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Britain. The way in which the Key Stage 3 History proposals link both threads to Citizenship
Education demonstrates an implicit link with Ajegbo’s recommendations, even though the
latter linked regional, ethnic and cultural diversity more closely than the Review. Fourthly,
the HMI report History in the Balance (2007) has identified strengths and issues which need
to be addressed by history teachers. For the purposes of this research the way in which the
report challenged teachers to consider ‘big issues’ in history, its relevance and the need to go
beyond teaching English history and make reference to regional and multicultural diversity
can be related to the teaching of an Irish dimension.
The above changes suggest that the potential opportunities for developing an Irish dimension
may be greater after 2007 than has been the case during the period of the current research
project. Clearly, how far this is the case will depend on a range of factors including teacher
perceptions, resources, and pragmatic considerations. For example, a recent article in the
Times Educational Supplement has drawn attention to the fact that the success of the
Secondary Review will depend on issues such as how well teachers cope with the flexibility
provided, whether Head Teachers use the increased flexibility to reduce curriculum time for
subjects like history in response to assessment pressures on core subjects. The article’s
conclusion provided muted optimism for the future:
Training for teachers in developing new approaches, all agree, is crucial … Will
teachers leap at the opportunities or feel so ground down by initiatives and testing that
they will not have the energy to come up with much that is creative? It is a
commentary on the state of the profession that a reform that seems so welcome in
concept might yet prove tricky to implement. (Mansell, 2007, p.22-23)
This last consideration naturally leads to considering ways in which the current research can
be developed. A comparative study between the perceptions of secondary teachers working
before and after the curriculum changes in 2008 is the most obvious development on the