This article looks at the Intermediate Certificate examination on Irish history between 1926 and 1968. An investigation on how the official syllabus was examined is of equal merit, if not more important than the syllabus itself, being used as the official marker of a pupil's aptitude and awareness of Irish history. Furthermore, examination papers…

This paper unites the history of Computer Science (CS) Education in Ireland by plotting Ireland's roadmap leading to the implementation of formal Computer Science Education in schools. It first outlines the educational system in Ireland. The history roadmap starts in the 1970s with the first notions of introducing computing in post-primary school,…

Regional Technical Colleges, later Institutes of Technology, were developed just over fifty years ago in response to a perceived gap in knowledge, skills, and competencies required to promote market growth and success (Thorn, 2018). It was envisaged that this change to Ireland's higher education landscape would be capable of continuing adaptation…

This article focuses on an underexplored aspect of the Catholic convent school experience, namely the kinds of socialisation and regulation of emotion maintained within the convent community. Drawing on the emerging history of emotions and the concept of emotional communities first posited by Barbara H. Rosenwein, it considers how historians might…

Purpose: Demonstration farming has been an important part of agricultural extension since the first decades of the twentieth century. While Seaman Knapp is often credited with developing demonstration farming, his son acknowledged that the concept has much earlier origins in the nineteenth century development of model/pattern farms. However,…

The Intermediate System of schooling, which operated in Ireland between 1878 and 1922, has, generally, been considered limited in ambition and as having generated a culture of high-stake terminal examinations. This article seeks a more nuanced understanding of the system and proposes that, despite an evolving system of secondary provision in…

Based on the oral history testimonies of Sister-teachers, this study provides an insight into the impact of the Free Education Scheme (1967) on the lives of women religious in Ireland. This major initiative was generated and driven by men; however, it had a direct impact on the professional lives of thousands of women who ran schools. The article…

Early advocates for the expansion of women's higher education imagined a future that was deeply embedded in their aspirations for social, economic and political equality. In the vanguard of campaigns for wider access to higher education were women professors, they themselves outsiders within an academic hierarchy marked by male privilege. This…

The launch of a Computer Science curriculum specification in upper secondary schools in Ireland in 2018 was a landmark and a historic development in Irish education. Addressing the historical policy decisions adopted towards establishing the specification, this paper presents an analysis of developments from the 1970s as revealed in key policies…

This research critically examines the efforts of the British State and the various churches to re-vision the character and status of elementary school teachers in Ireland between the 1830s and the 1920s. In a climate of regular political revolution and denominational hostility, the Westminster government and all churches were anxious to promote…

Early childhood education is steeped both in historical and ideological traditions which value play as a powerful pedagogy. From an Irish perspective, early years research tends to be framed with a sociocultural perspective. This research presents a reinterpretation of play episodes using a Foucauldian lens. It documents a re-imagination of…

In the two decades preceding Irish independence the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge, founded 1893), an organisation dedicated to the revival of the Irish language, campaigned to persuade both national and intermediate commissioners of education to reposition the language within the curriculum to reflect what the League believed was both its…

This article investigates policy and provision of music in initial teacher education (ITE) in Ireland and Northern Ireland through a novel approach to comparative music education in ITE. Employing literature reviews and a survey of music ITE policy and provision in the two jurisdictions, it draws on a range of primary and secondary sources and…

This article examines the lived experiences of teachers who were either lay volunteers or Sister missionaries, working in education and health care. The research draws on oral histories, examining the responses of participants under a series of thematic headings that unpack the influence of family life, schooling and faith, while also exploring…

This article assesses the rates of third-level degree obtainment amongst Republic of Ireland-born football migrants who played league football in England in the period from 1945 until 2010. It will illustrate that despite a general widening of access and participation at university level in the Republic of Ireland in the late twentieth century,…