‘The knowledge question’, addressing what students need to know and learn, becomes particularly relevant during the process of a new school reform. This paper examines the political messages and the role of knowledge in the current curriculum reform initiative for primary and secondary education in Norway (2020). The study is based on a document analysis of four key policy documents and one subject curriculum. Analysis reveals that, although the messages in the policy documents express expectations of strengthening the knowledge dimension in the school subjects, analysis of a new subject curriculum framework indicates that it more clearly prescribes skills, methods and strategies than the specialised knowledge content to teach. We conclude that the continuation of a competency‐oriented curriculum model, wherein the competence aims are the governing category, explicit content is difficult to prescribe because of the contrasting assumptions that underline a content‐oriented versus a competence‐oriented curriculum. The two curriculum models demand different approaches to ‘the knowledge question’, and raises questions about whether combining these two orientations in one curriculum model is possible.
After the state-based curriculum-development process has finished, the local curriculum-making of the teachers begins. This paper empirically explores the subject curriculum from the perspectives of teachers, focusing on the Norwegian language and literature subject (L1). Using group interviews and drawing on curriculum theory and L1 research and disciplinary didactics that focus on knowledge, we examine how upper secondary school teachers engage with and understand a newly launched curriculum document in Norwegian L1. Our analysis revealed that the L1 teachers had various perspectives on what they considered important subject-matter knowledge, depending on how they read, navigated, and combined components within and across the curriculum text. In addition, the L1 teachers generally perceived a rather weak narrative about explicit subject-matter knowledge in the curriculum document. Finally, most L1 teachers felt they were being guided in terms of how to teach rather than what to teach. Our findings suggest that a consideration of teachers’ voices is crucial for understanding how a formal subject curriculum text works to select content in an L1 subject and the role that knowledge plays in a competency- and future-oriented curriculum such as Norway’s.
Hovedmålet i norsk utdanningspolitikk er at elevene og studentene skal utvikle kompetanse. Vi utforsker mulige blindsoner i den utdanningspolitiske kompetansedreiningen og diskuterer hvordan den påvirker kunnskapens posisjon. Ofte diskuteres skole og høyere utdanning hver for seg, men vi forsøker å se på det samlet. Et underliggende spørsmål i artikkelen er; hvis kompetanse er svaret i utdanningspolitikkenhva var spørsmålet?
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