New peace, new teachers: student teachers’ perspectives on diversity and community relations in Northern Ireland

This paper reflects upon student teachers’ conceptions of inter-community relations and the preparation they receive to address issues of diversity and mutual understanding. The study in Northern Ireland is set against a backdrop of political, social and educational change, where a shared, peaceful future appears possible. Student teachers at a Catholic institution and a predominantly Protestant institution indicated a willingness to engage with issues concerning diversity and inter-community relations, despite having a limited knowledge of the concepts. However they also demonstrated clear views about the relevance and value of the preparation they received. The findings are evaluated using multicultural theory.

Social and Subcultural Capital among teenagers in Northern Ireland

This article makes a case for the inclusion of subcultural capital as an indictor of social capital networks in the lives of teenagers. It does so by critiquing approaches that assume that adult measures of social capital can be nonproblematically extended to account for stocks of social capital held by younger generations. To illustrate the fallacy of this approach, this article draws on data from the 2003 Northern Ireland Young Life and Times Survey (NIYLTS) and the indicators used to explore the relevance of social capital in the lives of teenagers. By ignoring concepts such as subcultural capital, surveys such as the NILYTS provide partial frameworks for understanding the complexities of young people's links to social capital networks and their inclusive and exclusive effects.