Exploring the introduction of the Framework for Junior Cycle

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The University of Limerick’s research report has recently been published: Exploring the introduction of the Framework for Junior Cycle: A longitudinal study Introductory report (Initial perspectives on implementation, outcomes, and impact).

So, some observations.

There is plenty of interest here for those of us in post-primary education in Ireland. This was the country’s first major curricular reform in the lifetimes of all pupils currently in the system, and many (most?) teachers. It was a reform plagued from the start by unwise political interference, implementation difficulties and union resistance, and its ‘skills-based’ ethos was questioned by many as out-of-date.  So reflection on it is important and there is much fascinating material in this, ‘the first of a series of thematic reports from an on-going 4-year longitudinal study.’

Most of the comments here are on what the report presents, rather than its methodology*: it has clearly been done professionally (though there have been some union concerns).

In page order:

  • 8) The phrase initial tentative themes is welcome: anyone who is drawing more than tentative conclusions at this stage is not being wise. Dismayingly, decisions are being taken on Senior Cycle reform before these themes move beyond the tentative.

  • 10) Clearly there is indeed a misalignment between the Junior Cycle and the Senior Cycle: it is a matter of great nervousness among teachers around the country that the powers that be will decide that the Senior Cycle should align with its junior sibling, and embed the latter’s errors and inadequacies.

  • 12) Introduction. I can hear intakes of breath from English and Irish teachers around Ireland at the (correct) statement: Teachers are at the heart of change. Yet they were not consulted about the wisdom of moving a major part of the assessments in their courses recently: they were not at the heart of change. Here is my piece on the intellectual poverty of that decision in English, and you should read Professor Áine Hyland in the Irish Examiner (she has written at greater length in the NAPD Leader magazine, though this is not online; she also spoke on the issue at researchED Dublin).  The UL report properly says that Curriculum change literature highlights the importance for all partners to support curriculum change (Fullan, 2007; Herold & Fedor, 2008). Quite.

  • 25). I do have an issue with the presentation of charts in the report, which is the apparently minor matter of colour: the use of shades of green for all responses tends to give an overly positive impression, and they would have been clearer with some sort of modified traffic light colouring.

  • The graphic on page 25: the central, and largest, section is for somewhat supportive, which is a very watery - maybe almost meaningless - phrase. A total of 44% of respondents were ‘very’ or ‘considerably’ supportive of the Framework for Junior Cycle, and 24% expressed ‘limited’ or no support. 44% does not qualify as high support: the 32% who were ‘somewhat’ supportive cannot accurately be thrown in with that 44%.

  • 26). P9 says I think everybody was fairly tired of the junior cycle, nobody saw any purpose in it anymore … everybody was looking for something new. Readers who do not know the context might think that was said this year, not about the old Junior Certificate.

  • 27) the (22 years old) old cliché of 21st century skills/learning rears its head. There are ‘stakeholders’, including S2 and S6 who believe that human nature and cognition are different now than in any other time of history and that there are different learning skills now than there were 200 years ago. Usually ‘collaboration’ and ‘creativity’ are used as evidence for this: try telling Shakespeare, Marie Curie or Isambard Kingdom Brunel that they should collaborate more, and be more creative.

  • 31) another cliché, this time the tired idea that there used to be lots of ‘chalk and talk’ teaching, and that teachers now have taken a step back, they took on the role of facilitator (yes, I’m looking at you, Guide on the Side). The report itself doesn’t try to prove that, and can’t be expected to, and it’s probably unprovable anyhow.

  • 31) P19 comments on resistance to reforms from teachers (mentioning anxiety about CBAs): You have to show them that you’re committed to it, that you believe in it and that they should follow suit, because that’s been a difficult enough sell. How many principals were genuinely committed to the reforms, rather than doing what they thought they should? If teachers had actually been at the heart of change would those teachers have had to ‘follow’?

  • 31-2) P12 makes an important point: You need to know what’s happening. You need to know what’s happening in classes, you need to be talking to teachers, and perhaps this was assisted by SLARs and more conversations about teaching and learning. You’d hope so, but the fact is that in Ireland we have Principals, not Headteachers: all principals are swamped by administrative tasks, technical management and tortuous engagement with the Department of Education. Some do their very best to lead/be involved with teaching and learning, but very few (have the chance to) teach. It remains the case that some Principals have little idea of what is going on in classrooms on the granular level that matters.

  • 34) a reference to schools developing their own short courses, much talked about in the early stages: it would be good to know how widespread this is in practice. Anecdotally, it seems rare.

  • 40) P10 comments on how his/her teachers became more positive about the whole formative assessment side of things and are now very involved in the whole active learning and with noisier classrooms. A lot to unpack here: as if formative assessment is a side of things rather than central, and what exactly active learning means - it seems to be connected with noisier classrooms, an idea that is not necessarily effective or productively active. Later on page 47 the chart says that the introduction of the framework resulted in (just) 36% teachers increasing significantly their time spent on formative assessment. Of course, this might have been because it was already embedded in many teachers’ practice, and they did not actually need to effect such an increase.

  • 43) Plus ça change: lots of criticism from stakeholders on the initial approaches to communicating the reform. There was miscommunication and, later, an overload of communication for everyone (including parents) (44). The default mode of communication of educational decisions in Ireland, whether pedagogical or administrative, is top-down and instructional. As they say, if you’re explaining, you’re losing.

