Exploring Irish primary school children’s perceptions of themselves as learners in preparation for the key competency of ‘being an active learner’ within the Primary Curriculum Framework

Abstract

In March 2023, the Department of Education published the ‘Primary Curriculum Framework’ for primary and special schools in Ireland. Reflecting trends in international curriculum reform centred on the needs and priorities of twenty-first century learning and life, the Framework proposes a set of seven key competencies which are presented to underpin children’s learning and development during their time in primary school. In this paper, we focus on one such key competency, ‘being an active learner.’ We aspire to theoretically conceptualise this key competency in relation to the psychological constructs of ‘learner identity’ and ‘learning to learn.’ We argue that such a conceptualisation must not only reflect the cognitive and metacognitive ‘how’ of learning, but also the affective ‘who’ of the learner. Arising from this, we explore Irish primary school children’s perceptions of themselves as learners, drawing on 188 children’s open-ended descriptions of themselves as learners and 136 online survey responses to the ‘Myself-As-Learner Scale’ (MALS). Despite a majority of children describing themselves as learners in positive terms, findings indicate that Irish primary school children report lower mean MALS scores than standardisation data for the scale, with statistically significant differences revealed between genders and class levels. Implications for policy and practice are discussed, as well as opportunities associated with the key competency if meaningfully realised.