Citizenship education in Northern Ireland and Israel within an educational rights framework

Analysis reveals that understandings of education rights can be oriented around three themes - minority group representation, dealing with difference, and preparation for life. Locating these themes within the 2-A framework proves problematic, and reveals wide and sometimes conflicting variety in interpreting the framework. Questions are raised regarding the ‘universality’ of international interpretative frameworks for education rights, and therefore the workability of such frameworks in the national and divided context.

The original contribution to knowledge of this thesis relates to how its combination of the disciplines of education and law, and its comparison of two divided jurisdictions, illuminate this interpretative variety, offering a critique of the international human rights system of interpretation, and proposes the notion of ‘interpretative communities’ as a way of conceptualising the variety of understandings. It also underlines the continuing complexity of delivering a common citizenship education curriculum in a divided society.