Media/ting Educational Reform: Junior Cycle Reform in the Media

The process of large-scale curriculum reform at junior cycle level which has been in process for the past few years in Ireland has been played out in the very public arena of the media. From the initial proposals, through the phases of development and compromise and more recently implementation, the process has been widely reported and discussed in the news media. Reporting has had a high profile in the national media outlets. This chapter presents a corpus analysis of national print media representations and analysis of the junior cycle reform process since its launch in 2012 to explore the focus and orientation of the media in relation to this curricular reform. Topics explored in this chapter include what areas of the wider reform process have been the focus of media attention and perhaps more importantly what is the sentiment orientation of the media’s treatment of these areas. This chapter will explore which elements of the reform agenda are foregrounded and which are backgrounded in media coverage. The discussion will also identify which of the stakeholders’ perspectives within the reform process (officials, teachers, students and parents) are most prominent. The chronological analysis is aligned with key moments in the reform process in order to provide a commentary on how media accounts track and potentially influence the reform process itself. This chapter concludes with a discussion of the partial nature of media representations of curricular reform which reflects “events-based” journalism, highlights adversarial issues and occludes more fundamental but less contentious elements of the reform agenda.