This paper explores the unheeded religious roots of the modern conviction to standardised, scientific education policy and its inherent sciento-social epistemology. In doing so, it traces the discursive roots of this hierarchical but non-governmental idea of social governance from its 16th century Scottish Presbyterian predecessors to its…

The United States occupations of Cuba and Puerto Rico following the War of 1898 instituted immediate reforms to the educational systems of the islands. The imposition of public school systems modeled on those of the United States and a concurrent wave of Protestant schools established by American missionaries are well-known features of the…

In Ireland primary RE is a fractured, contested, complex and changing territory devoid of a common language and characterised by a proliferation of syllabi and curricula generated for increasingly diverse school types. For centuries the dynamic decolonising process has led to a questioning of former orthodoxies and an attempted de-linking of the…

Transferring education policy from one country to another, or between supranational bodies and national administrations, is common practice, and the potential benefits for educational quality and standards are evident. Despite these advantages, the dominant approaches to policy transfer have been criticized for, among other things, neglecting…

This paper examines the distinctive locus of teacher education in Northern Ireland (NI) in respect of Fundamental British Values (FBV). It is written from the perspective of teacher education tutors in a PGCE programme that explicitly subscribes to pursuing the Shared Future agenda as outlined by NI Government policy in 2005. First, it establishes…