Practicing policy: an exploration of teachers’ ‘lived experience’ of an arts-in-education program in Ireland

The Creative Schools program is an arts-in-education program run in Irish schools since 2018. It was initially established under the Creative Youth Plan (2017-2022, 2023-2027) as part of a renewed focus on creativity and arts education in schools. While the rhetoric of the original plan and program focused heavily on the importance of teacher-artist partnership, recent research into the program’s impact has highlighted concerns in relation to the teacher’s role in the implementation of the program and its possible effects. Furthermore, research focusing exclusively on the teacher’s experience and their positioning within the program remains very limited. This study aims to address this research gap. Using a narrative approach drawn from the work of Clandinin and Connelly (Citation2000), this research explores the lived experiences of three primary school teachers who were involved in the coordination and implementation of the Creative Schools program. The experiences of these teachers working at national, school, and classroom level provide an important in-depth view of how they constructed their positioning as teachers in the program. In this way, this research illuminates the ‘lived’ practice of arts education policy in an Irish context.