Lower secondary education in Ireland is changing. The current system, 'The Junior Certficate', is being reformed into the 'Junior Cycle'. This is a school wide change that, in many ways, is one of the most significant educational reforms in the history of the Irish state.  In 2012, A Framework for Junior Cycle was presented by the Department of education as the guiding document for curriculum reform, hailing a new age of school-based assessment and the embedding of 21st Century transversal skills, or 'Key Skils' into the curriculum framework. The Framework advocates a dual approach to assessment, with formative assessment complemented by summative assessment as a key feature of the reform. As a curriculum, the Framework drew upon a number of travelling reforms at a supranational level that, if enacted to their fullest potential, would require a shift in mindset and a change in practice for many Irish teachers and school leaders. But this was not to be the case. Following a number of policy shifts from a local to a national level, an industrial impasse ensued between the Department of Education and the Irish teacher unions. After a prolonged spell of negotiation, the Framework was rewritten in 2015 with a number of pointed changes.

The enactment of the Framework is a model of change that is fragmented, slowly introduced but still highly contested - why? Why has there been resistance? What affordances does the Framework offer to schools and, of most interest to this research, teachers and school leaders? What advice can be given to these stakeholders to enable them to enact this curriculum reform to its fullest potential? The answers to these questions have been the guiding compass for this research.

Where discourses of efficiency, productivity and partnership have become part of the zeitgeist of educational change, ‘there is a growing recognition that schools need to lead the next phase of reform’ (Hopkins, 2009, p.206). In this environment of ‘unrelenting and even repetitive change, then, it is essential to understand how teachers experience and respond to educational change if reform and improvement efforts are to be more successful and sustainable’ (Hargreaves, 2005). This research seeks to further our understanding in this area from an Irish perspective. The specific focus of this research is in the area of context - how it can serve as 'an active force...not just a backdrop against which schools have to operate' (Ball et al, 2012, p.24). The research is located within three pilot schools for the new curriculum and stakeholders include teachers and school leaders. It is guided by the following aim:

Taking context as an active force that mediates the enactment of policy, and with regards to the stakeholders within and across the school sites – why does context matter in the enactment of Junior Cycle reform?

Ball, S.J., Braun, A., & Maguire, M. (2012). How Schools Do Policy: Policy Enactment in Secondary Schools. London & New York: Routledge Hargreaves, A. (2005). Educational change takes ages: Life, career and generational factors in teachers' emotional responses to educational change. Teacher and Teacher education 21(8), 967-983