  • 48) A sensitive one: the principals were very complimentary of the JCT’s CPD provision. For the most part of course principals did not experience it except in school-wide training days. But again anecdotally there was a lot of dismay (to be honest, some anger) about the quality of CPD (sensitive because it was being delivered by seconded teachers/colleagues). However, a model of CPD in which the deliverer is not involved in design is questionable. As I wrote in my piece on professional development, look at the quality of CPD offered online by expert English teachers like Conor Murphy, Aoife O’Driscoll and Clare Madden - and now we can have access online to international delivery from people like Jennifer Webb and Bennie Kara. I’m sure there is much excellent practice in other subjects too.

  • 49) P5 says that Curriculum planning has become much more difficult. It has indeed, and here is the top-down model again: timetablers must fit in 400 hours of wellbeing, and P5 quotes a maths teacher who has lost a substantial amount of contact time and struggles to cover content. Schools cannot choose to shape their own curriculum in any real way, which is essentially pre-determined: you’re playing a Rubik’s Cube. Another challenge is the scheduling of CBAs, which in some schools has resulted in agreed timetables: for their implementation in an attempt to evenly distribute the workload for students and to enable access to relevant school resources. This is understandable but has often resulted in the unintended consequence of more pressure, and parental involvement in what should be standard class work (the Matthew Effect there for middle-class families). A lot of teachers say they are frustrated in their attempts to run CBAs in the spirit that they were originally intended.  P16 makes the point that this might result in as many as 20 CBAs across two years, and over-assessment, despite official warnings about this. These anxieties are expanded on in pages 57 and 58. Sadly, it appears that students’ elevated levels were at times driven by teachers’ own levels of anxiety, and P19 has struggled in his/her school to make them low-stakes for teachers, students and parents. On page 65 S6 rightly refers to CBA-fatigue and post-pandemic this is only going to gather: teachers are certainly talking about it this year.

  • 51) Sensible comments from S6 on the insane generation of workbooks, teachers’ books and student books. I wish that the books were more streamlined, and that there was one set of books approved by the NCCA and Department. My piece on the quality of poetry books is more directed to Senior Cycle, but a lot of its points are equally applicable to the bloated textbooks for younger years in all subjects.

  • 54) Spare us the reductive use of learning intentions: see recent comments by Dylan Wiliam on how this can destroy lessons.

  • 58)  If it’s true that teachers are not afraid to go into each other’s rooms now across the country, then this is excellent (though how much is it actually happening, how much is it enabled by schools given time pressures? It must have stopped during Covid restrictions). The suggestion here is that this has been fostered by SLARs (and ‘professional time’) and cluster days, and that there has been a cultural shift from one of professional isolation to one of professional collaboration. I have written previously about CPD in the Ireland, and how thin the ecosystem is.  But there are green shoots: we can see these in the keenness of teachers to attend events like researchED Dublin, the English Meet, subject association conferences like INOTE, and the webinars provided by many education centres (here’s mine on Macbeth on January 9th with Tralee EC). But those are not embedded in a planned system. They depend on individual enthusiasm. My feeling is that the pandemic had as much catalysing influence here as the Junior Cycle roll-out.

  • 60) back to the bizarre Paper 1 decision for Leaving Certificate. P8 points out that students are going from a two-hour exam (formerly 5 hours in two papers for English), and facing the high standards of Higher Level Maths and Irish. And straight below, P10 says his/her school doesn’t do Transition Year, so the jump is immediate. As many teachers have pointed out, including former Chair of INOTE Conor Murphy in his recent address, essentially Transition Year is in danger of becoming the first year of the English Leaving Certificate. On page 64 S11 points out what hordes of teachers are saying: that basics are being neglected in the younger years: ‘the standard is lower, even though the aim was to teach more critical thinking skills and so on.’

  • 62) Unfortunately further clichés from principals: apparently teaching in Fifth and Sixth Years is ‘going back 100 years’ from primary school and another principal says that in the Senior Cycle we’re back to the old way, teacher at the top of the class teaching… The clichés continue on 63 from S14: supposedly there are now more active teaching methods and students are ‘no longer passive vessels’ (Hard Times, Chapter 1: Little vessels … ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim). Elsewhere, the hoary old student-centred learning is quoted, as if there is any other kind.

  • 68) COVID-19 disrupted all society, and inevitably it had an impact on the JC framework. While the whole country seemed to be obsessed with arrangements for the Leaving Certificate (calculated/hybrid/accredited grades and the rest of it), the Junior Cycle was essentially abandoned, with CBAs, examinations and Assessment Tasks junked. Some teachers feel that not much was lost. As P19 comments on page 69, it’s about trying to keep schools afloat. The aftermath and knock-on effects now see no results for Third Years who did take their examinations in June 2022 for five months! It is hard for principals and teachers not to be cynical: there is a widespread belief in schools, however un/fair, that the Department has no interest in the Junior Cycle any more, especially as Senior Cycle reform swings into action. The show has moved on.

What does all that add up to? The report shows how messy and problematic any major curricular reform is (always). If and when you are going to do it (and it must be done), it has to be grounded in sober evidence, in widespread consultation and agreement, and not imposed top-down onto schools. For those of us working in those schools, by far the most precious thing we have is time: among all the other demands of school life, there is very little capacity for attending to major curricular reform. As Dylan Wiliam says,

Opportunity cost is the single most important concept in educational reform.

Hoovering up time, effort and resources means that we had better be sure it’s all worth it, and well-designed in the first place. Unfortunately, now that the Junior Certificate is disappearing into the mists of history, its replacement is all too patchy and already looking tired. There are serious lessons to be learned, especially in the challenge ahead in the Senior Cycle. This report is a useful tool to help inform that to be better, and I look forward to further publications from the research team.

END

* one English-teacher-irritation: the regular misspelling of ‘practising’ (for example, pages 57 and 72).