Problem statement and relevance

Societal, political, economic and cultural participation as well as personal life coping are considered overarching goals for general education schools (Fend, 2006, p. 54; Klieme et al., 2007, p. 66). The framework curricula for grammar schools in German-speaking countries, for instance, stipulate a comprehensive, balanced and advanced education as well as the development of a mature personality (e.g. EDK, 1994). In Switzerland, the final educational goals of grammar schools (“Gymnasium”) are summarised with the formulas “general university entrance qualification” (i.e., general ability to study) and “advanced societal maturity” (ASM) in literature (Eberle & Brüggenbrock, 2013, S. 10-13). However, the conception of ASM in the framework curriculum is not based on or linked to educational theory, and it is still largely unexplored (Eberle & Brüggenbrock, 2013; Frese-Germann, 2021). In other words: AMS appears to be a popular educational policy postulate and a vague educational theory construct. In this respect, the conceptional sharpening of ASM represents an urgent research desideratum that needs to be addressed theoretically and empirically.

To address this research gap, this paper focuses an institution that is central to translate this vague and diffuse conception of ASM into instructional design: the curricula. This is for three reasons: Firstly, the curriculum condenses societal expectations of a school subject regarding the imparting of knowledge and values (Künzli, 2009). The curriculum fulfils a political-normative legitimacy function in the political negotiation process, e.g. the definition and weighting of educational objectives and the subject canon (Künzli & Hopmann, 1998), as well as a programmatic-descriptive orientation function for processes of teaching and learning, e.g. content and requirements of the individual subjects (Criblez et al., 2006). Secondly, in a federal education system, the individual curricula sometimes differ considerably from one another (Bonati, 2017). This translation work is always characterised by social and cultural conditions. Thirdly, the social science subjects and thus their curricula are characterised by different special-didactic conceptions (for economic education, e.g. Engartner et al., 2021).

Research goal and research questions

In this paper, we aim to analyse the understanding of the conception of ‘advanced social maturity’ (ASM) in the curricula of the three social science subjects history, geography and economics & law in German-speaking Switzerland using qualitative methods. We answer two research questions: (RQ1) Which disciplinary and interdisciplinary concepts of ASM are emphasised in the curricula of the social science subjects? (RQ2) To what extent are the interdisciplinary concepts differentiated in the social science subjects?

Document corpus and sampling In Switzerland, there are 95 curricula from state-recognised grammar schools (Ackermann & Ruoss, 2023). We selected German-language and cantonal curricula, so that 16 of 21 German-speaking cantons are included in the document corpus. Using a combination of selective sampling (structural characteristics of cantons) and theoretical sampling (maximum variation in research object), we gradually draw documents from this corpus (Strübing, 2018). The structural characteristics used were educational region (Northwestern Switzerland, Eastern Switzerland, Central Switzerland), year of enactment (1995-2004, 2005-2014, from 2015) and baccalaureate rate (12-35 %). Due to theoretical saturation, the sampling for the document analysis and content analysis was finished after 6 cantonal curricula and 18 subject curricula. From each curriculum, we took the sections of the three social science subjects (history, geography, economics & law). Within each subject section, we used the subsections “general educational objectives” and “interdisciplinary competences”, as a reference to ASM was expected in these narrative-argumentative descriptions and justifications of the subject. We did not use the subsection “learning areas and disciplinary competences”, as ASM and “societal tasks” were not expected in these concise lists of disciplinary learning contents and/or learning objectives (Ruoss et al., 2023). Qualitative data analysis and category building We analysed the documents using qualitative content analysis and inductive category building. The first step was a summarising qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2022, pp. 68-89). For this purpose, we marked and paraphrased text segments in the documents, openly coded the paraphrases, so that codes for each subject were created. The second step involved a structuring qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2022, pp. 96-103). For this purpose, we spread out the codes of all subjects, thematically bundled them and formed categories from them: subcategories from the codes, main categories from the subcategories. Both steps of the analysis were carried out by consensus for the purpose of intersubjective comprehensibility. The codebook comprises 280 paraphrases, 95 codes, 21 subcategories and 3 main categories. Finally, we carried out frequency and contingency analyses (cross-tabulations) with the categories (Backhaus et al., 2018, pp. 337-352) to determine quantitative differences between the subjects.

Regarding RQ1, we identified three main categories across all subjects as concepts of ASM: “orientation in society and nature”, “participation in society and politics” and “thinking skills”. The first two main categories have an object-related character; the third category has a cognition-related character. Conversely, “orientation in society and nature” and “thinking skills” have a knowledge-oriented and descriptive character; “participation in society and politics” has an action-oriented and normative character. These concepts of ASM from the curricula represent educational ideals in the sense of an inherently political-normative function of the curricula. Regarding RQ2, we differentiated the subcategories of ASM on a “social arena map” (Clarke et al., 2022), whereas a “social world” represents a social science subject (history, geography, economics & law). Each “social world” contains categories of ASM that it either claims for itself (separate categories) or shares with other “social worlds” (common categories). Outside of the “social arena”, we positioned the subject didactics and the subject sciences that interact with grammar school education policy in complex ways. Using the “social arena map” as representation and interpretation, the importance of disciplinary and interdisciplinary categories of ASM can be recognised. On the one hand, the social science subjects have great potential to create learning opportunities with regard to ASM due to its rather interdisciplinary understanding. On the other hand, these diverse interdisciplinary concepts indicate a (hidden) dissent within and between the social science subjects with regard to the conception of education for ASM and the contribution of each individual subject. Therefore, the “social arena map” for disciplinary and interdisciplinary concepts of ASM as a result of this paper, can be seen as a heuristic for further theoretical elaboration and empirical exploration of ASM for grammar school students.

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