In 2009, a longitudinal study by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) revealed a significant misalignment between Irish post-primary education and student needs. At the time, the three-year Junior Cycle mirrored the Senior Cycle: a collection of siloed subjects assessed by a centralised, terminal examination (Smyth, 2009). This “Junior Cert" model exerted a negative backwash effect on the purpose, processes, and practices of schooling (Doyle, 2019). Following disappointing PISA results in 2009, macro-actors sought a radical departure from this state-certified, examination-led status quo (Perkins et al., 2011).

The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) responded by designing a lower-secondary framework vastly different from previous iterations. This new ideology prioritised student learning and holistic development through an overarching framework of 24 statements of learning, eight principles, and eight key skills (NCCA, 2012). Crucially, it championed a constructivist pedagogy (Vygotsky, 1978), moving away from rigid syllabi toward subject specifications defined by learning outcomes. Assessment was no longer about performance but about supporting learning.  This policy shift demanded that teachers evolve from curriculum "deliverers" to curriculum "makers", an aspiration that proved premature, resulting in a hybridized approach to design. Instead of a pure transition to a constructivist, student-centred model, what emerged was a mixture of epistemologies and curriculum paradigms (Gleeson, Doyle & O’Neill, 2025).

Over the last decade, Irish upper-secondary reform has adopted a "backward design" approach, informed by these previous curriculum reform cycles. To avoid a disruptive overhaul, and acknowledging the immense pressure of the high-stakes Leaving Certificate, the NCCA began by rejuvenating subject specifications through learning outcomes. However, the recent introduction of a "content column" alongside these outcomes suggests a regression toward "teacher-proof" lists and a behaviourist model of delivery. While these pre-determined outcomes offer a form of contractual certainty for high-stakes examinations, they simultaneously highlight the friction between reformist ideals and the systemic weight of traditional assessment.

This paper investigates the perspectives of key macro-actors: the Department of Education (DoE), the NCCA, and the State Examinations Commission (SEC), on the curriculum-making process and endeavours to signpost issues that hinder and assist changemakers in bringing about reform. Specifically, it explores how the decision to utilise pre-determined learning outcomes influenced curriculum making during the Junior Cycle reform and how those implications are now manifesting at the Senior Cycle. Our research asks: What were the rationale and implications, from the perspectives of macro-stakeholders, for introducing learning outcomes in recent post-primary reform?  In the landscape of Irish education, progress is rarely linear; it is often a series of calculated retreats and advances. 

The theoretical framework in this study is based on Haraway’s (2016) concept of Speculative Fabulation which prompts us to search for the ideas, thoughts and knowledge behind the dominant narratives of learning outcomes. The framework understands that different patterns of threads are made and unmade as curriculum develops at different points in time, they are passed on in different twists that require ‘passion and action, holding still and moving, anchoring and launching’ which allow the actors to render each other capable by becoming-with each other within each pattern. Curriculum making through this lens is a practice and a process of becoming-with, and the way to map it in order to learn from the process is to unpick the threads in order to see ‘what thoughts think thoughts’, because this matters. The thread that an actor brings to the table in curriculum making is never what they leave the table with, it is within the encounter with others that the curriculum is conceived, developed and made.

This research uses Critical Case Study as the methodology that seeks to understand how curriculum making operates in different situations, rather than confining it to one particular situation (Bartlett and Vavrus, 2017). It ‘unbounds’ curriculum reform in Ireland by examining it across two of different axes. The first axis is the vertical axis which compares influences on the case at different curriculum policy levels. In this paper we focus on the Macro level actors. Exploration of this axis will extend to the other levels of curriculum in a wider study which will be reported on in subsequent papers. We hone the focus to the three state bodies responsible for setting the curriculum at this level and we examine how their mutual interaction influences the way in which the curriculum is made. The second axis is a transversal contestation of curriculum as static and bounded that warrants an examination of changes in the curriculum over time. In our tracing of the Irish second level curriculum from the initial lower secondary reform that began in 2012, up to the most recent upper secondary reform that is currently underway, we identify the back and forth movement of the pendulum as curriculum making advances along a continuum of development. In Ireland there are three state bodies operating at the Macro level in curriculum. Seven interviews were conducted with Macro actors from the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (n=4), the State Examinations Commission (n=2) and the Department of Education (n=1). The interview data collected was analysed using Template Analysis (Brooks et al, 2015) which is a form of thematic analysis that acknowledges the researchers’ familiarity with the data and emphasises the use of a number of hierarchical structured codes (which were based on interview questions) but also balances these with the flexibility to adapt it to the needs of the study by allowing new themes to emerge from the data.

The emerging findings suggest that: a. The introduction of learning outcomes to Irish curricula was influenced by international discussions at the Supra level. They were part of a wider adoption of a badly needed curriculum reform involving a student/learner centred approach to curriculum design. There was an epistemological conflict between the agentic student centred ideology and the pre-determined nature of learning outcomes. b. Knowledge had expanded beyond content and what became important was the process of the application of knowledge through skills, understanding and values and a focus on student agency and teachers as curriculum makers. Summative performance was no longer to be the most important aspect of a student's school experience. However, the assessment of learning did not align with the student centred ideology. c. The shifting identity of the teacher’s role was problematic and raised issues of professionalism and particularly in the area of assessment literacy. d. The subsequent curriculum reform at senior cycle has swung the curriculum making pendulum backwards to embrace learning from the junior cycle reform to gather the kinetic energy required to swing toward the future. . e. The partnership approach adopted in Ireland to curriculum making is very complex and requires far greater unpacking given the associated politics and challenges at the Macro level of curriculum making. The significance of this research lies in its insights for policy makers and curriculum makers in all jurisdictions. It reminds us that curriculum making is a social endeavour that takes place at a particular time and context and any curriculum made is just made at a point in time and will evolve.

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