Abstract
Societies which suffer from ethnic and political divisions are often characterised by patterns of social and institutional separation, and sometimes these divisions remain even after political conflict has ended. This has occurred in Northern Ireland where there is, and remains, a long-standing pattern of parallel institutions and services for the different communities. A socially significant example lies in the education system where a parallel system of Catholic and Protestant schools has been in place since the establishment of a national school system in the 1830s. During the years of political violence in Northern Ireland a variety of educational interventions were implemented to promote reconciliation, but most of them failed to create any systemic change. This paper describes a post-conflict educational initiative known as Shared Education which aims to promote social cohesion and school improvement by encouraging sustained and regular shared learning between students and broader collaboration between teachers and school leaders from different schools. The paper examines the background to work on Shared Education, describes a ‘sharing continuum’ which emerged as an evaluation and policy tool from this work and considers evidence from a case study of a Shared Education school partnership in a divided city in Northern Ireland. The paper will conclude by highlighting some of the significant social and policy impact of the Shared Education work.
Highlights
The idea of the nation-state included an assumption that the ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1991) of the nation encompassed a culturally distinct community, with its own history and traditions
This paper describes a postconflict educational initiative known as Shared Education which aims to promote social cohesion and school improvement by encouraging sustained and regular shared learning between students and broader collaboration between teachers and school leaders from different schools
The paper examines the background to work on Shared Education, describes a ‘sharing continuum’ which emerged as an evaluation and policy tool from this work and considers evidence from a case study of a Shared Education school partnership in a divided city in Northern Ireland
Summary
The idea of the nation-state included an assumption that the ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1991) of the nation encompassed a culturally distinct community, with its own history and traditions. It will expand opportunity for students and promote school improvement, as well as build connections across the sectarian divide and promote social cohesion It recognises the different contexts and circumstances of communities within Northern Ireland and so encourages locally tailored programs of between-school collaboration and places high value on the empowerment of teachers as co-creators of collaborative partnerships and practice. In addition to the experience of the first phase of SEP (Duffy and Gallagher 2014), the ‘sharing continuum’ drew from existing research on collaborative effectiveness in educational contexts, most notably Katz et al (2008), Katz and Earl (2010) and Woods et al (2006) In this way it sought to provide a ‘road-map’ whereby school partnerships could develop more advanced and effective arrangements, and work towards a context in which shared learning and broader collaboration was normalised, and sustainable.
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