The primary curriculum is changing, but why? Why now? What's new and what opportunities does this change offer? Welcome to the NCCA podcast for today's episode. So if there's anything from the past that would spring to mind it's around that time and space for teachers individually to come to terms with what in the curriculum documents, but I think especially with the curriculum framework that collaborative engagement of teachers at maybe the same class level, the same school, clusters of schools, to have those ongoing conversations as to what does this mean for my practice, what does this mean for the learning of children in our school? Teachers do know the craft, they know their classrooms, they know their pupils, they're invested in what they're doing and so they should be confident but they need support to become more confident. So in today's podcast we will delve into the rich history of curriculum reform in Ireland. In this episode we'll explore key lessons from previous reforms with a particular focus on the landmark curriculum changes of 1999. These past experiences provide valuable insights into both the opportunities and challenges that arise during such a transformative periods. As the redeveloped curriculum is being prepared for introduction to schools, this is an important time to look back on and reflect on lessons from the past and importantly to also look forward to consider how we can help ensure that the redeveloped curriculum is enacted successfully, empowering teachers and benefiting learners for years to come. For this discussion I'm joined by my guest Dr. Tom Walsh and Kevin McLaughlin. Dr. Thomas Walsh is an associate professor in the Department of Education Manuth University with particular research interests in the history of education and curriculum. Tom joined the department in 2014 having previously worked as a primary school teacher and education researcher and a primary school inspector. Tom is a member of the NCCA Advisory Panel for the redevelopment of the primary school curriculum. Kiva has spent her career between the classroom and the education support services. She was originally secondited to PCSP in 2005 to support the introduction of the 99 curriculum. She has since worked across subjects and teacher education continuum supporting teachers and school leaders to understand, implement and enact curriculum. Working with a range of support services including PPS, PDST, NIPT and IJ to name a few. We do love our acronyms in Ireland, don't we? Kiva was also a member of the development group for the redeveloped primary arts curriculum. Tom and Kiva you're both very welcome. Thank you Tracey. Tom as the historian in the room I'm going to start with you. Tom can you briefly talk through the history of curriculum reform at primary level in Ireland? Thanks Tracey. I'm afraid it's a very long story the story of curriculum reform but I suppose it's important to remember that there's always been an agenda, there's always been a purpose education and that has generally been reflected within the curriculum. So if you've been got back to the ear of the hedge schools, oftentimes the curriculum was determined by parents who were paying the masters to provide education to children and we saw quite an eclectic curriculum at that time including subjects like Greek or Hebrew, philosophy, astronomy and so on but it was really with the advent of the national system of education in 1831 that the state began to shape the curriculum and the learning experiences of children because they wanted a more standardized and uniform approach across the country and in the political climate of the time the education system was used at that point to imbue children with more of an imperial or a colonial ideology and there was an exclusion of elements of Irish identity like the Irish language, Irish culture, Irish history and so on and that was accentuated even further during payment by results at the end of the 1800s as well. I suppose one of the big breakthroughs in curriculum reform came in 1900 and so about 120 years ago now. It was a curriculum that was very much influenced by transnational educational ideas, some of the big progressive educationalists like Montessori and Russo and Pestilazzi were used in a way of introducing a very child-centered, very discovery-oriented curriculum with a broad base of subjects, so lots of manual and practical instruction and cookery, laundry, different subjects that were gendered in many ways for boys and for girls. That brings us through as most political independence in the 1920s where again political imperatives determined the curriculum largely and that was in a new reality, a new political reality, there was a quest to build new national identity, build nationhood and schools were seen as a chief mechanism to do that, so we see the introduction of the Irish language for the first time formally within all schools, both as a subject and as a medium of instruction and we see the removal of many of those manual and practical and broad-based subjects that had previously made there. I suppose the curriculum was seen as a colonial artifact, the previous one and there was an effort at least to bring it in line with the new reality of independence. That curriculum from the 1920s lasted in essence until the 1970s and I think that's when we started to revert to a more child-centered, discover-oriented and also broad-based curriculum and really that trajectory has continued from 1971, built on again in 1999 and I suppose in essence the 2025 redeveloped curriculum that I'm sure we'll talk about in a while is a further iteration of that 1971 curriculum. So I suppose in summary and there's been a number of evolutions of the curriculum and a number of shifts and a number of reforms, reversals and indeed pendulum swings in terms of how both teachers and children are conceptualized or understood within the curriculum in terms of the range of subjects in terms of pedagogies and I suppose the last thing to say maybe around that is it's important to remember that's the curriculum policy as written of course in terms of enactment and in terms of the experiences of children during that period it may have differed and indeed it did differ greatly perhaps from the vision of those curriculum developers. Well don't Tom, not easy to capture all that rich history and to summarize it so well and keep of course you're not going to be able to cast your memory back that far but can you can you tell us what your experience of curriculum reform has been and what role do you've played in supporting and enacting curriculum change? Yeah thanks Tracy so I suppose I'll start at the beginning so I would have began my teaching career in 2001 and so I was in the classroom at the time of the introduction of the 99 curriculum and so I remember engaging with the in-service days at that time and I also distinctly remember the truck arriving to marry I with the grey boxes in my final year and unloading this new curriculum document for us so I guess my initial teacher education straddled the 71 and the 99 curricula at the time. I began teaching in Galway City and I remain a member of the staff there to this day but I suppose it was in 2005 then when I was seconded to my first acronym to support service and so back then it was the primary curriculum support program and the role of the PCSP was to support in service as it was known then in terms of the 99 curriculum and what that looked like for teachers in real terms was being brought to an off-site