Through the capacity to collect and utilize comparative country data, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has become a "powerhouse” (Grek, 2014) that advocates for education policy reforms worldwide. Although governments remain central in policymaking they are constantly under pressure to interact, negotiate and mediate between a multitude of policy actors (Steiner-Khamsi, 2022). Nordic education policy research has explored to a great extent how national policymakers borrow or reject transnational policy elements in national education policymaking. However, there is a lack of research on how the OECD constructs transnational policies through a selection of country data and research. To contribute to the research on the OECD this paper explores how OECD orchestrates the process of shaping a shared imaginary of the future curriculum with particular attention to how values are issued. The following two research questions are guiding our study: 1. How is the issue of values modified and positioned through the reports from OECD’s Curriculum (re)design project 2. How is data from the Nordic countries used in OECD’s storytelling on values and attitudes? To explore the processes of transnational policymaking through the utilization of comparative country data and research this paper leans on discursive institutionalism (DI) as a theoretical framework for exploring the formation, communication, and translation of transnational policy ideas. Additionally, Actor-network theory (ANT) inspires the exploration of the modifying work of constructing the narrative of the future curriculum with a particular interest in how values are issued. The selected documents that we analyze are the thematic reports produced within OECD’s Curriculum (re)design project and especially the report on values and attitudes (OECD 2021). Our analysis shows that values are issued in different ways throughout the documents. Hence, documents are texts that modify and transform issues rather than simply describe them. Furthermore, borrowing the concept of contexting by Asdal and Moser (2012), we argue that the report is contexting values in different ways within a document and between documents. Moreover, the presence of the Nordic countries varies in the reports. This is partly due to how the countries decide to participate. OECD orchestrating of the future curriculum is depended on how the individual country engages itself in policy issues and initiatives. This means that the effort and engagement must be related to “what’s in it for us”. This also goes for the issuing of values.

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