View - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

The interviewee said that one of the reasons that they chose to teach about Ireland as the
Modern World Study at GCSE was because they had studied it at university. They also felt
that a lot of materials and conferences had been introduced to support teaching the topic. In
recent years the availability of BBC videos, CD ROMS and websites had also proved useful.
Pupils and parents were generally positive and some parents had commented that they would
have liked to attend their children’s lessons in order to understand what was happening in the
news. Nevertheless, this interviewee admitted that if they were introducing the School History
Project course into their school they would focus on ‘Terrorism’ because of its greater
contemporary relevance. Within this they noted that it would be appropriate to make
comparisons between the Irish Republican Army and current terrorist organisations, although
the focus of the study would clearly be elsewhere. An Irish dimension was taught when
studying the Civil War within the AS/A2 course where reference was made to historians who
promoted British as opposed to English history:
… partly due to the work of Conrad Russell [an eminent historian] in emphasising the
British nature of the civil wars of the 17 th century and the inter-relationship between
events in England and events in Scotland and events in Ireland.
Overall, the only issue at Key Stage 3 raised by the interviewee was time, and they said that
the amount allocated to history was about to be reduced. They were unable to specify whether
or not this would impact upon their treatment of an Irish dimension.
The fifth interviewee had been Head of History for four years in an 11-18 urban multicultural
school in eastern England. The school was operating a two-year Key Stage 3 curriculum.
During the interview they said that an Irish dimension had some importance at Key Stage 3
whereas they had said that it was important when answering the questionnaire. When asked
why they developed an Irish dimension at Key Stage 3 they cited personal interests and antiracist
or human rights issues as having some importance. However, the interviewee