Teacher professional learning (PL) is increasingly recognised as a cornerstone of educational improvement, yet many PL policies remain overly prescriptive, standardised, and disconnected from the complex realities of teaching. This article introduces a policy analysis toolkit designed to support more critical, context-sensitive engagement with PL policy. Grounded in a pragmatic meta-model of professional learning and underpinned by Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the toolkit examines how policy texts construct teacher agency, professional autonomy, and collaboration across macro, meso, and micro levels. It provides a structured yet flexible set of guiding questions and linguistic tools to uncover the ideologies, assumptions, and power dynamics embedded within policy language. In applying the toolkit to a national policy document from the Republic of Ireland, the analysis reveals tensions between democratic and managerial discourses and highlights how policy language can simultaneously empower and constrain teacher learning. While the analysis is limited to textual interpretation and does not capture the lived enactment of policy, this toolkit makes a significant methodological and practical contribution. It equips policymakers, school leaders, and educators to better understand and navigate PL policy, and fosters a more critical, reflective stance toward the discursive construction of professional learning in times of educational disruption and change.