location and having a day immersed in a particular subject of the curriculum. My role at that time was as visual arts Quijajor and the Quijajor service was part of the regional curriculum support service that began in 2003 when we were a few subjects in and we realized that beyond the off-site day there was an age for some on-site training because there was an emerging understanding that schools were different, the context of schools were different, what was happening and two teacher rural gesture school wouldn't be the same as a 24 teacher urban school. So the Quijajor role and what I was doing with visual arts at the time was visiting schools, working with staffs and meeting them where they were at so it was very much a bespoke model of support. I moved then from the Quijajor role into an advisor role and I would have been involved with the role out of the drama curriculum back in 1999. That was one of the last of the subjects to be in service for the 99 curriculum. There were two days and that day was provided to every teacher in the country at that time. The day itself then when teachers were invited to these off-site days it was about the teacher being introduced to the curriculum but also engaging actively with the approaches espoused by the curriculum. Drama as a subject was challenging in some ways because there was some confusion. Confusion that I would argue still exists today between drama as a subject and drama as a methodology. But again it's something to consider I guess as we move forward with that subject area. So from there the subject, the support services moved into more school-based approaches and there was an awful lot of developments at that time with SSE, with the literary sea numeracy strategy, so the role changed and I actually returned to school for a point as well for a number of years and I suppose then it was really looking at well I had been talking the talk in some ways with teachers and so now when I was in my own classroom again what would it look like for me in practice? So there was huge learning on that return to school and I didn't intend to leave the classroom again but I guess it was the literary sea numeracy strategy that served as a catalyst for me to return to the support services and so then it was to a PDST, so the professional development service for teachers so named because at that point it was a cross-sectoral support service and so for a few years then I was working predominantly with the areas of literacy and numeracy working a bit with EAL and a lot with the SSE process as well so a few different things going on there to help teachers and school leaders with reform and with understanding and enacting curriculum change and then most recently I became a team leader for CPD research and design so I started in that position in 2019 and kept that position for a number of years until my time with the support services concluded very recently and that was a position that I felt a real privilege to be in and to hold to be honest because it gave a really nice vantage point across the system because what the role involved was working across primary and post primary and working across all subjects so you really got to understand what curriculum was about and what the continuum of education was striving for so I could start to make connections between numeracy at primary and then how that would translate into subjects like computer science at post primary I can see now when I look back from the senior cycle key skills to the competencies that we have in the primary curriculum framework what the vision might be there so yeah I've had a bit of skin in the game for a while now and learnt a lot in the process and I mean Tom even in describing your bio you have a lot of experience when it comes to to this space as well and in supporting curriculum change both in the past and currently can you tell us a little bit about that as well absolutely Tracy yes I've been really lucky to have occupied a number of roles within the education system and just listening to Quiver I think we started out in similar timeframes I spent my undergrad in St. Pat's graduating in 1997 and throughout that period we'd been waiting for the big box of books to be delivered and I think by 1997 they realized the warden going to arrive and we got the two R in 10 books of 1971 so again my pre-service and beginning of teaching career straddled at 1971 and 1999 curriculum and eventually the big box of books did arrive but I was teaching at that stage after an over years teaching I then joined the St. Pat's as a development doctor in the Centre for Early Childhood Development and Education and I was involved in the development of Shelter which is the National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and that was that was the first time I got an opportunity to understand how policy is developed and has something like a framework for quality is compiled as well as based on evidence from research from consultations and so on and it was also during that period of time I completed my PhD which looked at curriculum history looking at the way in which the curriculum has been developed in the past and also I suppose the word I used at that time was implemented but I even hear the word in active and I think that's a far richer and more contextual word nowadays but I think historically curricular word devised and were implemented but we might talk a little bit more about that again. After that experience I joined the Inspectorate then for about seven years and I think that was the most insightful role I've had in terms of understanding what a curriculum is, what a curriculum does and I suppose in that privilege I've had of observing thousands of classes and sitting on low chairs and the back of many classrooms where I'm sure people might have preferred I wasn't at at that moment in time I really got to see as well as that interface between policy and practice and the way in which teachers around the country brought life the the objectives or the provisions within the curriculum and many ways I suppose going above and beyond what the curriculum could actually say around that and I think that's where I really understood the power of the curriculum but also the limitations of the written word and it's really in the hands of professional teachers that the curriculum comes to life and then as well as most recently I've been a minute university I'm working the education department there and a lot of my teaching and my research relates to the curriculum both historically and in contemporary terms and and more recently then I've joined the NCCA advisory panel for the redevelopment of the curriculum so I've been really fortunate to work alongside NCCA colleagues but also the other panel members Louis Hayward Jim Spelan and Dominic Wise all professors internationally and I suppose that has given me an opportunity to engage with policy developers with teachers engage in with the big ideas around the redeveloped curriculum with researchers policy makers and wider stakeholders so it's been a real joy to look at that process that is leading to the redeveloped curriculum which will arrive in schools I suppose in mid 2025 and Kiva I suppose looking back now with the view to look forward when you think about the 99 curriculum its introduction and how it became embedded in schools over time and I mean you've had huge amount of experience in supporting the enactment around that I mean what aspects of that change do you think would be important for us to continue