Catholic Teacher Formation in Northern Ireland

Abstract

AbstractAcknowledging Northern Ireland’s long history of sectarian strife between Catholics and Protestants and its “consociational” model of power-sharing government today, the essay introduces the region’s distinctive educational landscape with its extensive network of Catholic schools and state-funded Catholic teacher education university college (St Mary’s). It also touches both on claims that the very existence of Catholic schools perpetuates sectarian division and, au contraire, Catholic education’s defence of its positive contribution to education and life. Looking to the future, in the face of both the strong currents of secularization and Northern Ireland government policy which encourages a technocratic and bureaucratic approach to education, the essay recognizes the characteristic attitudes, often unsympathetic to religion, of typical student teachers today. Catholic teacher formation in Northern Ireland, it is argued, needs, if it is to be fit for purpose, to speak to these concerns and explore ways to offer student teachers a better intellectual and personal experience of the Catholic vision of education.KeywordsSectarianismEthno-politicalSecularizationManagerialismGeneration Z/iGens