ABSTRACT

Education in Northern Ireland continues to be organised along denominational lines, with more than 90% of pupils attending separate Catholic or de facto Protestant schools. Since 2007, an initiative known as ‘shared education’ has operated in the region to provide opportunities for pupils from separate schools to meet and learn together on a regular basis. This involves the formation of collaborative partnerships between Catholic and Protestant schools to deliver joint classes and activities for mixed groups of pupils. One of shared education’s objectives is to create more porous boundaries between schools and thereby provide the conditions for relationship-building between pupils. Mindful of this aim, the current study explores to what extent, and how, shared education alters social and spatial practices that sustain division in educational settings. To do so, it adopts Tilly’s (2004) typology of social boundary mechanisms as a framework for analysing qualitative data collected with 60 pupils in two shared education partnerships. The research identifies instances where boundaries are formed or intensified through shared education, as well as where they are relaxed and reduced, and examines in particular how the emplacement of encounter contributes to this variation in social boundary change.

摘要

北爱尔兰的教育继续按照教派组织，超过 90% 的学生参加单独的天主教或事实上的新教学校。自 2007 年以来，该地区开展了一项名为“共享教育”的计划，为来自不同学校的学生提供定期见面和共同学习的机会。这涉及在天主教和新教学校之间建立合作伙伴关系，为混合学生群体提供联合课程和活动。共享教育的目标之一是在学校之间建立更宽松的界限，从而为学生之间建立关系提供条件。考虑到这一目标，当前的研究探讨了共享教育在多大程度上以及如何改变了维持教育环境中分裂的社会和空间实践。为此，它采用 Tilly (2004) 的社会边界机制类型学作为分析在两个共享教育伙伴关系中收集的 60 名学生的定性数据的框架。该研究确定了通过共享教育形成或加强边界的实例，以及放松和减少边界的实例，并特别研究了相遇的位置如何促成了社会边界变化的这种变化。