and maintain aspects that worked particularly well when it came to supporting change and you know when we think about the upcoming changes that are proposed and how these will be enacted what is there anything that comes to mind in that regard I suppose for me it will start with the the CPD because that's what I've been involved with over the years are we more now call it professional learning than continuous professional development but I think that element is critical for teachers so we need to give teachers the time and space to understand the rationale for change to get inside the covers of the documents once they're published and to make time for for the sense making that we referenced earlier so that was done with the 99 curriculum teachers were given time they were given time out of school off site to focus on the curriculum to meet colleagues to engage as learners themselves and to engage probably for the first time as professionals so it was a shift I think from teaching as a vocation to teaching as a profession and then I think when we have the teaching council that's solidified this notion of professionalism in teaching and I think we are invested now more than ever in teachers as professional learners teachers as requiring professionals and so I think it's critical that time is given to that and the criticism of the subject days for the 99 curriculum would have been that there was more of a training model and so it would have been said that it focused on delivering content rather than necessarily spending time deep in professional conversations and I know that the inspectors at that time would have reported seeing some of the lessons experienced during these days replicated in classrooms and the criticism was that there wasn't an account of the school's unique context or the pupils needs and interests so I think there's a lesson to be learned there that it's about the combination of having some element of training of delivering and trying to understand the new content that is going to be presented to teachers but then maybe in school supports on site that allows them to consider that content in their unique context so it's the combination of content and context I think that's that's key for enactment and we did have that with the Quijero model in our CSS it exists for the primary language curriculum with the sustained support model and even if we look to what's happening now with the primary maths curriculum there's a suite of supports that are available so I think we have learned from the models of CPD and the type of professional learning and we've listened to teachers so there is a lot to be learned from the Quijero model, from the advisor model even if we look to the mesh model of support that existed there's lessons to be learned from from all of that and there's data and a story that's written that can be referred back to so the type of support is one thing but more important I suppose is the purpose of that support and then how it actually transacts with teachers and school leaders so at the start of the advisory service I would say there was an emphasis on planning and probably an over emphasis on the development of the subject plan and I remember the templates in use at that time and a concern for people to have the template complete it and so I think that was probably the expectation of the support was that you would be there to help them to write this plan and in some circumstances then that plan existed as a document on a shelf and I think we have changed our understanding of planning and even the language more to preparedness for teaching and it's about a living plan more than a static document so I think that has evolved but I do think the system needs to provide clear guidance for teachers around planning again that has been done in some ways with the preparation for teaching and learning document but we need to look at long-term planning and where teachers are agent professionals they will work best when they have some guidance and some steer around what the expectations are and how that guidance can frame professional conversations validate their practice and provide direction for teachers and school leaders so I think yeah long-term planning is something that we'd need to look at for curriculum reform and I see the primary curriculum framework itself and in some ways as a as a doubling down on the vision and aims of the 99 curriculum introductory document and it was interesting when Tom was saying that that the child centered vision for the curriculum that came in 1979 one has grown and evolved and you can kind of trace that back through the through the documents themselves so in the 99 curriculum there was references to the child as an active agent in the role learning you see the environment looking at the child's knowledge and experience as a base for learning there was talk of partnerships with parents active learning methodologies the transfer of learning so that language existed but I think because it was seen as an introduction maybe it came first and then wasn't revisited often enough as we looked at the individual subject areas so I think there's learning in that and when we look at the curriculum that's been developed now it's not been framed as an introductory document it's a framework so it's something that provides a foundation for every other subject area and I think that's critical that anything that we plan and talk about with teachers and school leaders keeps that as it's touched on connects back to the vision that's in that framework the principles the competencies and then give an opportunity for teachers to really think about what those principles and competencies mean for their practice in real terms in their own unique context and finally then I suppose thinking of the artifact the curriculum documents themselves I think the structure how these are presented to the teacher is really important so the curriculum documents are obviously written with the learner in mind but it is ultimately the teacher who will be the reader and the interpreter of the document as a starting point with every actor having a part but I think when we think about how they're initially composed we have to keep the teacher in mind and make them as accessible as possible so that they're easy to interpret and don't have too much ambiguity the learning outcomes are open ended in and of themselves so the structure needs to be supportive so that they can make sense of an outcomes-based approach and again I think there is learning from the past there if we look at the 1999 curriculum for English as an example so it started with four strands they were receptiveness competence and confidence cognitive and emotional and imaginative and I know that that language at the time was very new and maybe a bit too new a bit too much too soon because there was strands that are strand units of reading writing or a language or a language was getting a new emphasis so following the publication of the curriculum there was an additional support document that was published that shifted the strands and strand units and I think teachers received that much better and so we can see how there are lessons in the past there about how the curriculum is structured making a difference for how the teachers receive and engage with it and I think the draft documents that we have are really strong but as we look now to finalize them it's looking for consistencies across the curriculum specifications particularly when we're looking for an integrated curriculum