Education and Nationhood in Wales: An Historiographical Analysis

Abstract

Throughout the centuries, a sense of national identity in Wales has manifested itself in a variety of ways – aspirations to statehood, a unique language, cultural distinctiveness, religious affiliation, sporting achievement and, most recently, political devolution. Educational institutions in myriad forms have reflected aspects of these manifestations and themselves shed some light on their nature. In turn, the historiography of education in Wales is itself a product of national, educational, social and scholarly preoccupations which both reflect the ideas and priorities of the time and shed some light on their nature and significance. It is the purpose of this article to make a preliminary exploration into some of these interactions and, in so doing, provide an introduction to some of the major secondary sources of information on Welsh education. To this end, the article outlines in very general terms outstanding landmarks in those elements of Welsh education since the early modern period which might be ...