‘No One Sees a Traveller at the Top of the Class’: Experiences of Irish Travellers on Programmes Supporting Teacher Diversity

Marino Institute of Education’s Tobar and Maynooth University’s Turn to Teaching are university-based widening participation programmes focused on enhancing the engagement and experiences of Irish Travellers in initial teacher education. Adopting a narrative approach, this chapter explores five Travellers’ journeys into and through the two programmes. Participants’ teaching aspirations can be seen in a broader occupational desire and orientation to get involved with work that ‘makes a difference’ at both a personal and societal level. The intention of the programmes to create spaces for critical dialogue and reflection enabled participants to articulate not only the type of teacher they wished to become but also, significantly, provided them with a critical literacy and confidence to de-individualise notions of deficit through revealing and naming the structural, institutional, and financial barriers they experienced on their journeys towards teaching.