and so that consistency I think comes into its own and supports meaningful integration when the documents themselves are accessible. Quiva talks about curriculum past stories that have been written and Tom you've written extensively on the topic of curriculum from the research you have conducted what do you consider to be the key lessons that we can take from these previous reforms and as the new curriculum is introduced and enacted in primary and special schools around Ireland in the years to come what can we learn from these lessons? Yeah absolutely I'd agree with a huge amount that Quiva said because I think any time we any time we try to introduce change into our lives it disrupts the status quo and I think we react in different ways sometimes we relish the opportunity for change and sometimes we are a little bit fearful or a bit we're a little bit anxious around it and curriculum change is messy it's complex it's not linear in many different ways and it's a very broad landscape of education that we work in so when you try to change something like a curriculum and then there's so many I suppose both intended and unintended consequences around those efforts and I'm always like the analogy that Thomas Hatch uses it's like releasing a new species into an existing landscape and I suppose you have to be very careful about as well the species that you're releasing but also preparing the landscape for that new new species that's there but I suppose a few things that come to mind is first of all process I think historically we have looked at the curriculum as being an event and a lot of effort has been put into the written documentation around that perhaps some support documentation and indeed maybe some preparation for teachers in terms of enacting or properly implementing that curriculum and there was often a sense of relief then that's done the curriculum is out there and it's been implemented by teachers at that point in time and to agree with me then there was often I suppose a lack of emphasis on that ongoing process of sense-making of I suppose interfacing the new provisions within the curriculum within people's existing professional identity their professional practices their belief systems and so on I suppose gaining that ownership over the curriculum then and allowing for that continuous growth and adaptation within their practice so I'm heartened from even in the 99 curriculum we do see more of an emphasis on process and I think understanding curriculum change has been not the I suppose a huge event that just comes once every quarter of a century which is nearly what we have had in the past but that it is a non-going evolution in people's practice in people's beliefs rather than something that that comes around seismically and another thing I think and it resonates with what Quiver was saying is that oftentimes there has been an overemphasis on the individual subjects and sometimes to the loss of the bigger picture the core values division the aims the principles of the curriculum oftentimes get lost and I would be guilty at that as a teacher I would have rarely looked at the red handbook with the introduction where all of that was spelled out and it often would have dipped in to the curriculum areas and I think there may be a lot of the support at that time did delve into the subjects and going back to my previous point there was a sense then once English is done then English is in it's been introduced and we don't read to revisit and continue those conversations so if there's anything from the past that would spring to mind it's around that time and space for teachers individually to come to terms with what's in the curriculum documents but I think especially with the curriculum framework that collaborative engagement of teachers at maybe the same class level the same school clusters of schools to have those ongoing conversations as to what does this mean for my practice what does this mean for the learning of children in our school and so that they can reflect on ways that they can integrate their own identity their own knowledge their own beliefs their own practices and interface it with the new vision and the new reality of the curriculum so that sense making at a whole school level is really needed before nearly moving to the subject areas at all and I think that's one of the big changes I see in this curriculum it's not something that if you just take the the original or the draft framework or the framework now as it is and the specifications it's not something you could implement because there's so much teasing out to be done in terms of making professional decisions around how some of the outcomes might be realized within within your school and that's something you can't do alone and it's something you can't do without time so I think having those opportunities within schools and across schools to do that so that teachers children indeed other stakeholders within schools can adapt and construct a curriculum based on their own context their own priorities and their own needs maybe a third point I'd speak to then is around curriculum coherence because I think something that has I suppose interrupted curriculum enactment in the past has been looking at a curriculum as something disjointed from the rest of the education landscape and oftentimes when we introduce changes around the curriculum it has an impact on other policies like teacher education maybe inclusion policies and so on it's also affected by the wider societal issues like politics like economics in terms of resourcing so I think it's really important to keep an eye to that wider landscape and to look at how it's embedded in a coherent way across the landscape and the very last point I'd make then is around I suppose not only looking at the practicalities of curriculum change but also to look at the more effective or the the emotional domains of the impact of change on teachers on children on education partners more broadly than as well because I think that emotional domain is really really important even the discourse around a curriculum change is really important to establish that this does mean different things for different people so to attend to that so to speak to the heart I suppose as well as the head as we're supporting this change process. Kiva do you want to respond to anything that Tom has talked about there? Yeah there was just a couple of things that were coming to mind as Tom was talking then when I think about the amount of policies that have been introduced to the system over the past just 10 years alone like we're talking about the STEM policies digital learning framework that's policies that we have our LOS SSE and then I spoke more recently the well-being policy statement and framework for practice and I'm missing many of them but it's about having an opportunity to make connections across these documents so again they're not just static documents that exist on a shelf they need to come to life in real terms in practice so when we look at the well-being policy statement for example what implications are they're there for what we're looking at with SPHG and PE which are particularly areas of well-being but for other subject areas and we can see that reflected in the time allocations in the primary curriculum framework but if we're giving time for well-being what are the implications then when we look at areas like the arts and we have a creative policy so how can that be enacted if time has been sacrificed so it's a juggling act of all of these elements