Musicianship & Kindermusic Lecturer

Edel McDonnell (MA, BA Hons, LRSM, DipMus RIAM)

Edel is a graduate of Waterford Institute of Technology, the Royal Irish Academy of Music and the MTU Cork School of Music. She has been a prize-winner at the Dublin Feis Ceoil and at the MTU Cork School of Music, where she was awarded the Bernard Curtis Prize for piano.

Edel is committed to undergoing continuous professional development in music education. She obtained a Professional Development Certificate in Early Childhood Music (Kodály) with the British Kodály Academy/University of Roehampton, UK, a Certificate in Kodály Music Education Concept from Silver Lake College, USA and the Feierabend Association for Music Education Curriculum Certification (First Steps in Music and Conversational Solfege) at the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford, USA. She also completed an early childhood music & movement teacher training programme based on the Orff-Schulwerk pedagogy in Los Angeles, California, USA. As a graduate music student in the USA, Edel was awarded multiple scholarships from Silver Lake College.

Edel has devised and presented workshops and lectures in schools and colleges including University College Dublin, Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin, Leeson Park School of Music, Dublin, Herbert Lodge Arts Centre, Kildare, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, CIT Cork School of Music, Cork College of Commerce and the County Cork School of Music. Edel was appointed a music examiner for the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin and the County Cork School of Music.

Furthermore, Edel has lectured on various early childhood education degree courses throughout Ireland including Technological University (TU) Dublin, Munster Technological University (MTU) Cork and Marino Institute of Education (an associated college of Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin (TCD).

At present, Edel lectures in the Musicianship and Academic Studies Department at the MTU Cork School of Music and the Department of Applied Social Studies at MTU Cork. Edel has been responsible for designing many courses and modules throughout MTU including Kodály-Inspired Music Education for the Early Years, Kindermusic and the Junior Infant 8-year Musicianship programme.

Edel is currently a PhD student with the Department of Music, at University College Cork. Her doctoral research is funded by MTU. Her investigation focuses on the impact of a singing intervention with teachers in Irish early childhood classrooms.

Edel has presented the preliminary findings of her research at academic conferences in Ireland (Early Childhood Ireland Online Research Symposium), the UK (Music Educators and Researchers of Young Children England Conference), Belgium (European Network of Music Educators and Researchers of Young Children Conference) and Greece (European Early Childhood Education Research Association Conference).