Making the invisible visible: managing tensions around including Traveller culture and history in the curriculum at primary and post-primary levels

Abstract

The formal recognition of Travellers as a distinct ethnic group by the Irish State in 2017 was arguably a significant step towards redressing the pernicious and endemic institutional racism and marginalisation that Travellers have historically experienced in Ireland. It was announced by the Irish Government in October 2018 that a review of the place of Travellers in existing school curricula would be undertaken, with a view to including Traveller history and culture at primary and post-primary levels. While there are benefits associated with curricular recognition, including its capacity to potentially disrupt the reiterative reproduction of institutional racism at a formal curricular level, a significant body of literature highlights the shortcomings associated with additive curricular approaches. These include tokenism and a failure to challenge dominant mainstream-centric perspectives and wider systemic inequities. The potential for curricular interventions to obscure or side-line critical consideration of the role of teachers’ and student teachers’ subjectivities, privileges and biases in perpetuating inequities is another dimension of this critique. This article draws on critical social justice literature, including tools from Critical Whiteness studies, to critically explore anti-Traveller racism and to analyse the tensions inherent in including Traveller culture and history in Irish primary and post-primary curricula.

Keywords:

• Travellers
• curriculum
• racism
• whiteness
• teacher education

Acknowledgements

We would like to sincerely thank Fionnuala Waldron, Professor Emerita at DCU Institute of Education, for her constructive and very helpful feedback on the first draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We use the term ‘Traveller’ in this article as it is the term used in Irish equality legislation and in the Traveller Culture and History in Education Bill which we are discussing in this article, however, we recognise that many in the Traveller Community use and prefer the term ‘Mincéir’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne Marie Kavanagh

Anne Marie Kavanagh, PhD, is Assistant Professor in Ethical and Intercultural Education in the School of Human Development at DCU Institute of Education, Dublin City University.

Maeve Dupont

Maeve Dupont, PhD, is Assistant Professor in Psychology in the School of Human Development at DCU Institute of Education, Dublin City University.