Stephanie Burns

Demonstrating the merits of the peer research process: A Northern Ireland case study

This article discusses the benefits and challenges of involving peer researchers in social research projects. A research project on pupil participation in policy making on school bullying in Northern Irelands schools was commissioned by the Office of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People and undertaken by the National Childrens Bureau in conjunction with researchers from Queens University Belfast in fourteen schools across Northern Ireland, utilizing a mixed methods approach. We trained and employed nine 15—18-year-old peer researchers to support them in this project. After the projects completion, we conducted interviews with six of the peer researchers to investigate how they experienced their involvement in the research. We discuss the findings from these interviews and contextualize in a review of literature on research involving children and young people.

“The world would just fall apart if there’s no respect at all”: Children’s understandings of respect for diversity in a post-conflict society

Abstract The term ‘respect for diversity’ has gained prominence in many policy and curricular developments aimed at promoting reconciliation and pluralism. To explore the understandings of ‘respect for diversity’ held by children in a society that has both emerged from conflict and is increasingly multicultural, 15 group interviews were conducted with 7–11-year-old children in Northern Ireland. The behavioural aspects of respect for diversity articulated by the children were identified as: attention; offering time; equality of treatment; and acts of solidarity. Affective motivations for these actions were empathy and the pursuit of friendship; cognitive motivations were: a moral norm of inclusion; curiosity; internalised human rights principles; and egalitarianism (a belief that all persons are equal in fundamental worth or value). Findings are discussed in relation to theories of children’s prejudice development and moral development, and implications for the teaching and promotion of respect for diversity as part of peace education programmes are considered.

Teaching Citizenship in the Faith School: Qualitative Evidence from Separate Schools in Northern Ireland.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how teachers teach and students learn about citizenship education in two faith-based schools in Northern Ireland. The data show that participants in the Catholic school were confident in their own identity; teachers encouraged active engagement with contentious, conflict-related debates and students displayed empathy with other racial and religious groups. In the Protestant school, teachers avoided any reference to identity and conflict and students seemed to have limited knowledge of these issues. The findings emphasise the extent to which separate schools embody the cultural norms prevalent within each of the communities that they serve and reveal the influence which these norms have for teaching and learning about citizenship.

Caught in the Conundrum: Neoliberalism and Education in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland--Exploring Shared Education.

Northern Ireland (NI) is emerging from a violent period in its troubled history and remains a society characterized by segregation between its two main communities. Nowhere is this more apparent than in education, where for the most part Catholic and Protestant pupils are educated separately. During the last 30 years there has been twofold pressure placed on the education system in NI – at one level to respond to intergroup tensions by promoting reconciliation, and at another, to deal with national policy demands derived from a global neoliberalist economic agenda. With reference to current efforts to promote shared education between separate schools, we explore the uneasy dynamic between a school-based reconciliation programme in a transitioning society and system-wide values that are driven by neoliberalism and its organizational manifestation – new managerialism. We argue that whilst the former seeks to promote social democratic ideals in education that can have a potentially transformative effect at the societal level, neoliberal priorities have the potential to both subvert shared education and also to embed it.