Curriculum theorising draws on different knowledge sources and concepts. It combines professional knowledge and experience, empirical research and fundamental ideas from ‘Pedagogik’ and ‘Didaktik’. It draws attention to the long historical lines as well as to current educational policies.
At the same time, stakeholders and organisations are arguing that the world is at a tipping point and are urgently calling for curricula for a damaged planet and a democracy that is at risk. Meanwhile, the curriculum policy discourse is dominated by a narrow language of competences, performance and measurable learning outcomes, combined with fears of falling behind in the competitive global economy. This contradictory complexity calls for the importance of curriculum theorising and critical reflection.
Normativity is part of a longstanding approach to curriculum theorising in the Nordic countries. Engaging with normativity from a critical perspective implies that research and scholarship, in addition to understanding and interpreting the world, must also engage in transforming the world. However, expectations of curriculum research increasingly emphasise a more instrumental approach in which researchers play the role of curriculum experts. This implies a focus on providing evidence and outcomes in response to particular questions, policies and practices.
The following question therefore lies at the heart of the conference: How can we continue to protect and stimulate a research agenda that welcomes reflexivity, challenges taken-for-granted assumptions, and unpacks and repackages concepts, distinctions and epistemological boundaries, while being recognized as an important contributor to policy-making, the profession and educational practice?
You can read the keynotes' abstracts below. A detailed programme will be provided at this web page at a later stage.
Please note that the conference is primarily intended for those who have received an accepted abstract for presentation. The number of presenters is limited to 50.
Call for abstracts
The conference welcomes papers from the Nordic countries that aims toward stimulating the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological development of the field by presenting new approaches, concepts, and empirical studies.
The abstract submission is now closed. Notice of acceptance of abstract will be given latest June 21, 2024.
Key notes
Professor Andreas Bergh (University of Uppsala): The Many Faces of Juridification in Education – some empirical and theoretical reflections
Abstract
As is well known in curriculum theoretical research, legal regulation of the school system is far from a new phenomenon. However, the last decades development towards increased use of judicial means, to solve different societal and educational problems, calls for further theoretical development.
In studies of education the tendency of juridification, which in a broader sense refers to a situation or issue taking on a legal or a changed legal character, has until recently remained an outlier.
While the use of legal means can contribute to creating a just, equal and democratic society, there is at the same time a risk of adverse consequences, such as overregulation and leading to a colonization of the lifeworld.
This duality also highlights the complexity of the many faces of juridification, as it points to the multiple interconnections between education and other systems, especially politics and law.
Learn more about Professor Andreas Bergh (University of Uppsala)
Research Director Tiina Soini-Ikonen (University of Tampere): Is participatory curriculum reform possible? Reflecting sense-making and teacher agency in Finnish curriculum reform
Abstract
The national core curriculum is renewed in Finland approximately every ten years, the most recent renewal being in 2014 (Finnish National Agency for Education 2014).
Curriculum making in the reform may be referred to as participatory relying on shared sense-making as a tool for transformative learning throughout the educational system. The approach emphasizes interpreting, adapting, and transforming policy messages in an interactive process that is influenced by participants’ cognitive efforts whilst simultaneously embedded in social and structural conditions.
To be successful participatory reform should support teachers’ agency in sense-making. The written curriculum document itself should communicate the big picture clearly and create sufficient alignment between meta-goals of the curriculum and changes they imply to classroom practices. However, focus should not be only on what is changing but also on how the change can be brought about. Here teacher agency is in crucial role.
Learn more about Research Director Tiina Soini-Ikonen (University of Tampere)
Professor Ninni Wahlström (University of Linnaeus): Knowledge and Democracy – The Educational Task Before Us
Abstract
According to V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy), autocratisation continues to be the dominant trend in 2024 and it is becoming increasingly clear that democracy cannot be taken for granted. When a democracy goes down, it happens through gradual restrictions on the freedom of the press, academic freedom, civil organisations, investigative bodies, and on deliberations about political initiatives.
Therefore, as researchers in the Nordic countries, we need to take the school's democratic task seriously. We need to thoroughly discuss the reason for having a public school system and articulate what this means for approaches to knowledge in daily teaching.
I explore how a democratic stance can form a basis for the authoring of the teaching content and how we can understand what characterises good teaching quality beyond a results-driven school system.
The conceptualisation of a fundamental purpose of teaching in a liberal democracy, as well as how teaching quality can be understood, is based on concepts of transactional realism, “bildning”, and speculative pragmatism in terms of «revolutionary habits».
Learn more about Professor Ninni Wahlström (University of Linnaeus)
Important dates
- First announcement March 1, 2024
- Second announcement: April 5, 2024
- Abstract submission: April 5 – June 1, 2024
- Notice of acceptance of abstract will be given latest June 21, 2024
- Registration: June 20 – September 20, 2024
Organisers
The conference is organised by the research group Curriculum, leadership and educational governance (CLEG) at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Oslo.
Berit Karseth, Jeffrey Hall, Kirsten Sivesind, Ragnhild Meland and Ruth Jensen are in the organising committee.
Questions can be directed to Berit Karseth.