As children’s digital lives become increasingly complex, there is a growing need to explore how cybersecurity education can be introduced in primary schools in ways that move beyond narrow technical instruction and engage with the ethical, behavioural and social dimensions of online security. While cybersecurity has not traditionally been foregrounded in primary education, building awareness and good habits as early as possible is increasingly important as children encounter networked technologies from a young age. In this context, cybersecurity education can support digital resilience, helping children participate in digital environments in informed, critical and responsible ways. The SECURE initiative (Strengthening Education for Cybersecurity: Uniting Resilience and Expertise), funded by the Research Ireland COALESCE Research Fund, responds by supporting teachers to adapt and enact cybersecurity education in developmentally appropriate and pedagogically meaningful ways.

This paper focuses on the teacher professional development dimension of SECURE and examines how a design-based approach can support teachers in embedding cybersecurity education across primary classrooms and the primary curriculum. The study is informed by design-based research and sociocultural perspectives on teacher learning, and is shaped by adaptive expertise and expansive learning. Professional development is understood as an iterative and situated process through which teachers develop knowledge through cycles of interpretation, design, enactment, feedback and refinement. Teachers are positioned as co-designers of learning who work collaboratively with peers, researchers, cybersecurity professionals and government agencies to create context-responsive units of learning. This is particularly important in cybersecurity, where teachers may be navigating emerging content and where effective practice requires technical, ethical and pedagogical considerations to be brought together.

The SECURE initiative promotes a holistic understanding of cybersecurity education and explores opportunities to teach about cybersecurity as a natural part of the primary curriculum rather than as an isolated topic. While codes, ciphers and encryption may provide accessible entry points, the project extends beyond purely technical content to include dimensions such as personal data protection, cyber hygiene, resilience, social engineering, misinformation, digital ethics, critical thinking and digital agency. Teachers draw on open-access resources as flexible stimuli for co-design, enabling them to shape learning experiences relevant to children’s everyday digital lives while remaining responsive to primary classroom realities.

The paper asks: How does participation in a design-based, community-supported professional learning process shape teachers’ confidence, pedagogical decision-making and enactment of cybersecurity education in primary school classrooms? To address this question, the paper foregrounds teacher-focused data generated across the initiative, including teacher surveys, teacher focus groups, observations of community of practice sessions, and teacher feedback on resources, classroom enactment and student engagement. Together, these data provide insight into how teachers make sense of cybersecurity as a curricular and pedagogical area, how they negotiate uncertainty in an emerging field, and how professional learning is mediated through collaborative cycles of design, dialogue and reflection.

Findings suggest that the design-based structure of SECURE creates productive conditions for teacher professional learning. First, it supports teachers in developing broader understandings of cybersecurity as a matter of online security, ethics, resilience and agency rather than simply technical knowledge. Second, the community of practice model enables teachers to test, adapt and refine learning in dialogue with peers and external partners, including cybersecurity professionals and government agencies. Third, structured opportunities for observation, feedback and reflection strengthen teacher agency by positioning teachers as active designers of digital learning.

This paper contributes to discussions in digital learning professional development by showing how a design-based model can support teachers to engage confidently with cybersecurity education in primary schools. It offers a practice-based account of how collaborative inquiry, pedagogical design and teacher agency can be brought together to build capacity for cybersecurity education in practice.