and it's not easy to get the right mix and speaking about it at a policy level is one thing but it's in the lived experience of classrooms every day where that policy becomes real and is enacted and becomes practice so time needs to be given to teachers to think about these policies read these policies and then start to actually make connections across them and see what can be done with it so I don't think it's fair to underestimate the ask and the level of change that's in the system and I think respectfully then it needs time and that's not something that can be given easily but I think time does have to be found for teachers to take on that task. Tom as a member of the primary advisory panel and Quiva you know in your contributions to two curriculum developments as a member of the development group I think it's fair to say that you're both relatively familiar with the proposed changes to the primary curriculum and perhaps in some areas more than others but nonetheless when you think about these changes what do you see as the key opportunities and also the challenges and again I suppose with the view of looking back with with the view to looking forward you know thinking about the lessons that we've already discussed so that we maximize these opportunities and reduce the challenges. I maybe can start off if that's okay I think the opportunities and the challenges are nearly like a double-aged sword because sometimes the most fundamental and important things that should be done are often the most challenging and that sometimes maybe the things as a system that we neglect but I think for me one of the most fundamental changes that I see is the move from a more descriptive and prescriptive curriculum to a curriculum framework. I think we've moved historically I think the curriculum in 1922 was 14 pages long. By 1999 we had nearly reached 3,000 pages of curriculum documentation not to mention all of the other initiatives that Quiver gave a brief outline of earlier on. So I think moving away from that very descriptive and prescriptive model with a big focus on the vision and the principles of the curriculum allied to the subject specifications that I think is going to be one of the biggest challenges for the system but I also see it as a huge opportunity. I think it really changes how we envisage or conceptualize what a curriculum is because I know for many years I would have understood the curriculum to be the the two orange books are the big box of books or now perhaps the written documentation that we're going to see coming but I think it's much more than that. I think Stephen Ball's talking about the curriculum as text and curriculum as discourse I think is really important to hold in mind that that the curriculum I suppose is this organic dynamic process of development that's constructed and co-constructed between teachers and teachers and children an ongoing basis and I think that's where the energy and the dynamism comes into the curriculum as something that's made and remade in different ways across every classroom across the country every everyday and every week and I think that's the big change in terms of this is a curriculum that cannot be implemented it really needs to be an actor in a co-constructed way. I think allied to that then I suppose is this vision of the teacher within the curriculum and and the associated vision of the child as being agentic and that is I suppose that freedom and capacity to make informed decisions and choices regarding the content and approaches to teach and learning within the classroom that is a very I suppose the vision maybe is not radically different it was probably implicit in the curriculum maybe in the 1970s and 1999 but this is a very explicit talking about the teacher as being this agentic professional and it's not a surprise that this comes as a challenge for some teachers because there haven't been opportunities when you've got 3000 pages of just curriculum documentation alone there haven't been many opportunities for professional decision-making or for working with children in terms of the direction of teaching and learning so I think there's now an opportunity for teachers to start to exercise agency and to engage in that curriculum making role. I think what we what we will be challenged to do is to strike that balance that balance about moving away from the spiral of specification perhaps that was there in the previous curriculum to ensure that the sufficient detail there that the curriculum doesn't feel vague or inaccessible to teachers within the classroom but I think we've never been more prepared as a teaching profession for this challenge in terms of teacher preparation in terms of opportunities for teacher professional learning so I think it's coming at a good time for that. I'm also heartened that in Ireland we're moving in that direction because I know another jurisdictions were moving to more what they call teacher-proofed curriculum and that teachers are becoming deprofessionalized in terms of the decisions that they can make so I think the direction of travel is in the right direction in Ireland in terms of empowering the professional status of teachers. Link to that then I guess is the greater focus on student voice and agency again which is probably following a direction of travel from 1971 to 1999 and now into 2025 involving students to greater degrees in shaping both the direction and the format of their learning experience and again I think it'll be around achieving that balance of how do teacher agency and child agency interface and interact within the ordinary classrooms on a day-to-day basis. Also I think the there's been some groundwork done on this which is heartening as well in terms of the primary language committee curriculum, the primary mathematics curriculum that have been introduced recently using the outcomes-based format. I think that's a good preparatory groundwork for it. I'm also a big fan of the plus one concept which is big within UDL and other elements of this gradual progression, this gradual and incremental improvement on a continuous basis rather than a big bang of everything being introduced all at once so that we understand what are the what's the new vision, what are the new provisions and and that we gradually move step-by-step towards that. Maybe just at the last point and I think it really strongly resonates with what Quivo was saying earlier on, I see one of the biggest threats to this curriculum being the I suppose initiative overload that often characterizes the policy landscape and particularly so in the last decade or even the last two decades. So while you can't disagree or maybe find fault with how worthwhile many of those initiatives are whether they be around literacy or numeracy or digital learning or well-being and so on, I think we need to position ourselves within the classroom and looking at the totality of demands and of messaging that's coming at school leaders and teachers by all of these wider policy initiatives. So I think we probably need more coherence at a national level, the various agencies, departments, groupings who are developing policies, so that there's not a tension between the messaging within those policies and that they are aligned very strongly to the curriculum or as I would argue maybe just embedded within the curriculum that that becomes the core, the fulcrum, the spine of the teaching and learning experience rather than having a multiplicity of initiatives running alongside it. So that would be one of my