In two linked sessions, we bring together papers from six different countries that are investigating and analysing the reconfiguration of curriculum at the broad policy and public level. Historically, there have been some distinctly different intellectual configurations framing curriculum in different countries, and the European tradition of ‘didactics’ has no real counterpart in UK or countries like Australia. However the late 20th century and 21st century are notable for the global movements and institutions now impacting on the nation-state and its traditions, for the widespread belief that we are in some sense in new times, and for some strong questioning of traditional disciplines and traditional underpinnings for curriculum in school. Since the 1970s, many countries have experienced some major changes in the institutional, organizational and epistemological framing of curriculum policy and public documents. Movements concerned with women and multiculturalism and the development of the EU and issues of citizenship have been part of a changing context, as has the growing impact of OECD and global benchmarking activities such as PISA, and as too the changing focus on human capital and vocationalism forms for the 21st century. In the academic community some traditional conceptions of disciplinary knowledge have been disrupted and destabilized; but more recently too a new debate about problems of relativism in the critical sociological approaches to curriculum common in the late 20th century. In many cases the forms of relationship and forms of power in the governance of education policy have changed, with different configurations of political steering and of the education bureaucracy. The researchers in this linked symposium each draw on their own detailed sociological and historical projects concerned with changing developments. They analyse different national settings of curriculum work, but share some common interest in the contemporary context for curriculum policy, including the effects of global movements and institutions; and the issue of the changing labour market and its relationship to education. More broadly, the participants in the linked sessions of this symposium are engaged in a new consideration of power and knowledge as an issue for curriculum and education policy today. They are interested in how curriculum now is being specified, and by whom and on what basis; in how this interacts with existing national traditions; and in what kinds of epistemological, political and institutional issues we should now address. What is happening to knowledge and the development of knowledge through policy-framing of curriculum is the central interest of this symposium. (In this first of the two linked sessions, we consider papers from Sweden, Malta and Belgium; and the session will be chaired by Lyn Yates, with Cherry Collins as discussant.)

The proposal draws on sociological, historical and philosophical investigations; empirical methods include policy document analysis, interviews, and observational studies.

1. An enhanced knowledge of the form of contemporary changes in curriculum policy across national settings; 2. A new perspective on the way global and national movements and interests are interacting; 3. A new perspective on approaches to knowledge and power for schooling in the 21st century.