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The purpose of this paper is to identify whether or not females believe they associate with the culture of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by investigating the perceptions of female students currently enroled in STEM courses.

The paper presents data from a survey on female STEM students’ “Perspectives of women in STEM”, “Parents’ Science qualification”, “Supports in their STEM Course” and their “Science identify” through a social capital lens. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to analyse the data.

The main findings were that female STEM undergraduates believe social bias, balancing work and family life and lack of role models are the main cause of less women in STEM professions and leadership positions. There were statistically significant differences between how male and female students identified with certain traits, with less females claiming to be intelligent and know about latest discoveries than males.

To eradicate stereotypical views of scientists, it is recommended that Irish higher-education institutions introduce initiatives to increase the socialisation of STEM females within female networks and develop female students’ self-awareness of their own capabilities. The expansion of STEM networks could act as a means to facilitate female students adopting positive science identities, increasing their science capital.

In Ireland, there is a paucity of literature relating to females’ experience of STEM in higher education. This paper provides evidence that despite their engagement with STEM, female undergraduate students subscribe to the stereotypical image of the scientist. This study highlights the need to change the culture experienced by female STEM undergraduates in Ireland so as to improve the experiences and trajectories of women in higher education.

This chapter introduces a theoretically grounded pedagogical procedure of moral argumentation that aims to facilitate student teachers’ learning of moral competencies during teacher education. Despite the essentiality of the moral aspects of teaching, they often remain implicit in the curricula and pedagogical practices of teacher education. Thus, there is a clear need to bring these aspects to the foreground and create possibilities for student teachers to elaborate them thoroughly during teacher education. Authentic cases capturing classroom realities and moral dilemmas at school as well as their systematic analysis and reflection from various lenses form the core of the procedure. Based on the results of the use of the procedure in the practice of teacher education, it promisingly fulfills the aims to demonstrate the moral core of teaching and teacher’s central role in it for student teachers.

The term recovery is an abstract concept. It differs for each and every person regardless of race, sexual orientation, culture or belief system. Throughout the age of modern medicine, doctors and scholars have tried to understand the concept of recovery for those in mental distress and those who are in the process of addiction. This chapter aims to highlight the different understandings of the concept of recovery from both a mental health and addiction perspective in order to gain a more in-depth understanding of the processes of recovery and how its definition and qualities have changed over time as new and more compelling clinical evidence emerges.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions created a range of potential additional stressors for families, particularly for parents living with children. This study aims to explore whether there were any differences in the mental health and emotional experiences of those living with children, and those who were not, during the pandemic and related lockdowns; and whether there were any specific risk factors associated with these mental health outcomes and emotional experiences.

Regression analyses of ten-wave repeated cross-sectional surveys between May 2020 and November 2021 on a total sample of 42,529 UK adults, which measured mental health with a range of pleasant and unpleasant emotional experiences. The interaction effects of living with children and age as well as marital status were tested.

During the pandemic, individuals who were living with children were more likely to feel hopeful (OR: 1.1) and grateful (OR: 1.163), less likely to feel hopeless (OR: 0.918) and lonely (OR: 0.799), while more likely to feel guilty (OR: 1.185), unprepared (OR: 1.195) and pressurised (OR: 1.14), than those not living with children. More nuanced findings and diverse emotional experiences were also found in people of different age groups and marital statuses.

This study has highlighted that being parents and living with children could be important factors of emotional distress, especially during the special circumstances of the pandemic and lockdowns, drawing on the large-scale national data.