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Abstract
Through the lens of contrasting curriculum cultures, the author considers the evolution of Irish curriculum policy and reform. Whereas our curriculum thinking and practice are grounded in an Anglo-Saxon/American culture, Didaktik curriculum culture and Stenhouse’s Process model provide valuable alternative perspectives. Our prevailing understandings of curriculum are reified, in an environment where curriculum reform/change are used interchangeably. Historically, our curriculum reform efforts have been characterised by centralised control and a paucity of research, debate, and school-based curriculum development. Meaningful curriculum change, however, challenges the cultural beliefs of employers, parents, and students and requires critical engagement with the professional beliefs and values of educational administrators, school leaders and teachers. Since the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment became statutory, our curriculum culture, and our understandings of curriculum change, have been evolving. This growing appreciation of the complexity of change is reflected in the discourse of the Framework for Junior Cycle. The influence of Anglo-Saxon/American curriculum culture remains palpable, however, while the impact of globalisation and market forces is evidenced in a growing emphasis on skills, competences and pre-determined learning outcomes. The author concludes that we have arrived at a hybrid curriculum culture whose future development is rather difficult to predict.
Acknowledgement
The author is grateful to his former colleague and student, Dr Orla McCormack, School of Education, University of Limerick, for her constructive observations regarding an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks also to the reviewers for their helpful advice concerning the sequencing of paper content.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Example of policy borrowing.
2 From Greek didaktikos meaning ‘apt at teaching’.
3 For example: Education is the process of growing up in the right way. The objectives are the goals of growth. The pupil's activities and experiences are the steps which make up his journey toward these goals … [they] are the curriculum (Bobbitt Citation1924, 44).
The curriculum cannot be regarded as dead and summative … . It is a living whole, comprised of experience actually going on in school … Its content is identical to the content of the actual experience of the learners (Taba Citation1932, 156).
4 As noted by former Deputy Chief Inspector Sean MacChárthaigh in consultation with the author.
5 Rather like the French cours d’etude.
6 Council of Education report on secondary education.
7 The final report of the Interim Curriculum Examinations Board.
8 The paucity of research literature on these Centres is indicative of the general disinterest in school and teacher-based curriculum development at that time.
9 As well as a small number of Vocational Education Committees.
10 Following the establishment of the Moderation and Educational Assessment Service (MEAS).
11 Irish Times interview with Sean Flynn, 18 January 2006.
12 See NCCA (Citation2002, Citation2003, Citation2005, Citation2006, Citation2010).
13 Minister Ruairi Quinn states in his introduction to the DES (2012) Framework it ‘presents more detailed and very different assessment arrangements to complement and support the sort of curricular change that will best suit our students’. These arrangements would lead to huge opposition from the relevant teacher unions (see Gleeson, Klenowski, Looney. Citation2020).
14 History was one of seven core Intermediate/Junior Certificate subjects in secondary but not in vocational school prior to the publication of the Framework.
15 Listed in NCCA’s publications for 1999.
16 While content (Lehrplan) selection is a matter for the state, the management of education is a matter for individual schools (Westbury Citation2000).
17 Returning to my earlier focus on language, one notes the changing nomenclature for our national Education Ministry – from Department of Education (1924–1997), Department of Education and Science (1997–2010), Department for Education and Skills (2010)
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jim Gleeson
Dr. Jim Gleeson is an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Education, Dublin City University. After five years as a post-primary teacher, he worked as an independent curriculum evaluator, Project Leader at Shannon Curriculum Development Centre, and NCCA Development Officer for Leaving Certificate Applied. As a teacher educator at University of Limerick he held various positions, including Head of Department and teacher education nominee on the Teaching Council. Jim was appointed to the Chair of Identity and Curriculum at Australian Catholic University, Brisbane, in 2011. His main research interests include education and curriculum policy and practice, teacher development and professionalism, and faith-based education.