Modern curriculum making can be perceived as a social practice undertaken in different sites across the education system (Priestley et al., 2021). Research has shown that teachers are defined as key actors in education reform, and they are expected to participate in curriculum work and to act as agents of change (Priestley et al., 2012). Thus, participatory approaches to macro curriculum making and involvement of teachers in reform work is becoming increasingly common internationally (Almeida & Viana, 2023; Soini et al., 2021). Yet, a well-known issue in participatory approaches is that they can give the illusion of symmetrical relationships. The process can create the appearance of equal influence among the participating actors, when the reality is that government institutions have more power, which gives them more influence over the outcome (Vaillancourt, 2009). Thus, such processes can conceal hierarchies and power structures that are inherent in them. The current study focuses on a central part of macro curriculum making, namely government-appointed curriculum committees consisting of teachers and subject experts who work alongside government officials in the development of a new curriculum. The article zooms in on a recent curriculum making process in Norway. In 2020, Norway introduced a new national curriculum, called the Knowledge Promotion Reform 2020 (LK20), where co-construction and partnerships with the education sector were important policy elements of the development process. From the literature, we know that national curriculum development processes are highly governed and controlled by central authorities (Humes, 2022; Levin, 2008; Westbury et al., 2016), and teachers’ role in such processes is not always clear. We also know that even when teachers are involved in macro curriculum making, they do not necessarily have any significant influence over the outcome of the process (Finnanger & Prøitz, forthcoming; Theodorou et al., 2017). Thus, the aim of the study is to investigate how documents present the teachers’ mandate, and to explore how these findings resonate with the teachers’ understanding of the mandate and their perceived contribution to the final national curriculum. The research questions that have guided the investigation are:

How is teachers’ mandate as national curriculum makers described in documents? How does this resonate with teachers’ understanding of the mandate and their perception of contribution to the final national curriculum?

Theoretically, the study is guided by the understanding that curriculum making is a social practice. Modern curriculum theorists argue that curriculum making is a complex, interactive, non-linear, social practice that occurs and flows across various contexts (Alvunger et al., 2021; Priestley et al., 2021). It is a dynamic and transactional process of interpretation, mediation, negotiation, and translation, involving different actors, activities and sites across the education system (Alvunger et al., 2021). Central to this heuristic is that curriculum making happens in sites, and that it is the type of activity and not the involved actors, that determines the site. This way of conceptualizing curriculum making infers that actors can move between sites. The process is shaped by the beliefs, values, and professional knowledge of the involved actors, as well as by their room to manoeuvre and the interplay between actors, contested spaces, contextual factors, and power relations (Alvunger et al., 2021).

The study relies on two types of data – documents and qualitative interviews. First, a selection of documents was sampled and used to gain a broad understanding of the curriculum making process (Bowen, 2009). It was important that the documents could provide information relevant for the aim of the study and the research question, and the sampling can thus be considered purposeful. The documents included policy documents, the strategy for the LK20 reform, the contract for the curriculum committee members, and communication between the Ministry of Education and the Directorate for Education and Training. As a second source of data, interviews were conducted with six teachers who participated in three different curriculum committees within the field of English as a foreign language, and one interview with a subject supervisor from the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training who participated in and oversaw the process of developing the LK20 curriculum. The recruitment of informants was done purposefully based on who and what could provide the most suitable data for the research question and scope of the study. The analysis of the documents and interview transcripts was conducted using a combination of deductive and inductive approaches. All material was first coded deductively using the two broad categories mandate and contribution. Then the categorized parts were coded inductively. Through the inductive analysis, the aim was to construct patterns of similarities, while also considering parts that stood out or were surprising (Saldana, 2011).

Preliminary results shows that the curriculum committees’ mandate is vague. None of the studied documents state precisely what the committees’ mandate is. A clear pattern is vagueness regarding whether the curriculum committees’ documents would be the final macro curriculum or whether changes would be done after the documents were submitted to the Directorate for Education and Training. This finding is mirrored in the interviews, where the teachers show diverging understandings of their mandate and about the status of their final documents. Another pattern in the documents is that teachers were expected to contribute with their professional experiences and practical knowledge from classrooms in the national curriculum making process. However, how those practical experiences should be materialized in the curriculum making process or in the final curriculum is not specified. When talking about their contribution, the teachers focus on practical aspects of the curriculum and particularly how the curriculum can be suited to different student groups. Finally, the analysis of interviews revealed that the teachers – though involved in most of the curriculum making process – were excluded from the final decision-making process, and some of the teachers reacted strongly to changes that were made to their curriculum documents by central authorities after the committees submitted their final recommendations.

Almeida, S. d., & Viana, J. (2023). Teachers as curriculum designers: What knowledge is needed? The Curriculum Journal, 34(3), 357-374. https://doi.org/10.1002/curj.199 Alvunger, D., Soini, T., Philippou, S., & Priestley, M. (2021). Conclusions: Patterns and trends in curriculum making in Europe. In M. Priestley, D. Alvunger, S. Philippou, & T. Soini (Eds.), Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice Within and Across Diverse Contexts (pp. 273-293). Emerald Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/ https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83867-735-020211013 Bowen, G. A. (2009). Document Analysis as a Qualitative Research Method. Qualitative Research Journal, 9(2), 27-40. https://doi.org/10.3316/QRJ0902027 Finnanger, T. S., & Prøitz, T. S. (forthcoming). Teachers as national curriculum makers: Does involvement equal influence? Humes, W. (2022). THE ‘IRON CAGE’ OF EDUCATIONAL BUREAUCRACY. British Journal of Educational Studies, 70(2), 235-253. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2021.1899129 Levin, B. (2008). Curriculum Policy and the Politics of What Should be Learned in Schools. In F. M. Connelly, M. F. He, & J. Phillon (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of curriculum and instruction (pp. 7-24). SAGE. Priestley, M., Edwards, R., Priestley, A., & Miller, K. (2012). Teacher Agency in Curriculum Making: Agents of Change and Spaces for Maneouvre. Curriculum Inquiry, 42(2), 191-214. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-873X.2012.00588.x Priestley, M., Philippou, S., Alvunger, D., & Soini, T. (2021). Curriculum Making: a conceptual framework. In Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice Within and Across Diverse Contexts. Emerald Publishing Limited. Saldana, J. (2011). Fundamentals of qualitative research. Oxford university press. Soini, T., Pyhältö, K., & Pietarinen, J. (2021). Shared Sense-Making as Key for Large Scale Curriculum Reform in Finland. In M. Priestley, D. Alvunger, S. Philippou, & T. Soini (Eds.), Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice within and Across Diverse Contexts (pp. 247-272). Emerald Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83867-735-020211012 Theodorou, E., Philippou, S., & Kontovourki, S. (2017). Caught between worlds of expertise: Elementary teachers amidst official curriculum development processes in Cyprus. Curriculum Inquiry, 47(2), 217-240. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2017.1283591 Vaillancourt, Y. (2009). SOCIAL ECONOMY IN THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF PUBLIC POLICY. Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 80(2), 275-313. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8292.2009.00387.x Westbury, I., Aspfors, J., Fries, A.-V., Hansén, S.-E., Ohlhaver, F., Rosenmund, M., & Sivesind, K. (2016). Organizing curriculum change: an introduction. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 48(6), 729-743. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2016.1186736