Bicycle-sharing schemes have become an important piece of infrastructure in many cities across the world over the last decade. However, existing research investigating the role and impact of these schemes in cities is sparse. This research analyses the impact of a recently implemented scheme in Dublin, Ireland. Using evidence from 360 questionnaires, the paper examines four associated with the scheme: (1) the socioeconomic characteristics of the users; (2) its impact on modal choice; (3) its peak and off-peak functionality; and (4) its impact on driver awareness of cyclists. Results show the scheme is used predominantly by higher-income individuals, it has a different functionality during the peak and off-peak and has been indirectly successful at improving driver awareness towards cyclists.

The Covid-19 pandemic is an unanticipated event that has exposed human fragility in an interconnected and interdependent world. While impacts are of a global magnitude, they have been felt at the most local of levels. Across the world pupils' daily lives and experiences have been directly impacted by government-imposed measures and restrictions taken to address the pandemic. Existing research on the teaching of primary geography in Ireland, although both dated and limited, indicates the prevalence of didactic, textbook-based methods involving rote-learning. This points to a policy-practice gap whereby teaching methods are not aligned with those advocated by the curriculum. Primary teachers and student primary teachers have been found to hold knowledge-based encyclopaedic images of geography, failing to recognise the subject's relevance to the real-world lived experiences of pupils. This paper frames the Covid-19 as an authentic learning experience that can form the foundation for effective geography education. Pupils learn best and are more motivated to engage in a problem or issue that affects them or that they are connected to. By investigating Covid-19 through geography in the primary classroom, this paper argues that both pupils and teachers can recognise the relevance of geography to their lives and the wider world.

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When pupils learn geography they are extending their world view and reshaping it. This paper analyses representations of Africa and African countries and cultures in Irish primary geography textbooks and assesses to what extent these textbook portrayals facilitate or repress multicultural education, specifically critical multicultural education (CMCE). Here, this paper argues that primary geography can and should play a critical role in challenging societal issues of inequality, racism, prejudice and stereotypes, particularly pertaining to perspectives of the 'Other'. This paper devises a framework for critical multicultural geography education (CMCGE) and applies this to Irish primary geography textbooks. While some textbooks can demonstrate capacity in fostering multiple perspectives, appreciation for diversity, development of critical thinking and enquiry, and making connections; in the main, textbooks present stereotypical, oversimplified accounts of issues, peoples and places which can result in feelings of superiority amongst dominant groups and more entrenched feelings of 'Otherness' amongst minority groups.