In 1980 McKernan was appointed as a college lecturer in Education at University College Dublin where he established Curriculum Studies as a new field of teaching and educational inquiry in the Education Department. In 1991 he accepted the King Distinguished Professorship at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, US. He returned briefly to act as Dean and Chair of the Education Faculty at the University of Limerick, Ireland in 1993. McKernan returned to East Carolina University in 1994. McKernan's educational theory emphasizes the teacher as a researcher and schools as agencies of cultural reconstruction using action research [2] to improve school practices. McKernan is a founder and member of the Educational Studies Association of Ireland and has been its secretary and general editor at times since 1977.
McKernan is an advocate for 'action research' - research used to solve practical social problems experienced by those who encounter the problems themselves. He has developed 'reflective practice' techniques as tools for employing action inquiry in educational settings (Curriculum Action Research: London: Palgrave Macmillan 1998).
McKernan was secretary for the Galway Itinerant Settlement Committee, Galway, Ireland, which provided housing for homeless Irish "Travellers" (nomadic persons) in Galway. In 1971 the group housed all thirty-six families in Galway who had been homeless - the first city to do so in Ireland.
He is a founding member of the Educational Studies Association of Ireland and was editor of its journal Irish Educational Studies.[3] He has been general editor of the Yearbooks of the South Atlantic Philosophy of Education Society (1998–2004) and was President of the Society during 2003-2005. He has been a finalist for the East Carolina University Lifetime Research Award.
