This double symposium focuses and theorises on the concept of ‘curriculum making’ by means of bringing together five regions (Wales, Sweden, Czech Republic, Ireland, the Netherlands) as cases from across Europe that are in the midst of or launching curriculum reform. More particularly, the symposium will explore European educational policy through the emergence of new forms of national curriculum policy formation, explicitly framed to address wider social and economic issues, which seem to have been prevalent since the turn of the millennium in order to discuss:

a) curriculum policy shaped by particular global and/or international institutions or bodies with diverse agendas/priorities etc. and reflected in official national curriculum texts (e.g. in aims and purposes, form/structure, and content),

and,

b) the processes of curriculum-making-as-official-text within each of the national cases/contexts, especially in terms of which and how different pressure groups/stakeholders have been involved in its development and support.

Drawing upon this curricular landscape as multilayered amidst reform, the double symposium aims at bringing in some of the convergences which are emerging from the national cases represented in the panel (e.g. in terms of the timing and directions of these curriculum reforms) as well as problematizing some of the surface similarity, speaking to the need of understanding ‘curriculum making’ as a localised process yet simultaneously open/porous to international trends.

Part 1 of the symposium will consist of contributions on the case of Wales, Sweden and the Czech Republic, followed by first comments of the discussant. Part 2 will consist of the cases of Ireland and the Netherlands, again followed by a contribution of the discussant and room for a broader discussion with the audience.

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