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Teacher professionalism in policy texts in the Republic of Ireland; A critical discourse analysis

Barron, Brian, Gorman, Alan orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-5024-448X and Looney, Anne (2023) Teacher professionalism in policy texts in the Republic of Ireland; A critical discourse analysis. Irish Education Studies, 43 (4). pp. 1407-1428. ISSN 0332-3315

Abstract
In the Republic of Ireland, primary school teaching is a very attractive profession with pay being above the OECD average (Heinz and Keane 2018; Hennessey and Lynch 2017). This paper investigates how the Department of Education Inspectorate and the Teaching Council of Ireland position primary school teacher professionalism. The paper presents the findings of critical discourse analysis (CDA) of two policy texts; Looking at our schools 2016 (2016) by the Department of Education Inspectorate and Cosán framework for teachers learning (2016) by the Teaching Council of Ireland. This paper is timely because the Inspectorate and the Teaching Council of Ireland, recently published the Cosán Action Plan (2021) and Looking at our Schools 2022 (2022), both of which describe how the Department intends to integrate Cosán more deeply into Irish education as a complementary policy to Looking at our Schools (2022). At this policy juncture, this research finds that the two organisations’ understandings of teacher professionalism overlap in places but also sit in tension with each other.
Metadata
Item Type:Article (Published)
Refereed:Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:Critical Discourse Analysis, teacher professionalism, Department of Education, Inspectorate, Teaching Council of Ireland.
Subjects:Social Sciences > Education
Social Sciences > Teaching
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Institute of Education > School of Policy & Practice
Research Institutes and Centres > Centre for Inclusive Pedagogy
Publisher:Taylor and Francis
Official URL:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03323...
Copyright Information:Authors
ID Code:32054
Deposited On:05 Jan 2026 15:41 by Tom Feeney . Last Modified 05 Jan 2026 15:41
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