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The Craft of Curriculum Making in Lower Secondary Education in Ireland

Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice within and Across Diverse Contexts

ISBN: 978-1-83867-738-1, eISBN: 978-1-83867-735-0

Publication date: 20 January 2021

Abstract

This chapter will consider curriculum making in lower secondary education in Ireland. Building on the concept of curriculum as a social practice involving multiple actors across different contexts and involving intersecting domains of influence from the supra, to the nano, we characterizethe landscape of lower secondary education in Ireland as an “assemblage” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2003). An assemblage is any number of elements that are engaged in a process of arranging, organising, fitting together and a process of knowledge making. We discuss the emerging properties that have begun to evolve through the inter-connections of the assemblage as they engage in the process of reform by structuring the findings through the lens of how the semiotic, material and social flows worked simultaneously to open up or close down the process. Curriculum ideology, concepts, language and communication are examples of the semiotic flow. The material flow is the content of the domains, such as the actors, the physical structures, documents and artefacts. Relationships, pedagogy, and collaborative practice are involved in the social flow of the assemblage. The research underpinning this chapter mapped the agency of the actors in their capacity to make curriculum as these three flows worked simultaneously during a process of assemblage wide curriculum reform of lower secondary education in Ireland. The analysis and discussion gives rise to a number of insights into processes of curriculum making and into the complexities of system-wide reform.

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Citation

Dempsey, M., Doyle, A. and Looney, A. (2021), "The Craft of Curriculum Making in Lower Secondary Education in Ireland", Priestley, M., Alvunger, D., Philippou, S. and Soini, T. (Ed.) Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice within and Across Diverse Contexts, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 199-222. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83867-735-020211010

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021 Mark Priestley, Daniel Alvunger, Stavroula Philippou and Tiina Soini