hopes for the future that the curriculum becomes the spine rather than something alongside many other competing initiatives. Thanks Tom and same question to you, Kiva, you know, what do you see as the key opportunities and maybe also the challenges when you think ahead to the curriculum? Well I would think similarly to Tom in the days that double-edged sort that in many instances where you have an opportunity there's a corresponding challenge. So if I pick up on on the agency piece, I think there's a cultural shift that's needed. I think teachers are a very conscientious lot. We want to make sure we're doing things right and so there is a mindset somewhat of compliance and that mindset needs to shift to one of more teacher confidence, I think, where they feel that when somebody asks a question about their practice that rather than trying to give the right answer, they give their genuine authentic answer for why they're doing what they're doing because teachers do know their craft, they know their classrooms, they know their pupils, they're invested in what they're doing and so they should be confident but they need support to become more confident and I would agree with Tom that it's everybody in the system that has a part to play in that. There has to be a consistency of message because trust breaks if there's mixed messaging from the system and so they need to be hearing the same thing from all the players and agency isn't something that you're just given so it can't be a kind of a get out of jail either for decision making within the system. Oh well teachers are authentic and therefore they can decide themselves. Yes, they are authentic but it's something that has to be enacted and it's enacted, I go to the work of Mark Priestley in an ecological setting in a school where there is multiple factors at play and so there's a lot to think about for teachers to actually enact that agency and so that would be one area I think we need to think about yes, massive opportunity but to be realistic about the challenges that are there as well. Another would be the integrated nature of the curriculum so again I think this presents both opportunity and challenges and I think the work of Patrick Burke and Paula Lahan in their review of curriculum integration is really helpful and a really rich starting point it brings up a huge amount to consider and when we think about disciplinary knowledge alone I think the challenge is that sometimes when we look at an integrated approach that's simplistic and maybe looks at thematic planning there can be the core subjects that come to the fore and then other subjects nearly functioning as carrier subjects and not getting the attention they deserve and as somebody who has been very invested in the arts as an area often the arts are a casualty of that so coloring in a picture about a theme isn't covering for one of a better word the painting color strand you know there are meaningful learning outcomes in the arts curriculum that need attention and if our integration isn't about genuinely looking at the outcomes within each discipline then it can just be paying lip service to getting things covered back to that dawn kind of attitude and so I think there's a lot of thinking that needs to be done about about that integrated approach and then I think it will be remiss not to look at inclusion when we think about the challenges and opportunities that exist within the broader system I mean within the last couple of weeks we had circular 8024 which announced measures to support special education provision we've heard 1700 new special classes opened in the past five years 11 new special schools and well we're not going to go deep into the inclusion space today I do think it would be remiss not to consider what supports those schools need and the teachers that are working in those settings need when we look at this curriculum and so again I know there's been some work done with the pathways and this is seen as a curriculum for all but there are questions that teachers have we've seen them come up with the primary language curriculum we've seen them from up with the primary arts curriculum and they are looking for support in in that space and the system needs to look at how those conversations will be supported because when we look at even just the services so we have NCSE and we have Vigia how are they coordinating and collaborating to support teachers that are working in the SCN setting whose remiss is that where do teachers go for support I think there's a lot of clarity and that's needed and communication and transparency so schools know that there is support for them and I think that goes right across the continuum of education as well if there's going to be more special class settings in the system we need to look at initial teacher education and how that prepares teachers to work in those settings so there's changes happening at many levels and it's about looking at each level and providing supports appropriately. Time at the heart of curriculum change is the aspiration to provide an education for children that is up to date relevant and which addresses the core educational needs for all children so the 99 curriculum was a cutting edge curriculum in its time but it's almost a quarter of a century old now and change is necessary but changing what and how children learn means change at all levels and of course we expect changes at school level but to enable this change this requires changes at other levels too and Givi you've talked about the importance of system collaboration and coordination to support change so when we think about those levels you know support services the inspector the department policy research you know what your path lessons offer us to ensure that the system that exists to ensure schools provide for and and realize that the new vision for the curriculum can really thrive and respond to this change. Thanks Rathie and I think there's so much to learn from the past around this because historically there's been nearly a binary of the national system where decisions were made and the very micro level of schools where maybe those decisions were implemented or enacted in various ways but the policy landscape and the education landscape is far more complex lots of layers lots of various dynamics that exist within that now and it's far more diverse it's far more diffused to the greater emphasis on participation on partnership on consultation so in the past there was really the department of education and the word schools but now we have so many various agencies stakeholders department sections units units of education that is a far greater complexity in the interpretation and even in the refraction of the key messaging that Quiver was talking about and unless there's clarity around that messaging then it does cause fragmentation and a lack of trust within the system so I think one of the key messages really is to try and look at the entire landscape from the national to the local and one of the things in Ireland that we probably have a weaker system within is that measle level or that maybe that more regional level of education I was very lucky in the last year to spend a number of months in Chicago and a full bright scholarship and that was the area of focus I was looking at that measle level of how in Chicago public school system schools are supported between the national board I guess or the city board and the individual schools in a very tight coupled way as a literature would talk about so I think those