Curriculum making is defined as a multi-layered social practice that incorporates the professional selection of knowledge, key skills, values and understanding. It includes pedagogical approaches to learning, teaching and assessment, the production of resources and activities for an inclusive and transformative education that serves the diverse needs of all students in their specific context (Priestley, Alvungar, Philippou & Soini, 2021). Curriculum making takes place across multiple sites of practice (Priestley et al., 2021).  At the Supra level, the EU, OECD, World Bank and UNESCO all endeavour to propose a range of curriculum policies, which are often enacted at the macro level by different national agencies who wish to secure curricula promoting the richness of education but also its competitive component (Sahlberg, 2012). Curriculum agencies and schools (Meso and Micro levels) are then tasked with translating these policies into a particular context. Finally, the teacher must employ their judgement and agency to this curriculum by responding to the needs of a diversity of students in their classroom (Nano Level).  This research recognises the dynamic interrelationship of all these levels. In curriculum literature, there is a paucity in the role that Initial Teacher Education (ITE) plays in preparing the pre-service teacher for the role of curriculum maker.  This research proposes a new level in the strata proposed by Van den Akker & Thijs (2009). The “Pico” level, which on the measurement scale is smaller than Nano, focuses on the pre-service teacher in their preparation of becoming a curriculum maker.  This research asks, “How does ITE prepare pre-service teachers in their theoretical, pedagogical and technical knowledge and agency to become a curriculum maker?”

Theoretical Framework

The choice of a theoretical framework takes advice from Deng (2018) who argues that “curriculum theorizing requires the use of theories in an eclectic, critical and creative manner” (p. 705).  This eclectic mix of educational theories assist in shedding light on the complex process that builds the pre-service teacher’s identity as a curriculum maker.  Our framework uses a Venn diagram, which offers three important pedagogical overlapping and interrelated concepts: Learning, Assessment and Teaching. The theory of learning works from Enactivism (Begg, 1999), which draws from a number of discourses, among them phenomenology, constructivism, ecology, and systems and complexity theories.  Enactivism views learning and knowing, as complex, emergent processes by which dynamic agents maintain fitness with one another and within dynamic contexts. (Davis, 1996).

Xu and Brown’s (2016) conceptual framework of teacher assessment literacy in practice, frame the theory of assessment.  This six-component framework recognizes that the agency of the teacher to make assessment decisions in practice moves beyond the knowledge base of assessment to “consideration of a situated, dynamic, and evolving system in which teachers constantly make compromises among competing tensions” (p.27).  The theory of teaching draws on Biesta and Osberg’s (2010) “logic of emergence” which sees the encounter between student and teacher as the opening up of existential possibilities in education. Biesta (2015) suggests it is less about seeing the subject as that which grasps and comprehends the world, and is more about offering the time and space to situate the subject differently in relation to the world (Biesta, 2013).

At the centre of this Venn diagram is the concept of curriculum making which is a highly dynamic process of interpretation, mediation, negotiation and translation” (Priestley et al., 2021). This research explores and unpacks this complex process and considers how ITE can prepare pre-service teachers, not only for their future identity as curriculum makers, but to become creative innovators as they respond to the multitudinous diversity of the school and classroom culture and context.

In September 2022, two ITE programmes in Dublin City University, designed and introduced a new approach to assist pre-service students (PSTs) in developing their craft and identity as curriculum makers. In preparation for Professional Placement, the PST engaged in designing Units of Learning (UoL) rather than the more traditional Schemes of Work (Tyler, 1949). The UoL is the dynamic structure through which the PST creates a series of learning encounters for a specific class with a particular time-frame and sequence. Curriculum making includes making professional decisions about Learning Outcomes, content, knowledge, Key skills/competences, values, pedagogy, resources and technology that responds to the diversity of student needs. This endorsed a more reconceptualist approach to curriculum making (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery & Taubmann, 2008). The methodology chosen is design-based research (DBR) (Brown, 1992). DBR is about being situated in a real educational context whereby through the collaboration of researchers and stakeholders, there is a process to appraise, design and reflect on an intervention. According to Jan, Chee & Tan (2010) there are four design components that must align for an effective intervention to be successful. They include “frameworks for learning, the affordances of the chosen instructional tools, domain knowledge presentation and contextual limitations” (p. 471). DBR often selects mixed methods in order to understand the complexity of the intervention. This paper is interested in Cycle 1 and 2 of the DBR. In Cycle 1, desk-top research was carried out on the designed Units of Learning from 20 students in a sample of schools (n=40) during placement from December 2022 to February 2023. This will assist the researchers to view the decisions made by the PST in curriculum making. Cycle Two comprises two elements: An on-line survey of a volunteer sample of approximately 500 PSTs inclusive of both programmes. The questions will explore the choices made by the PST in choosing Learning Outcomes, content knowledge, skills and values, methodology and learning experiences, assessment, differentiation and reflections on their identity as curriculum makers. Following the analysis of this questionnaire, semi-structured focus group interviews will be conducted with a purposive sample of PSTs from each year of both programmes. The interviews will provide further reflective space for PSTs to articulate a more in-depth understanding of the complexity of the process of designing and creating a UoL and how it has impacted on their understanding of their role as curriculum makers.

From the study, we argue that the Pico level of curriculum making has huge implications for the functioning of all other levels or strata. The introduction of the UoL and the complex process of constructing it, offers the PST the space to grapple with the DNA of curriculum. This study highlights that each of the following questions, why, what, who, how, where and when, generates a complex ecological web in which the PST must learn to navigate. The UoL contains the epistemological, ontological and pedagogical instructions that afford the PST the opportunity to confront the big questions about curriculum, knowledge and assessment. Each component opens up a myriad of possibilities that a PST must consider and make professional judgements and decisions about in planning their UoL. Initially, the process of making decisions seems segmented and lots of scaffolding of learning is required for the PST. However, through engagement over the years of the programmes, they learn that each segment of the UoL is interconnected so that curriculum making becomes a dynamic and creative process contributing to new, as-yet-unimaginable collective possibilities (Davis & Sumara, 2007). Arendt (1958) tells us that teacher education is the process in which “beginners” are also “beginnings” and with each unique origination of action brings something new into the world. Such creativity takes risks and chances and moves the PST into what Deleuze and Guattari (2003) call “smooth space”. Smooth space is the space of the incalculable, of possibility, where the PST takes flight as curriculum maker. The progressive agency that is learnt at the Pico level will move upwards through the strata and offer a synthesis of theory and practice that is essential for future curriculum design, development making and enactment at national and international levels.

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