TEACHER unions are moving towards a future less defined and dictated by the parameters of sectarian division, the Transforming Education project has found.
Academics said organisations were characterised less by antagonistic opposition and more by cooperative rivalry.
Such a future, it said, was in the interests of all teachers and not just those who shared the same community identity.
The project examined the history of the north's five teaching unions.
When Northern Ireland was created in 1921 the interests of teachers in three distinct school types were represented by three different unions.
Those in the state-controlled sector by the Ulster Teachers Union; Catholic maintained schools by the Irish National Teachers' Organisation and voluntary grammar schools by the forerunners of ATL/NEU.
In 1947 a new type of school was created: secondary modern. The National Association of Schoolmasters and the National Union of Women Teachers filled that gap. It later merged into the NASUWT.
A fifth union - the National Association of Head Teachers - represents principals.
In a paper, the project team said that "inevitably teachers and their unions got tangled up on the margins (and occasionally in the middle) of the conflict".
UTU and INTO struggled to maintain cordial relations across the sectarian divide, it said.
It added that today, political stability and the need for economic pragmatism created a climate "within which a degree of détente has been achieved between unions that had previously been in fundamental opposition to one another".
"By acting to protect the interests of teachers against powerful employing organisations the teaching unions undoubtedly foster a sense of unity amongst their members.
"In NI, where community division is endemic within education, the nature of the relationship between the teaching unions is vital in either widening or bridging that divide."
