In most countries, schools are entrusted with the task of shaping the citizens of the future. Naturally, this makes schools a social institution where a lot of hope and many expectations about the future come together. Schools should ensure that students have the opportunity to enter society as responsible citizens, who are able to take a stand on different political alternatives, evaluate different views and make well-balanced decisions for the collective good (OECD, 2018; UNESCO, 2016). The school's task is, in other words, not only to ensure that the students learn a subject-specific knowledge material, but also to help the students internalize the norms required to be able to act as responsible citizens (Biesta, 2010). The national curriculum is one of the state's most important governance tools for this purpose (Goodlad, 1979; Van den Akker, 2004). Amongst the many different curricular traditions, the national curriculum may be seen as school’s “social contract”, as it puts into words what a student is expected to be able to do after finishing school (Westrheim & Tolo, 2014). Curriculum analysis can make visible both conscious and unconscious assumptions that form the basis for school professionals' local work in selecting and organizing the content of teaching (Karseth et al., 2020; Van den Akker, 2004).

The focus of this presentation is on one of the school's most central tasks in the development of society: to counteract racism. This task is central in education across the globe- amongst other reasons- because it is central to society, as has recently been illustrated by the worldwide protest under the Black Lives Matter-banner that took off after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. National curricula deal with racism in different ways and degrees, and investigating how this is done in different countries is important. Here, I focus on the Norwegian context, where the national curriculum has recently been renewed, and racism has entered the agenda in new ways. Through previous research, we know that Norwegian teachers experience that racism is complicated to teach and that they often feel insecurity in their task of teaching racism (Midtbøen & Lidén, 2015; Osler & Lindquist, 2018; Svendsen, 2014). This is serious, as it can have major consequences for the school's opportunities to fulfill its task of counteracting racism. Contrary to the picture of tolerance and inclusion that most Western countries put forth (Bonilla-Silva, 2002; Harlap & Riese, 2021; Miller, 2020; Stevens et al., 2019), a vast quantity of educational research on racism shows that racism continues to be a destructive force with vast consequences in schools as in societies around the world. Racialized minorities continuously suffer indignities, marginalization, prejudice, exclusion and underestimation in schools (Leonardo & Grubb, 2018; Lundberg, 2021; Miller, 2020). National curriculum, as a guiding tool for schools, must be studied in this context.

The purpose of this presentation is to develop knowledge about which understandings of racism are expressed in the new Norwegian curricula, as well as which potential contradictions for these different understandings are possible to identify.

The empirical contribution of this presentation is knowledge about the expressions of racism-counteraction in the Norwegian curricula. Theoretically, I use input from curriculum theory (Goodlad, 1979; Karseth et al., 2020) and concept analysis to identify ways in which the curriculum propose counteracting racism. As analytical tools, I use four major educational approaches to counteracting racism: Norm-critical, intercultural, democratic, and relational approach (Arneback & Jämte, 2021).

The presentation is based on findings from a qualitative content analysis of parts of the Norwegian national curriculum (LK20): The Core curriculum, which states the values and principles for primary and secondary education, and the curriculum for Norwegian, social sciences and Christianity, Religion, Philosopshy and Ethics (KRLE) for primary and lower secondary education. These parts of the curricula are analyzed because they are a part om the compulsory education in Norway, they apply to all students. The two latter have been found specifically relevant to understanding how the curriculum deals with issues of racism in previous research (Røthing, 2015), and the first is the largest subject (in hours) in primary and lower secondary education, and deals with many relevant topics such as empathy and critical thinking. The content analysis (Bratberg, 2017) was conducted as a concept analysis, focusing on racism as a concept. Here, it is crucial to acknowledge that a concept is not restricted to the use of the specific word (“racism” is only mentioned once in the analyzed material). Racism is here recognized as a complex phenomenon (Lentin, 2008). As previous research has shown, the word “racism” is often avoided in policy documents and public discourse (Goldberg, 2015; Harlap & Riese, 2021), and to trace it in the curriculum I have chosen to use pre-defined categories as analythical tools. Specifically, I have looked for expressions of norm-critical, intercultural, democratic, and relational approaches to racism in the curriculum through a coding scheme developed from previous research (specifically from empirically based representations of these dicourses/approaches found by Arneback and Jämte (2021)). The analysis was done in MAXQDA software.

The study finds that the new Norwegian curriculum holds ample opportunities for schools to counteract racism through education from both norm-critical, intercultural, democratic, and relational approaches However, racism is mostly addressed on an individual level in LK20, giving less room for structural understandings. In my analysis, I draw on research on colorblind ideology (Bonilla-Silva, 2002; Leonardo & Grubb, 2018) to put these findings into perspective. There are noteworthy inconsistencies within the curriculums understanding of racism counteraction. For instance, freedom of religion and equal worth is portrayed as important in parts of the curriculum, in line with an intercultural approach to countering racism, yet Christianity is upheld as a foundation of education in others- in contrast to the fundamental idea of equal worth. The curriculum is intentioned for interpretation at the local school level, in professional communities and by individual educators. This study suggest that it is crucial in this process that racism is put into focus. If not, racism may not come into focus at all, as the LK20 curriculum is not specific in its mentioning of racism or how to counteract it. Even though there are many possibilities of including counteraction of racism in education through the new curriculum, it requires attention and proficiency in the interpretation process. For curriculum research in other countries, this study offers an example of how racism may be traced in curriculum. For other researchers interested in racism and education, the study may be valuable as a contribution to the ongoing discussion of colorblind ideology or specific educational approaches to racism.

Arneback, E., & Jämte, J. (2021). How to counteract racism in education–a typology of teachers’ anti-racist actions. Race Ethnicity and Education, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2021.1890566 Goldberg, D. T. (2015). Are we all postracial yet? John Wiley & Sons. Goodlad, J. I. (1979). Curriculum Inquiry. The Study of Curriculum Practice. McGraw-Hill. Lentin, A. (2008). Europe and the Silence about Race. European Journal of Social Theory, 11(4), 487-503. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431008097008 Leonardo, Z., & Grubb, W. N. (2018). Education and racism: A primer on issues and dilemmas. Routledge.