Influenced by research nationally (see for example Smyth and McCoy, 2011; Smyth, 2016), and internationally (NCCA, 2010), Ireland embarked on an ambitious reform of lower secondary education in 2010. The push for reform in Ireland can be traced back to Lisbon in 2000 (Dempsey, forthcoming). Lisbon is significant in education for a number of reasons—not least that it linked education with social policy, labour market and overall economic policy (European Council, 2000). It also saw the introduction of Open Method Coordination, which has led to policy borrowing and peer learning, but also to ideation convergence and an obsession, some would say, with global data such as that from PISA and TALIS (Raffe, 2011; Radaeilli, 2003; Dale, 2009; Dale and Robertson, 2012). Curriculum discussions tend to be about how change is managed, rather than its meaning; about who controls and decides, rather than what is decided; and about the relationship between curriculum and economic success, rather than the common good. The domination of the rational technical paradigm has supported the climate of fragmentation resulting in the neglect of macro-curriculum issues (Gleeson, 2010). Curriculum reform in Ireland is at present in a liminal state (Sellers, 2015). In this paper the lower secondary system of education in Ireland is viewed as an assemblage. An assemblage is not an entity or thing. It is a process of arranging, organising and fitting together, a process of knowledge making. It acts on semiotic flows, material flows and social flows simultaneously (Deleuze & Guattari, 2003). This assemblage of lower secondary has manifold histories, traditions, values and cultures. It uses its own language about education, has highly evolved concepts about what education is about and the assemblage is charged with emotion. This assemblage plugs into other assemblages as an open, adaptive system and the sum of the whole is greater than the number of its parts. The study builds on interviews with 6 teachers teaching the new specifications of English, Science and Business and 6 focus groups of their students. The interviews are analysed in relation to teachers’ role in a process of arranging, organising and fitting together, a process of knowledge making as part of a bigger whole. It shows how this knowledge making in a change-oriented environment can promote or inhibit curriculum making.

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