The imminent redevelopment of Ireland’s national curriculum promises to promote agency by giving teachers the autonomy to make significant decisions regarding the content, sequence and pace of instruction in their classrooms (NCCA, 2020a). While the explicit positioning of teachers as ‘change-agents’ (Fullan, 2016; NCCA, 2009, 2020) is welcome, international studies which focus on the phenomenon of teacher-agency with regard to curriculum reform are only recently beginning to emerge (Biesta et al., 2017; Pantić, 2017a; Priestley et al., 2013; Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson, 2015; Priestley & Drew, 2019a; Pyhältö et al., 2018).  A review of this burgeoning pool of empirical investigations reveals a tendency to theorise agency at the level of overarching national curriculum frameworks.  This is not to suggest that these studies were limited in their own terms but to emphasise the fact that they had a particular focus.  A more fine-grained exploration of agency, which embraces the disciplinary-specifics of curriculum reform-measures, awakens the possibility of a more refined analysis of the phenomenon.  This therefore presents the next logical phase for empirical study.

Building on the conceptualisation of Emirbayer and Mische (1998), the current work proposes a definition of agency as ‘teachers’ capacity to critically shape their responsiveness to curriculum change’.  Set against the backdrop of the recent introduction of the Primary Language Curriculum - the first of a series of major national curricular reforms - the study presented in this paper draws its conceptual framing from both ‘ecological’ and ‘sociocultural’ approaches to theorising teacher agency (Biesta & Tedder, 2007; Pantić, 2017a; Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson, 2015).  Agency is concieved as a situated achievement, an emergent phenomenon, which arises at the confluence between an individual and their particular contexts for action.  Three dynamic, interrelated dimensions comprise the conceptual backbone of this theory of agency:  the ‘iterative’ (which delineates an orienation towards the past), the ‘practical-evaluative’ (with a focus on the present context within which an individual is 'acting' and the ‘projective’ dimensions (with its focus on the future).  Each dimension has a complex internal structure, each with its own orientation towards the past, present and future. Emirbayer and Mische refer to this as the ‘chordal triad of agency within which all three dimensions resonate as separate but not always harmonious tones’ (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 972). Although analytically separate, each can be found to a greater or lesser degrees in any given instance of action. 

The study presented in this paper intends to address the following overarching research question: In what ways do teachers achieve agency in the context of engaging with the new Primary Language Curriculum?  This overarching question was supported by a number of subordinate questions:

• How is the phenomenon of teacher agency understood by significant actors in the national policy and practice arena?
• How do teachers describe their engagement with the Primary Language Curriculum? 
• In what ways does a professional learning community influence teachers’ agency in the context of engaging with the Primary Language Curriculum

The study presented in this paper employed an exploratory, sequential, multi-methods design (Morse, 2009, 2010b), which incorporated focus groups with key stakeholders (n=10), phenomenological interviews (n=12) across four school contexts and a single-site case study of teacher agency for curriculum enactment in a professional learning community (n=6). The sequential, multi-methods design aims to move beyond a potentially reductive ‘snapshot’ in time perspective (Sugrue, 2014), as it cumulatively adds colours to the canvas of agency-understanding.

This Irish ‘case’ points to the centrality of teachers’ ‘knowledgeability’ (Giddens, 1984) regarding the reform-effort, and highlights the sustained, supported, collaborative and incremental manner in which this needs to be developed in order for vistas of agentic possibilities to be revealed and realised for teachers. The influence of ‘mediating artefacts’ (Vygotsky, 1987) on agency’s dynamic emergence highlights another important contribution. The potential for agency, it is argued, is influenced by the material infrastructure which scaffolds the reform measure. In this regard, existing planning templates were shown to infuse the leaden feet of change with calcified reluctance. The importance of teachers’ ‘existential feelings’ (Ratcliffe, 2005, 2008) in orienting themselves to the particular reform provides a final insight of particular consequence. Arguably the curriculum-reform/agency nexus underestimates the significance of these feeling and in doing so, is in danger of relegating reform to the realm of superficial adoption or, more worryingly, teacher burn-out. Considered in their totality, the findings suggest that agency for curriculum innovation emerges across a series of settlements, or ‘new accommodations’ and the paper presents a model for understanding the phenomenon in such terms. Appreciating how the emergence of teachers’ agency can be supported by professionals in the educational arena is the primary focus of this paper. It will present an Irish perspective on this international phenomenon. In doing so, it offers significant potential to contribute to this gradually burgeoning field of study and to support policy-makers, teachers and learners into the future.

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