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The interviewee said that at a recent examination meeting they had been asked why they
studied Ireland as their Modern World Study. They suggested that Roman Catholic schools
selected it because of links with Ireland but for many teachers like themselves it was because
they were traditionalists who had taught the same topic for many years and that they were
familiar with it. They also noted that one teacher from a multicultural school had started
teaching the Arab-Israeli conflict and they felt that in similar circumstances they would do the
same. Overall, this goes some way towards suggesting that they were influenced by
multicultural and, possibly, anti-racist considerations more explicitly at Key Stage 4 than Key
Stage 3. However, pragmatism and pressure to increase examination results appear to have
been a major influence on the teaching of an Irish dimension at Key Stage 3 and their wider
adoption of the School History Project.
The second interviewee taught in an urban 11-16 girls’ school serving a predominantly white
working class community. This interviewee had been Head of History in the school for seven
years and had recently become an Assistant Head Teacher. They regarded an Irish dimension
as important at Key Stage 3 and developed it alongside work related to medicine as
preparation for work at Key Stage 4. The idea for developing themes came about after the
interviewee had attended a School History Project Conference and its implementation was
facilitated by financial support from the Head of School. The interviewee said that reasons for
developing an Irish dimension at Key Stage 3 included:
Children’s backgrounds, and I would say background to Key Stage 4 was the real push. It’s been the
push for everything that we do … over the past few years. We just threw everything out and wrote
specifically linking Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4.