From Student to Citizen The Role of Post Primary Schooling in the Political Socialisation of Irish Youth

This thesis explores the role of second level schooling in the political development of young people in the Republic of Ireland. Although it is not uncommon for youth voter turnout to be lower than the national average, patterns of youth engagement and development in Ireland present a number of problematic irregularities compared with European trends. Schools are nationwide institutions which engage with the vast majority of young citizens just before they reach voting age. As such they are important sites for the development of the civic habitus. The piloting of a new citizenship education course called Politics and Society, provided a unique opportunity to observe the effects of the formal curriculum on the political socialisation of students. The hidden curriculum was also examined under the lens of social capital theory in order to provide a full account of the impact of school experience. A matching pairs research design was developed in order compare similar sets of students, one set was piloting the new course and the other was not. Five pairs of twin schools were observed across five socio economic strata in order to assess the impact of both the formal and the hidden curriculum on young people from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. This approach was supported with an explanatory sequential mixed methods model involving two-phases, whereby quantitative data was collected and analysed first and then used as a foundation upon which to build a second phase of qualitative research. This enabled the ability to present a clear account of the factors affecting political socialisation in school contexts. The findings of this study demonstrate the power of the formal curriculum for civic and political development, with clear indicators that students who took the course had an advantage over students who did not in a variety of variables such as political efficacy and political knowledge. Another interesting outcome was that social capital on its own did not affect levels of political efficacy in any statistically significant way in any cohort. However, it is clear from qualitative data that the real success of the course relied on the context in which it was delivered, and that was most certainly grounded in the elements of social capital.