In many school curricula in Europes' public schools, European competency is perceived as a cross-sectional task (see Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, 2020; “Curriculum Reform in Europe: The Impact of Learning Outcomes” 2012), but subjects outside of the social sciences struggle to fulfill these requirements. The German government organization "Kultusministerkonferenz" (KMK) has been working on defining European competence since the 1970s. In a recent publication (2020) they define a set of competences at the core of European education. The competences in summary are 1) geopolitical knowledge of Europe 2) intercultural competence 3) participatory competence 4) multilingual competence. Furthermore, the quote stresses the importance of building an individual European identity for every student, which co-exists with other regional modes of belonging like national, regional and local ones. Then again, Curriculum Studies (see for reference Pinar et Al., 2004, 2008; Varbelow, 2012) is rarely represented as a discipline in its own rights with research institutes in Europe (see for reference Hopmann & Riquarts 2012; Pinar, 2011). A short look at vastly different understandings of curriculum within curricular documents points towards these shortcomings.
The curricula here included fall into one of different types, which were encountered during the sampling. The classifcation here relies on a rationale of prioritization, to determine which documents were most closely related to the educational reality of the teachers and students, to classroom practice. (see Method section) The language of curricular documents vastly differs based on the outlet and the stake holder/s. Curricular documents, depdending on definitions, might include a wider or narrower range of genres of mediated production. I encounter in my research for curricular texts fall in genres defined as curriculum in a wider sense. The assembly of all curricular documents lead to a textual corpus, which I then divided into two subsamples: one being a corpus composed of all curricular documents across subjects of one area, the other being a corpus composed of the same subject across all areas. This approach will allow me to respond to the research question in two ways. One produces insight into the regional differences in terms of European education, the other produces insight into differences across subjects in that matter.
A similar definitory ambiguitiy persists with the definition of competence. For reason of practicability, I am here looking at competences which enable students to navigate the 5 political systems of the Greater Region and through the results of the analysis, I will also aim to further contribute substance to the working definitions by the KMK above and to the varying discourses of competence in classroom practice. The border region will be referenced here as Greater Region. The definition of Greater Region is marked on one hand by the geographical inclusion of Rhineland-Palantine, Wallonia in Southern Belgium, Luxembourg, the Saarland, and the French region of Grande-Est, on the other by efforts of cross-border cooperation (see Kooperationsraum-Großregion, n.d.). I am aiming to respond to the following: What (unused) potential for the inclusion of European competency is embedded within middle school curricula across different subjects in a cross-border metropolitan area? Which methodology can reveal these competencies across different curriculum designs? The responses to these questions and the analyses here provided will contribute, besides the implications for school development and didactics for teaching Europe, a pilot study to discourses of comparative curricular analysis (see Voogt & Roblin, 2012; Yates, 2016; Wei & Ou, 2019).

Using methods of qualitative meta-synthesis (Bennett et al., 2017; Jones, 2004; Baumeister 2003) I am analyzing large bodies of text authored and published by the curricular authorities of 5 school districts from the French, Luxembourgish, German, and Belgian regions of the Greater Region. The qualitative meta-synthesis is aided by corpus linguistic procedures to determine not just themes across texts but also their statistical importance (keyness). (see Jakubíček et. Al, 2015; Baker & LeTendre, 2014). All texts chosen (curricula) are either qualitative in nature or use a wide range of mixed methods to qualitative methods. For that reason, I here focus completely on what Leamy et al. (2011) outlined as a narrative synthesis. The curricular sample in textual form stems from middle school subjects, which for one exist in a similar form across all school districts in the greater region, for second it is checked for selective bias by including solely public-school curricula of all levels of academic performance from grades 7-8. Lastly, the sample manages to include ‘traditional’ candidates in a search for European competency i.e., social sciences, history, but it equally manages to include STEM subjects. Sampling: For purposes of representation and validity, I choose subjects which are shared across all regions. The school types might significantly differ in the type of funding they receive, as well as in the outlook for graduates in their respective systems (which might be another research altogether). I encounter several types of curricula during my sampling process. I create a rationale of prioritization, to determine which documents were most closely related to the educational reality of the teachers and students. I categorize them as following: 1. Decrees; 2. Quasi-scientific literature; 3. Instruction manuals. Curricular documents, depending on definitions, might include a wider or narrower range of genres of mediated production. The texts I encounter in my research for curricular texts fall in genres defined as curriculum in a wider sense. (for reference see: Varbelow, 2012; Bhuttah et. Al., 2019; Brömssen & Nixon, 2021) The assembly of all curricular documents lead to a textual corpus, which I then divided into subsamples: one being a corpus composed of all curricular documents across subjects of one area, the other being a corpus composed of the same subject across all areas.

The employed method, and the wider definitions of curriculum allowed for comparison across genres of text, enabling a comparative analysis of those different genres of documents across 3 languages. Furthermore, the competence model yielded nearly exclusively results for the documents of vague character, which had no link to practical classroom applications. The discussion of that fact reveals a lack of pedagogical support or didactic refinement when teaching for Europe is concerned. Exceptions were: curricular documents of middle schools in Luxembourg yielded exceptions here, as they had all 4 competences represented across all genres of curriculum. The fact that some subjects did not have traditional instruction manuals, but instead referred directly to broader literature explains some of these distinctions and needs to be further discussed. Curricular documents in the sample from the state of Rhineland-Palantine consisted nearly exclusively of quasi scientific literature published by the respective educational stakeholder (Ministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Weiterbildung und Kultur). A true distinction between subjects within a defined group was difficult and the results need to be discussed in light of that bias.In comparison across regions, there was the exception of Luxembourg, where multilingual competency (4) and intercultural competence (3) were represented significantly (keyness value > 1) across all subject groups. Potential for European education is found throughout all subjects, in all areas of the Greater Region, but the implementation into classroom practice, therefore the actual presence of European education, shows to be lacking. The matrices based on each competence across subjects and across school and regional districts continue to provide material for discussion and serve to flesh out and add to the competency model from KMK from the theoretical framework. A proper overview will be given for the presentation, which allows for further discussion by the audience.

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