huge opportunities for schools as clusters and for that as well as regionalization of supports for schools to come into play to a greater extent in Ireland because really it's only when the all of the landscape is moving in a similar direction and that they're shared understandings that they're shared trust among the organizations that there can be hope for the successful enactment and the I suppose parity of a steam and respect across all layers and levels of the system and I think in the past it just hasn't been a sufficient attention to that I think oftentimes schools were either praised or blamed for the successful or unsuccessful enactment of policy whereas coming back to Quiva's point I think that you know we need to look at the systemic the structural the the organic issues that either support teachers in these change or don't support teachers in these these change this is not an individual thing there are structural and systemic issues that either allow or don't allow or either support or don't support particular policies to be enacted and I think the the NCCA document the supporting systemwide change document is a really critical part of the landscape of documentation around that because it talks to that broader landscape of of experience it looks at teachers both collectively and collaboratively rather than individually and I think a place as an onus on is all across all levels of the education system from the national to the regional and the meadow level right down to the micro and we all have roles and responsibilities in the successful enactment of this policy thanks Taman and I'm just going to place a spotlight on the local level just from my next question Quiva and which is to really you know just honing on teachers and their experiences now and you know teachers in Ireland have been incredibly agile over recent years I mean if we just think alone about the how teachers responded during the pandemic I suppose we know the teachers are incredibly capable and skilled in this regard however for many teachers in our current system and I look I'm thinking in particular about those who've joined with professions since 1999 and so this will be their first experience of any kind of significant reform of curriculum in their in their career for those teachers you know what advice might you offer from your experience in terms of how they might manage this change and I suppose the first thing I would say to them is to give it a go to just be open to the opportunities be open to the learning engage with the process so if there are events happening that you're invited to go to them be go with an open mind listen seek first to understand I think as I was a good starting point and if you take even one thing it's back to what Tom talked about the plus one approach and Tom also referenced that in relation to UDL universal design I think I think there's a lot there that if you are going to be an agent professional you are the designer of the learning in your classroom so when you go and are open and you think about it when you return to your classroom try something and when you try it reflect on what worked well what didn't go well but when you're trying to try to shift your focus from the teaching from the content to the actual learning I think that's the most significant shift in this curriculum and Tom talked about it the shift from content objectives to learning outcomes so it's it's not like well I'm teaching the Vikings so it's more about well we're learning about invasion and so the Vikings might be the most suitable vehicle or the most suitable context to look at invasion and therefore what's the learning what's the focus of learning as it talks about in the preparation for teaching document I think if teachers can make that jump from thinking about rather than what they're putting in what the learner is getting out and I see that when I'm working with student teachers at the minute if you can refine your focus of learning the that thread kind of pulls through the whole thing if you know what the pupils are learning or what you're hoping for them to learn you know the appropriate pedagogy you know the appropriate resources you can provide formative assessment you can provide feedback to feed forward because the focus is clear from the start in the absence of that we revert to just teaching that this was a really nice activity that I thought I could do and therefore I did it but what was the learning in it so if teachers are open to the learning and then think about what learning is what constitutes learning what needs to happen in a classroom for learning to happen what needs to happen for the different children in that classroom so teaching then becomes a much more complex iterative process of interpretation meaning making and teacher judgment and decision making becomes absolutely crucial so it's about having a conversation about what's purpose what's just practice preserving the best and reinventing the rest it's always a phrase that I liked I don't know where the source is but I often come back to it and but I also think it's important to acknowledge as you say Tracy the journey the teachers have have come on so I was thinking about what's happened in the classroom and even if we take the classroom itself as a physical space and reflect on the changes in it like when the 99 curriculum was introduced I think a lot of pupils were sitting in rows you rarely walk into a classroom where teachers where pupils are in groups so we have engaged with the notion of active learning with collaborative group work and next sitting in a group alone does not group work make but there's progress even in reorganising how our classrooms look if we look at the wall of a classroom where we had teacher farris and teacher created resources on the walls I think more so we walk in now and see children's work adorning the walls children's work the children have maybe been asked to select what work they would like to display so that notion of voice is coming into the classroom and children having choice and even if I think about when we rolled out the first subjects of the 99 curriculum it was acetates on an overhead projector and I mean now there's whiteboards and stylus and iPads so the digital technology space has had massive implications for practice again some opportunities some challenges in that but we see more and more concrete materials and classrooms target boards counting sticks magnifying glasses bebots all of those are kind of the norm now when you walk into a classroom we have moved out of the textbook so teachers have embraced a lot of the principles of the 99 curriculum and it's not then a case of what we're doing it all already it's that we have a really good foundation to build from and so there is still more to do it's that lot more to do slogan but I think teachers should be recognised for the work that they have done and how agile as you say they have been and traces they have risen to the occasion time and time again and amongst all this change teachers remain the constant and so I would say I suppose you can do this don't panic try not to get overwhelmed one step at a time thanks so much Kiva Tom as a member of the primary advisory panel you've played a key role in the story of review and redevelopment of the primary curriculum of recent years and you continue to do so and in time this would become part of the history in Ireland's story of curriculum change and reform so as a final question I wanted to ask you to transport yourself into the