A Critical Analysis of Irish Primary Education Policies through a Hybrid Poststructuralist and Critical Discourse Lens: A change over time perspective

The absence of acknowledgement by education policy actors involved in the production of policy in the Irish context, that their methods of producing and analysing policy are underpinned by philosophical and ideological ‘stances’ has long been a feature of the policy and greater education ecosystems. Unchecked by critical attention and nourished by a conservative-neoliberal political continuum, rationalist and positivist approaches to education policy have long flourished in the Irish context. This study is a ‘testing ground’ for a framework for policy analysis that seeks to draw attention to the ideas and assumptions that underpin education policy and ‘moulds’ policies and policy ‘subjects’ including teachers. The framework for policy analysis utilised here draws on ‘tools of analysis’ from the traditions of poststructuralism (Bacchi, 2009; Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Van Leeuwen, 2008). An exploration and excavation of distinct theorisations of ‘discourse’ which fundamentally pertain to the poststructural and CDA traditions, is engaged in, prior to establishing the usefulness of the approach via the analysis of selected policy texts.
Utilising a ‘change over time’ perspective, three important instances of primary education policy (primary curriculum policy and literacy policy) spanning a period of forty-eight years (1971-2019) are critically analysed, drawing attention to how policy ‘practices’ have been complicit in the constitution of various ‘things’ connected to education policy. To achieve this, critical attention is directed to the distinction between ‘policy as text’ and ‘policy as discourse’ (Ball, 2015) in the analysis of education policy. With an emphasis on ‘heterogeneity and contingency’ (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016) and on knowledge practices, the analysis provides important insights into how distinct ways of understanding curriculum (via curriculum policy) are possible over time. A number of Foucauldian concepts underpin the tools of analysis utilised in the analysis, including the concept of ‘governmentality’, which allows the author to interrogate education policies (such as literacy policy) as instances of policy actor deployment in the governing of education, thereby ‘making visible’ the politics of policy.
The study, while relatively unblinkered to its own biases and cognisant of its position as a perspective existing among many, nevertheless questions and disrupts assumptions that buttress what ‘has to be’ in education policy. The ‘change over time’ aspect of the study demonstrates that certain dominant discourses have constituted policy in the national context. The deployment of a set of tools of analysis has shown them to be fit for the purpose of interrogating education policy, thus creating a new impetus to make room at the policy table for poststructuralist, structuralist and critical perspectives. Looking to the future of policy making suggests the need for a more egalitarian community of policy actors encompassing a broader range of voices and the benefit they bring to education policy in the Irish context.