This Reader brings together a wide range of material to present an international perspective on topical issues in history of education today. Focusing on the enduring trends in this field, this lively and informative Reader provides broad coverage of the subject and includes crucial topics such as: * higher education * informal agencies of education * schooling, the state and local government * education and social change and inequality * curriculum * teachers and pupils * education, work and the economy * education and national identity. With an emphasis on contemporary pieces that deal with issues relevant to the immediate real world, this book represents the research and views of some of the most respected authors in the field today. Gary McCulloch also includes a specially written introduction which provides a much-needed context to the role of history in the current educational climate. Students of history and history of education will find this Reader an important route map to further reading and understanding.

This book examines educational policy at primary, secondary and university level in Ireland from the foundation of the State to the present day. Primarily an attempt to set policy within a historical context, the book draws together compelling research on the evolution of key changes in topics as diverse as the use of corporal punishment, the evolution of skills policy in post-primary settings and the development of the universities in the post-1922 period. The book includes detailed analysis of more recent policy initiatives and changes in, initial teacher education, curriculum change, and special and inclusive education and will be of interest to those working in the various fields, students and the general public. It presents detailed discussions of change in the Irish education system, demonstrating how policy initiatives, particularly since the early 1990s, have brought about significant transformation at all levels. In doing so, the book also demonstrates that the origin of change often lay in earlier developments, particularly those of the mid-1960s. Policy development is closely linked to external factors and influences and chapters on academic selection and teachers’ recollections of policy, for example, set developments within the wider historical context employing the views and recollections of teachers so that the influence of change on day-to-day practice is revealed.

This book explores the experiences and activities of students across the twentieth century and throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. The daily experiences of students, their involvement in local communities, national political organisations and widespread cultural changes, are the main focus of this ground-breaking book. It takes students themselves as the subject of inquiry, exploring the fundamental importance of student activities within wider social and political changes and also how some of the key changes across the twentieth century have shaped and changed the make-up, experiences, and lives of students. This book charts the experiences of students throughout a period of unprecedented change as being a student in Britain and Ireland has gone from the endeavour of a small number of elite, mainly wealthy white men, to an important phase of life undertaken by the majority of young people.

This book examines the radical reform that occurred during the final two decades of British rule in Ireland when William Starkie (1860–1920) presided as Resident Commissioner for the Board. Following the lead of industrialized nations, Irish members of parliament sought to encourage the establishment of a state-funded school system during the early nineteenth century. The year 1831 saw the creation of the Irish National School System. Central to its workings was the National Board of Education which had the responsibility for distributing government funds to aid in the building of schools, the payment of inspectors and teachers, the publication of textbooks, and the cost of teacher training. In the midst of radical political and cultural change within Ireland, visionaries and leaders like Starkie filled an indispensable role in Irish education. They oversaw the introduction of a radical child-centered primary school curriculum, often referred to as the ‘new education’. Filling a gap in Irish history, this book provides a much needed overview of the changes that occurred in primary education during the 22 years leading up to Ireland’s independence.

Professor Dermot Keogh's Twentieth-Century Ireland, the sixth and final book in the New Gill History of Ireland series, is a wide-ranging, informative and hugely engaging study of the long twentieth century, surveying politics, administrative history, social and religious history, culture and censorship, politics, literature and art. It focuses on the consolidation of the new Irish state over the course of the twentieth century. Professor Keogh highlights the long tragedy of emigration, its effect on the Irish psyche and on the under-performance of the Irish economy. He emphasises the lost opportunities for reform of the 1960s and early 70s. Membership of the EU had a diminished impact due to short-term and sectionally motivated political thinking and an antiquated government structure. Professor Keogh looks at how the despair of the 1950s revisited the country in the 1980s as almost an entire generation felt compelled to emigrate, very often as undocumented workers in the United States. Professor Keogh also argues that the violence in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s was an Anglo-Irish failure which was turned around only when Britain acknowledged the role of the Irish government in its resolution. He extends his analysis of the twentieth-century to include a wide-ranging survey of the most contentious events—financial corruption, child sexual abuse, scandals in the Catholic Church—between 1994 and 2005. Twentieth-Century Ireland: Table of Contents - A War without Victors: Cumann na nGaedheal and the Conservative Revolution - De Valera and Fianna Fáil in Power, 1932–1939 - In the Time of War: Neutral Ireland, 1939–1945 - Seán MacBride and the Rise of Clann na Poblachta - The Inter-Party Government, 1948–1951 - The Politics of Drift, 1951&1959 - Seán Lemass and the 'Rising Tide' of the 1960s - The Shifting Balance of Power: Jack Lynch and Liam Cosgrave, 1966–1977 - Charles Haughey and the Poverty of Populism - Ireland in the New Century