Kirsten Sivesind

Mixed images and merging semantics in European curricula

Due to European agreements and policy expectations, national authorities are revising their formal curricula in line with an evidence-oriented policy. The article explores how new trends in formulating curricula can be regarded as an outcome of experts’ semantics and impact on education policy. The article reanalyses documentation from a project, where curricula were compared across countries according to their conceptualizations about schooling and reform. Throughout this project, we observed that curriculum documents merge professional semantics on the purposes, and content of schooling with a language formed by evidence-based policy on outcomes. To understand what the formal curricula express within contemporary policy, a research model is applied, which illustrates how semantics associated with curricula weight theory and evidence differently, all regarded as sources within curriculum making. From this point of view, the recognition or ignorance of schooling is dependent not only on political ideologies, as indicated in Tanners op-ed article, but on how experts provide semantics which might take professional-practical theories of schooling into regard.

State School Inspection Policy in Norway and Sweden (2002-2012): A Reconfiguration of Governing Modes?.

There is growing research interest in school inspection throughout Europe; however, there have been few comparative studies between Swedish and Norwegian school inspectorates. Such a study is necessary since little is known about how inspection policies are shaped through ‘governing modes’ in the two Nordic countries. This paper explores the similarities and differences between state school inspection policies within the two countries from 2002 to 2012. Based on a rigorous, comparative document analysis of 23 policy documents, a particular focus is given to how school inspection adheres to professional-bureaucratic control as a mode of governing and/or details national expectations through performance audit, potentially intervening into school practices. We demonstrate that even if the cases of public administration seem to be somewhat homogenous from the outside, there is substantial evidence of major differences in the inspection policies of these two countries which can be explored by comparative analysis. Specifically, this paper contributes both conceptually and comparatively to understanding how a study of purposive and evaluative modes of governing can add to the field of school inspection studies.

Curriculum on the European policy agenda: Global transitions and learning outcomes from transnational and national points of view

This special issue examines curricula and their histories as they have evolved throughout the 21st century as part of transnational and national education policies. With a specific focus on the policy transitions that are taking place in Europe, the articles demonstrate how curriculum making processes move in different directions, following their own reform cycles despite globalization and internationalization. At the same time, a third wave of transnational policy transitions seems to be taking place, such that international organizations like the European Union have intervened in curriculum decisions regarding compulsory schooling within national contexts. The articles within this special issue draw on different epistemologies and methodologies and, thus, contribute to analytical frameworks and provide a variety of lenses for understanding and exploring how curriculum making processes respond to and re-contextualize processes and expectations beyond national and global contexts.

Organizing curriculum change: an introduction*

Abstract This paper introduces the questions and approaches of a five-nation cross-cultural study of state-based curriculum-making discussed in this issue of JCS. The paper reviews the two decade-long interest of many nations in state-based curriculum-making and presents a framework for thinking about state-based curriculum-making as a tool of educational governance.

Transnational policy transfer over three curriculum reforms in Finland: The constructions of conditional and purposive programs (1994–2016):

This article examines how three national curricula for basic education in Finland reflect transnational policy perspectives from 1994 to the present. By developing a conceptual apparatus for curriculum analysis, we examine how national curricula in Finland can be interpreted as modifications of transnational policy transfers shaped by international comparisons in today’s society. Transnational policy has been the subject of numerous studies, but ongoing curriculum modifications of policy transfers across reform periods have rarely been examined. Using a systems theory approach, we seek to understand how curriculum revisions are designed as combinations of conditional and purposive orientations. The most important contributions of this paper lie in its use of a mixture of these orientations, and its demonstration of the particular functions that these orientations play in both facilitating and constricting transnational policy transfer as evidenced by our analytical apparatus.

State-based curriculum-making, Part I

Abstract This paper frames the problem underlying the cross-cultural Organizing Curriculum Change (OCC) study of state-based curriculum-making. The paper discusses the increased use by states over the past two decades of the century-old instrument of the state-based curriculum and the tool of the curriculum commission. The paper contrasts the slender English-language writing on these institutions with the extensive German literature, with particular emphasis on the post-1970s German analysis and the revisionist analysis of the 1980s.

The Rhetoric of the Norwegian Constitution Day: A Topos Analysis of Young Norwegian Students' May 17 Speeches, 2011 and 2012.

National Day, or Constitution Day, in Norway, May 17, is often referred to as Childrens Day. On this day, thousands of young Norwegian students march in parades and participate in celebrations in schoolyards and similar meeting places. Some students are selected to give speeches, performed in front of family members, neighbors, classmates, and most often teachers and the school principal. We analyzed 30 speech manuscripts, 12 from 2011 and 18 from 2012, and examined how the Constitution is expressed by a selection of topoi. The present study is the first one to examine how students engage in the constitution by giving speeches. Thus, our paper provides new insights into contemporary conceptions about the Constitution, as well as how students act in terms of school, society, and democracy.

Policy learning in Norwegian school reform: a social network analysis of the 2020 incremental reform

ABSTRACT This policy study examines how policymakers and policy experts in Norway made us of research and studies – produced in Norway, in the Nordic countries and outside the Nordic region – to explain the 2020 incremental school reform. In total, 2 White Papers, 12 Green Papers and 3438 texts, cited in the White and Green Papers, were used as data for the text-based social network analysis. The three major findings were the following: First, the policymakers and experts make excessive use of references (on average, 246 references per White or Green Paper). The publications they cite are highly specialized and issue centred with little overlap between the various papers. Second, the policy references for the 2020 reform were mainly domestic. Approximately 70% of the referenced texts were published in Norway. Finally, the social network analysis enabled the authors to identify five texts that were influential and that bridged curriculum with quality monitoring reform topics. The authors suggest that more attention should be paid to an analysis of incremental reforms such as the 2020 reform in Norway. They identify a few of the blind spots that the more commonly used focus on fundamental reforms tends to produce.

State-based curriculum work and curriculum-making: Norway’s Læreplanverket 1997

Abstract This case study of the development of the Norwegian compulsory school curriculum of 1997, Læreplanverket 1997, parallels a study of the development of the Illinois Learning Standards of 1997. The pair of case studies is designed to explore the administration of state-based curriculum-making and, in particular, the use in curriculum-making of the administrative tools of compartmentalization, segmentation and licencing. Often the use of these tools serves to make the curriculum as a guiding instrument largely symbolic and/or ideological.

State-Based Curriculum-Making, Part 2, the Tool-Kit for the State's Curriculum-Making.

Abstract The paper identifies three tools that support the administrative instrument of a state-based curriculum commission: compartmentalization, licensing and segmentation. These tools channel the state’s curriculum-making towards forms of symbolic rather than regulatory action. The state curriculum becomes a framework for the ideological governance of schools and school systems.