Mapping the mathematics education policy discourses that prefigure and configure primary initial teacher education in Ireland

In this paper, we explore the opening of mathematics education policy windows in Ireland over a 25-year period and the production of four key policies: at secondary level, Project Maths and the Bonus Points initiative; and at the primary level, the Primary Curriculum Framework and the Primary Mathematics Curriculum. Through our discourse analysis of 18 core texts, we detail the political, problem and policy streams that contributed to the opening of policy windows, before attending to convergences across the streams that led to the four policies. We demonstrate that the four policies are local translations of global travelling discourses and exhibit both overlaps and contrasts. We contend that these contrasts lead to incoherencies in how mathematics is constructed across primary and secondary levels. We conclude by considering implications of these mathematics education policies for primary initial teacher education.