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This articles reports on the findings of a study carried out in 2003Á2004 which examined gender perspectives in the delivery and assessment of junior cycle history. The study was a collaborative effort between the School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University College Dublin, and the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, Trinity College Dublin. Commissioned by the Gender Equality Unit of the Department of Education and Science, the principal aim of the study was to examine how men and women are represented in the junior cycle history syllabus. The principal focus of this article is to report on a key aspect of the overall research study*/ namely, the gendered nature of examination questions at junior cycle history and teachers' beliefs in relation to gender equality in the classroom. Central to the study was a survey of the views of practising (n 0/249) and trainee history teachers (n0/46). Key findings included the under-representation of females in the historical narrative and in the state examinations in junior cycle history and the frustration of a significant number of teachers at the lack of gender balance in available teaching materials.

This article examines the perspectives of 14 primary school teachers subjected to a marriage ban in Ireland between 1932 and 1958. This oral history study provides a unique platform to examine the construction and articulation of these women's historical memories. Interrogating their perspectives on the marriage ban provides an important window into the social and cultural world in which they lived, the norms and dominant values they encountered, and the ways in which they negotiated their own individual consciousness within a specific cultural framework. Specifically, the analysis of these women's testimony generates significant insights into the gendering of teaching as a suitable profession for women in early twentieth-century Ireland; how gender shaped social and cultural roles; Church control over women's training and employment; and the use of policy to deepen women's social and economic subordination.