Podcast 436, Dr. Conall Ó Breacháin on Teacher Agency and Curriculum Change (15-9-25)

My guest on this podcast is Dr. Conall Ó Breacháin from the School of Language, Literacy and Early Childhood Education in Dublin City University. Among the topics we discuss in this episode are: 

• Differences between 1999 language curricula and the 2016 language curriculum in Ireland (e.g. focus on plurilingualism and the transfer of skills is a noticeable difference in emphasis in the redeveloped curriculum, broad learning outcomes versus learning objectives in 1999). He refers to the work of Jim Cummins who featured on Inside Education in Episode 15 and Episode 16.
• How learning one language can help the learning of another.
• Was there a need to change the 1999 curriculum when “it was working fine”?
• Finding the right degree of innovation in curriculum change.
• The importance of providing teachers with a timeline for proposed change and a plan for how teachers will be supported around the change.
• Why teachers typically don’t ask for curriculum change.
• The most underrated ideas in the redeveloped language curriculum – digital literacy? Plurilingualism?
• What is meant by the term “knowledgeability,” a term used by Anthony Giddens
• What teacher agency is.
• The difference between teacher agency and teacher autonomy
• A practical example of teacher agency applied to a problem of teaching reading
• Agency is a conceptual framework to understand how people act in the structures within which they are acting.
• Ethical and unethical agency
• Challenges of measuring agency
• Questions Conall still has about teacher agency
• How teachers can influence one another in their practice
• Changing the culture of a school and the role of leadership (wherever it comes from)
• “Connecting” to a curriculum (current or previous)
• Associating curriculum with accountability.
• Analogy: Changing curriculum is like servicing an airplane mid-flight – “It’s not like [teachers] get a six-month sabbatical to get their heads around” a new curriculum before implementing it.
• The process of writing the dissertation
• Gert Biesta (qualification, socialisation and subjectification) on Inside Education 356  and Inside Education 357. 
• Catherine Snow on Inside Education 184 and Inside Education 185. 
• Nell Duke
• Ciaran Sugrue Curriculum and Ideology
• The difference between educating pre-service and practising teachers.
• We Cut Corners (http://wecutcorners.net/)