Teacher professionalism in policy texts in the Republic of Ireland; a critical discourse analysis

In the Republic of Ireland, primary school teaching is a very attractive profession with pay being above the OECD average (Heinz and Keane 2018; Hennessey and Lynch 2017). This paper investigates how the Department of Education Inspectorate and the Teaching Council of Ireland position primary school teacher professionalism. The paper presents the findings of critical discourse analysis (CDA) of two policy texts; Looking at our schools 2016 (2016) by the Department of Education Inspectorate and Cosan framework for teachers learning (2016) by the Teaching Council of Ireland. This paper is timely because the Inspectorate and the Teaching Council of Ireland, recently published the Cosan Action Plan (2021) and Looking at our Schools 2022 (2022), both of which describe how the Department intends to integrate Cosan more deeply into Irish education as a complementary policy to Looking at our Schools (2022). At this policy juncture, this research finds that the two organisations' understandings of teacher professionalism overlap in places but also sit in tension with each other.