future and when we look back at this period in Ireland's educational history what do you hope that the future educational historians will report or say about it that's a challenging question Tracy I'm far happier in the past and the archives than maybe projecting into the future but maybe a few thoughts on that maybe first of all that it would be the last big substantial quite revolutionary change in curriculum history so we've talked about 1922 1971 1999 2025 but perhaps that there are no big changes in 2050 or 2060 again that this becomes I suppose the the bedrock or the the ground from which we build incrementally so that we update we we constantly revise and we look very much at the curriculum as process as this evolving set of documentation that I suppose goes in line with evolving teachers practice societal needs along the way so that we don't see a quite we don't wait 20 years I guess to look at the curriculum and see does it need to be updated that we engage in that ongoing process of review so that when we look back historically we see 2025 as the last major maybe shock around curriculum policy. Secondly I think I very much agree with Quivas point around that this hopefully will mark a huge amount of trust and confidence both in teachers but also by teachers in their own professional practice because I think in the past there's been that doubt by teachers in themselves and maybe that lack of confidence in articulating why they have made certain professional decisions so I think this curriculum really provides a context for teachers to be able to articulate very clearly both individually and collectively why certain decisions have been made to either do or to not do and I think sometimes not doing is probably more challenging than doing what do what gets left behind what do we no longer do in order to do new things so I think having the professional confidence to make those decisions and to articulate those will hopefully be something that emerges really strongly out of this and maybe a last point I would hope that I would see the policy landscape as being quite fragmented in many ways there are lots of different agencies departments organizations developing very worthwhile and meaningful policy but when you're a school leader or a teacher in a classroom that can feel overwhelming and really daunting when you look at the fragmentation of all of those policies so I would hope that the curriculum can become the spine or the fulcrum for the policy landscape to cohere around rather than I was reinventing the wheel or restating similar things in many different ways so I think a more tightly coupled system where you see greater resonance and synergy between the the national the regional and the local and the micro school level would be great and I suppose part of that would be around coming back to Quiva's point around agency providing those structural supports that agency isn't something to just hand over but that you create the conditions for for these decision making to be made at a local level and support all those both children and teachers to use that. In concluding our podcast I have one additional question for you both and it's it's a tradition we're introducing as part of our podcast which is to ask all of our guests the question what is curriculum and what does it mean to you Quiva? Okay so given that much of my career has been spent engaging in professional conversations with teachers about how they can bring curriculum documents to life for me the curriculum starts with those curriculum documents that's not where it ends but it has to provide a starting point so it's about opening the documents reading the documents reading across the documents and in a reading process there is the text and there is the reader and the understanding happens in the interaction of both those things in the space between the text and the the mind of the reader so where there is that understanding that's when the curriculum begins to come to life so that's the starting point and I think you have to start with those documents read the learning outcomes read the primary curriculum framework document itself think about the vision and then think about the steps that you can take to realize that curriculum in practice in your classroom so I would start with the reading I always go to Dr. Zeus read the more that you read the more that you know the more that you know all the places you will go and my thoughts are not dissimilar at all I very much see the text as that living document that social construction that comes to life in that interaction in that co-construction space so the image that comes to mind for me always of the curriculum is like a springboard and as well as I was thinking more about that I was thinking that a springboard is something that lends impetus or assistance to a particular action enterprise or development I suppose the image that then came to mind for me was like a trampoline and bear with me because I know the strange image perhaps to think around the curriculum but I see the curriculum documents both their text and the discourse as a trampoline which interacts as well as the teacher and the pupil in terms of the curriculum ideas so each person we approach and interact with the trampoline in different ways and with each and every interaction it results in different types of bounces different directions different heights sometimes we interact with the trampoline alone but other times we were there with others and we work collaboratively or collectively or enjoyed in different ways the other image that comes to mind around that is that of risk and I'm really taken by Garpie Estas beautiful risk of education I think each time we engage with the trampoline there's no predetermined outcome and we can move in different ways and sometimes we make mistakes sometimes we get hurt along the way but hopefully we can get up and do it better or fail better the next time round so I think it's that I suppose the unknown outcomes of engaging with the curriculum is part of that a beautiful risk then as well and I think it firmly moves away the curriculum from something that can be implemented to something that must be enacted so it's it's that unknown territory and the pre-ordained past is no longer a given it's something that will create something radically new each time we individually or collectively engage with it so that's my trampoline image Tom and Kiva I can't thank you enough for your openness and your generosity in in sharing your memories and your experiences and your learnings from the past and also you know talking us through how this might support us as we as we navigate upcoming changes importantly as with all podcasts in this series our hope is that in listening to Tom and Kiva sharing they're thinking that you the listener will also be inspired to think about what your past lessons have been what they mean to you and how you can apply these going forward as the redeveloped primary curriculum is introduced enacted and embedded in primary and special schools over coming years thank you Tom and Kiva so much thanks thank you for joining us for this conversation and we hope that this podcast will spark your own thinking and further conversations around curriculum at NCCA all voices matter and we would love to hear from you if you have any thoughts in response to this podcast episode or even some ideas for what we might explore in further episodes please do get in touch by emailing us at
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