The modern globalized educational context constantly presents challenges and imperatives, which take place simultaneously, locally and internationally, "imposing" new tasks and roles on teachers (Hargreaves, 2000 ∙ Swann et al., 2010 ∙ Evans, 2011). These new professional requirements create new conditions for the teaching profession which produce different teacher subjectivities. This occurs in numerous sites, however a key one is professional development, through which teachers are expected to engage in a continuous effort to acquire additional knowledge and skills in new fields or forms of education that appear in global agendas, leading them to re-evaluate and modify their practices, including the national or school curriculum enacted in schools (e.g. Draper et al., 1997˙ Day, 2002 ˙ Geijsel & Meijers,  2005 in Parmigiani et al., 2023). At the same time, teachers’ professional subjectivity evolves through constant connections between their personal and professional experiences (Parmigiani et al., 2023).

One such supra-national policy entangled with schooling has been the European Program "Erasmus," described by the Commission as a program that contributes to the professional development (PD) of teachers through experiences of participation in projects with European partners (2023). In this study “Erasmus” is explored as a case of an educational policy produced at the supra-site of the EU that is recontextualized to the macro-site of the education system in Cyprus, acquiring specific meanings in the process, while at the same time “encouraging” teachers to acquire PD experiences of a specific European character as professionals. I argue that, in turn, this produced new meanings of curriculum as it is being enacted in their schools and classrooms within and beyond their national settings. Drawing on Priestley et al. (2021), curriculum making is understood as a social practice that occurs in supra-, micro- and nano- sites i.e. in international, school and classroom settings respectively.

Therefore, the paper investigates through teacher life histories how the curriculum, as intention and as enactment, changes due to/through both students’ and teachers’ participation in "Erasmus" projects. Specifically, the experiences, actions, practices, program themes, activities, and collaborations Greek-cypriot primary school teachers narrate as having developed for and with their students, colleagues and partners in their life histories are investigated, exploring how the supra-national site is recontextualized at the micro and nano-sites of their schools and classrooms.

According to Pinar (2004, in Tsafos, 2021), the "curriculum" in its traditional form refers to a predetermined trajectory, the same “subject-matter” for all, a standardized procedure, without acknowledgement of its political, institutional, and biographical assumptions. However, by theorising curriculum as a biographical text through its verb formulation "currere", Pinar and colleagues re-conceptualised it as an active process of all educational/formative experiences throughout life as a complex, dynamic, ongoing process of "conversation" and dialogue inside and beyond schools, emerging in formal both and informal contexts (Doll, 1993∙ Tsafos, 2021) . To conclude, it is not considered merely as an institutional text that includes instructions and procedures to be strictly implemented, but rather as a process, a social practice made through the interactions and actions of the teachers and students between them and other texts and materials in schools and classrooms: how was Erasmus involved in these, is the key question this paper aims to address.

The research adopted a biographical approach and developed the life histories of 8 primary school teachers. In this study teachers were asked to narrate their experiences of the Erasmus program and more specifically the nature of curriculum making it entailed in their schools and classrooms. Teacher life histories, their narrations, the composition of the narrative episodes, and the analysis carried out by the researcher, depending on the context studied can be a tool for investigating the educational experience from within, from the perspective of those involved in the process (Smith, 2013 ˙ Tsafos, 2021). While at the same time of connecting the social construction of this experience with the wider social context (Goodson, 2019). Eight teachers who had multiple experiences of Erasmus project participation as teachers were selected through purposive convenience sampling. Their participation was voluntary, and their informed consent was secured with the assurance of anonymity and confidentiality, following the relevant national bioethics authority procedures. Data collection involved two biographical narrative interviews with each teacher based on semi-structured interview protocols between November 2021–April 2022. During these interviews, teachers narrated their lives before focusing on Erasmus to investigate the reasons they sought these experiences, to narrate them in detail and to describe the nature of curriculum making that emerged for students and other teachers during their participation. The transcribed texts of both interviews were sent to the teachers to make changes or additions to their narratives, since member-checking enhances the trustworthiness of the results (Creswell & Miller, 2000). After participants checked, approved, and returned the data, data analysis followed. A combination of analysis methods was used to analyze the data, specifically thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) and content analysis (Franzosi, 2004). First, the transcripts of the two interviews were read several times to develop familiarity with the data and to conduct an initial coding of teachers’ narrations. Next, salient patterns across the collected data were determined, and initial themes were generated, including those pertaining to curriculum making, before finalization of the coding in Atlas.ti. Finally, the themes and codes were reviewed with sample quotations and interpretations, allowing comparisons between the teachers' narratives for similarities and differences between them with regards to the identified themes and codes. In this paper the emphasis codes were ‘Erasmus and the official curriculum’ and ‘Erasmus and curriculum making in classrooms and schools’ that were used to analyze the data and draw conclusions.

The teachers' narratives point to how curriculum was made through participation in ‘Erasmus’ projects. Teachers narrated a number of their own and their students’ experiences which pointed to how the program became a condition for the enriching of the existing official curriculum, while at the same time a condition of ‘new’ curriculum making which would not have otherwise occur. Both these instantiations of curriculum making are viewed as fueling the making of an ‘erasmian curriculum’. A strong pattern in teachers’ narrations was that during these projects they developed contacts/relationships/school policies/curriculum materials, knowledge/skills, which each adopted/applied/modified for their own micro- and nano-sites. Firstly, the ‘erasmian curriculum’ was narrated as curriculum content being made mostly in the subject-areas of Greek Language, Art-Music, Sciences, Life-Education, History-Geography and Physical Education. Secondly, the narrated ‘erasmian curriculum’ included a range of interdisciplinary, thematic emphases beyond the official curriculum that appeared frequently, either singularly or in combination: culture, ecology-environment, technology, sports. The teachers described how they enriched the official curriculum through the actions of each Erasmus project by connecting these emphases with multiple existing subject-areas. Thirdly, teachers narrated Erasmus as providing conditions for changing the pedagogy by implementing examples of good practices used by their European partners (e.g. student evaluation, classroom organization-management, cooperation, integration of technologies); the latter was particularly salient in their narrations, which stressed the greater use of digital tools, such as tablets and digital books. These projects demanded alternative ways of working with students from other countries (e.g. distance or live attendance of lessons by partner-teachers, online connection with students from partner-schools, exchange of opinions). Moreover, teachers narrated their Erasmus activities as cultivating their students’ open-mindedness, cultural horizons, communication and collaboration skills and intercultural awareness. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this emerging ‘erasmian curriculum’ complemented, informed, or challenged the official curriculum.

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