Transnational Knowledge Circulation and the Closing of Minds to Progressive Education Influences on Schooling in the First Decade of Independence in Ireland

Abstract For decades, transnational knowledge circulation in relation to schooling in Ireland has been a neglected area of study among historians. This paper provides new insights through a transnational lens on primary, secondary, and vocational curriculum developments in the first decade following the advent of national independence in the country in 1922. During this period, key policy-makers largely rejected progressive educational ideas circulating internationally and promoted curricula and pedagogy in primary and secondary schools that reflected the new nation’s deeply conservative Catholic nature and nationalist ethos. While initial signs indicated that developments in vocational education might head in a different direction, ultimately, more progressive educational ideas circulating internationally were excluded from that sector as well. At all levels of the education system, the hegemony of the Catholic Church and other contextual factors resulted in traditional and conservative curricula that underpinned policy and practice until the 1960s.