Research questions, objectives and theoretical framework

The transnational turn from content-oriented to competence-oriented curriculum making may have altered understandings of how to facilitate Bildung in public education (Hilt & Riese, 2021). In 2020, a comprehensive reform of the National Curriculum for Norway (Læreplanverket) was carried out intending to clarify, among other things, the connection between the Bildung-promoting task (danningsoppdrag) of public education and classroom teaching (Meld. St. 28 (2015-2016)). In the meantime, policymakers in Norway have argued for an increased presence of philosophy teaching in the national curriculum based on the idea that it facilitates Bildung (danning) (St.meld. nr. 30 (2003-2004); Meld.St. nr. 25 (2016-2017)).

This poster presentation is about the description of philosophy teaching and Bildung in the National Curriculum for Norway. How is the concept of Bildung and the teaching of philosophy discursively represented in the National Curriculum for Norway and what are their points of convergence?

Philosophy teaching can be placed on a continuum between two extremes, where one side stands for a ‘content-based’ and the other for a ‘method-based’ definition of philosophy (Bialystok, 2017). The content-based definition corresponds to what Godlovitch (2000) labels the “Proper Content view”. According to this view, philosophy is a field of knowledge with its own historical and thematic content (ontology, epistemology, antiquity, etc.). Meanwhile, the method-based definition corresponds to the “No Content view”, where philosophy is interpreted as a transdisciplinary modus operandi, useful for potentially any type of inquiry. Because these extremes either depict the content or the method as that which characterises philosophy as such, to favour the content-based definition (e.g., Bialystok, 2017; Biesta, 2011; Murris, 2016) or the method-based definition (e.g., Vansieleghem, 2013; Kienstra, Karskens & Imants, 2014) also means to favour different ways of incorporating philosophy in classroom teaching (Bialystok, 2017). Prior to the 2020 reform, both the Proper and No Content view of philosophy were present in pre-college teaching in the National Curriculum for Norway (see e.g., the national subject curriculum of ‘History and Philosophy’, ‘Religion and Ethics’ and ‘Knowledge of Christianity, Religion, Philosophies of life and Ethics’). Parts of the curriculum encouraged the use of philosophical questions, conversations, and ‘way of thinking’ in the teaching of school subjects, thus advocating philosophy teaching as a transdisciplinary method of inquiry. Other parts, however, also mentioned philosophers, philosophical traditions and texts, thus suggesting that philosophy has a content of its own to be taught. In other words, the role of the didactics of philosophy in Norway was multifaceted and prone to change.

The objective of analysing the relation between the teaching of philosophy and Bildung in the current National Curriculum for Norway is therefore threefold: to clarify what the representation of Bildung-promoting teaching in competence-oriented curriculum making is, what the National Curriculum for Norway is directing the didactics of philosophy towards and whether it reflects or stands as an alternative to transnational trends in education.

The study’s theoretical framework is based on a poststructural perspective on policy analysis known as “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016). It presumes that unquestioned knowledge(s) (included about the nature of things, beings and the human subject) are generated in repeated heterogenous social practices and relations (Bacchi, 2016, p.109). ‘Knowledge’ is not truth, but that which is accepted as truth, thus being indissociable from ‘discourses’ understood as socially produced forms of knowledge that set limits to how we may understand the world (Bacchi, 2016, p.35). Policies can therefore be said to rely on unexamined assumptions to produce and represent the “problems” that they propose to solve.

For this paper, I will combine Bacchi and Goodwin’s (2016) WPR-approach to policy analysis with a deductive oriented thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022). First, I will employ WPR to analyse the concept of Bildung in Norwegian education policy. To clarify how Bildung is represented in the Norwegian National Curriculum, I will start by elucidating the “problem” to be solved by education policy and policy proposals reinforcing the 2020 curriculum reform in Norway. Then, I will investigate how Bildung is constituted as a part of the proposed solution to the “problem”. Considered that representations of Bildung presume a link between the inner cultivation of the individual and the development of better societies (Horlacher, 2017), I will analyse the concept of Bildung in Norwegian education policy through the lens of Bacchi and Goodwin's (2016) discursive categories ‘subject’ and ‘place’. While WPR is not concerned with the analysis of patterns of speech, rhetoric and communication, policy texts may be used as levers “to open up reflections on the forms of governing instituted through a particular way of constituting a “problem”” (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016, p.18). For this article, I will use the white papers St. Meld. 30 (2003-2004), Meld. St. 28 (2015-2016) and the core curriculum of the National Curriculum for Norway as a starting point for the analysis. Meld. St. 28 (2015-2016) presents the rationale behind the 2020 national curriculum reform in Norway, which is described in the same document both as a development and renewal of the 2006 reform. The latter was introduced by the white paper St. Meld. 30 (2003-2004) and marked the shift from a content-oriented to a competence-oriented approach to curriculum making (Hilt & Riese, 2021). The two white papers are therefore important to identify the “problem” that a competence-oriented comprehension of Bildung addresses and, subsequently, what makes the given comprehension unique. Finally, the national core curriculum describes the values and principles for primary and secondary education in Norway, included what Bildung comprises and its place in schooling. Based on the discursive representation of Bildung revealed by the WPR-approach, I will then conduct a deductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022) of the national school subject curriculum of ‘History and Philosophy’, ‘Religion and Ethics’ and ‘Knowledge of Christianity, Religion, Philosophies of life and Ethics’. The analysis will focus on the points of convergence between descriptions of Bildung and the teaching of philosophy.

While the study is in its preliminary stages, the dataset suggests that the National Curriculum for Norway favours a representation of Bildung as a capacity for problem-solving. This is connected to the description of a society in permanent change that must adapt to the challenges of today as much as to the unpredictable challenges of the future. A consequence appears to be that education must prioritise the development of long-lasting skills and adapt the content of teaching to it. Accordingly, it would seem like representations Bildung-promoting teaching in philosophy tends towards an understanding of philosophy as a transdisciplinary method of inquiry and less so on philosophy as a field of knowledge. If so, the written curriculum’s use of the concept of Bildung may be too narrow, as it does not grant teachers sufficient autonomy to evaluate how Bildung can be put into practice in classroom teaching (Bergheim, 2023).

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