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this course required young people to set current issues in their historical context by looking at
developments over the past 400 years of Irish history, provided useful skills which they could
apply to other contexts. However, they said that whether Ireland was used to exemplify a
current issue depended on whether history teachers chose to select it.
Finally, the interviewee identified how an Irish dimension contributed to the pilot History
GCSE (OCR, 2006) that was due to be implemented in September 2006. Although teachers
had to address issues such as diversity, the syllabus was intended to be more flexible than
existing examination courses. The interviewee indicated that this had the following
implications for an Irish dimension:
In terms of the Irish dimension they [the history teacher] could choose not to do that.
That is certainly a possibility. Or equally on the positive side they could choose to do
that and they could do it through a number of different units.
They said that the medieval unit content had been reviewed on a number of occasions to
ensure that it included the histories of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Teachers would
have the opportunities to choose whether to include an Irish dimension within other units of
the course. The overall impression given from interviewee perceptions was that they were
sympathetic towards teaching an Irish dimension within the context of a flexible approach to
the curriculum that gave due consideration to diversity. Within this framework they allowed
for a significant degree of teacher choice, which would affect the extent to which they chose
to develop Irish history.
The third interviewee was the Director of the School History Project, and the interview took
place in February 2006. The breadth of their role and influence meant that their perspective on
the place of an Irish dimension provided a strong justification for interviewing them. The