Explore is the verb that is used most often in the new Norwegian national curriculum (LK20) to describe the competences the students must develop. Why has exploration received such an important position in LK 20, and what is exploration intended to do, or add to education in general? In the introductory chapter of the curriculum (LK20) it is stated that the pupils should have ample opportunities to develop their desire to explore. It is emphasized that the ability to explore is important for deep learning and that the school must both respect and cultivate different ways of exploring (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2017, p. 13). In its definition of the verb "to explore" (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2018, p. 16) the Ministry of Education and Science includes several other verbs to define what is involved in exploring. The definition also covers different working methods and settings for work processes and learning. Some places in the plan, it is indicated that the pupils should use their ability to explore, in other places that they should develop a desire to explore.
In this paper I use John Goodlad's (Goodlad, 1979) three phenomenon areas for curriculum analysis: The substantial, the socio-political and the technically professional as a framework. The theory was developed to analyze curriculum work, but I use it to analyze a single concept in the curriculum. Based on this framework, I limit my investigation to the first two phenomena. Nevertheless, I draw in elements from the third level to discuss the consequences of what emerges for teaching on an operationalized level.

Nevertheless, I draw in elements from the third level to discuss the consequences of what emerges in the analyzes for learning and teaching on an operationalized level. I pose the following research questions:

What does exploration include?

Why has exploration been given such an important part in the curriculum (LK20)?

The term curriculum is used in a variety of ways depending on the didactic traditions of a country. Internationally, there are two basic models that dominate: The Anglo-Saxon curriculum tradition and the continental European tradition of didactics and/or curriculum (Hopmann, 2015). Curriculum is a broad term and can refer to the entire teaching plan for an educational system and include both content and pedagogical methods. It is also used more specifically describing a detailed plan – a document for central management. Discussions about the introduction of new curricula, on the other hand, actualize other functions that curricula can have, than the more formal functions. Documents are never neutral. "The bureaucracy's documents may appear neutral and objective, but this is also an effect of the work of writing texts in a certain way. This means that the bureaucracy's documents are always situated - they come from somewhere and are designed in certain ways" (Asdal and Reinertsen, 2020, p. 68). I see the documents as "artifacts of modern knowledge" – things in which knowledge becomes attached. The fact that things and social phenomena are moved into document form means that they become documented and textualized phenomena, and through these movements, they are made the subject of politics. Documents are thus both text and things – they are material, in a dual way (Asdal & Reinertsen, 2020, pp. 19-20). In this paper, I discuss some of the "complicated conversations" (Pinar, 2004) that are actualized when examining what is involved in the term exploring and what is written in the curriculum about why students should explore.

In this investigation, I did a practice-oriented document analysis (Asdal & Reinertsen, 2020). I looked at the curriculum documents as part of a larger landscape where I went deep into the document itself and did a close reading of what it says about exploration. In the analysis, I see the curriculum (LK20) as a political and normative text that is built into a social and professional opinion production (Andreassen, 2016). In this way, I see the documents not only as a source for a variety of political aims, but that they also are central from a purely linguistic point of view. Asdal and Reinertsen point out that context is not something that just "lies there" passively, around the text or the case. They suggest the expression "contexting" to convey that it is a question of active processes. It involves turning the word context into a verb "to context", or "contexting" (Asdal & Reinertsen, 2020, pp. 117-118). I mainly focus on the new national curriculum, LK20 (Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2020), but I "contextualize" it with other documents that have had significance for the development of the plan (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2016; Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2018; Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2019) and evaluations and articles that critically analyzes the plan (Karseth et al, 2020; Borgen & Engelsrud, 2020).

My analysis and close reading of the national curriculum (LK20) shows that there is not just one context, but that several contexts are at play in the same text - and which establishes competing case information within the same text. When the Ministry of Knowledge defines the verb, they came up with a multifaceted description that draws in several other verbs to describe what is involved in exploring. The plan is based on an ideological view that the pupils have a built-in urge to explore, at the same time it is suggested that the pupils must be trained in exploring to be able to develop this urge to explore. Exploration is described in some places as a method, in other places as a competence, in some places as a value and in other places as a principle. The verb 'explore', which is supposed to refer to an action, is also often turned into the noun. The noun exploration is also written as an object, with the emphasis on 'exploring'. LK20 bears the stamp of pluralistic compromise formulations that steer in different directions and where important value conflicts are hidden. It may look like the plan is the result of negotiations and compromise and that what lies in exploration, and why the students should explore, is unclear. Exploring repeats itself in several competence objectives, but what knowledge is considered significant when it comes to exploration does not appear in the plan. Most of the competence targets are also procedural, and therefore refer to a small degree of professional content. This creates a space for professional judgement, where it is the teachers who must define which content elements should be included in the teaching and where the guidelines for how the teacher can facilitate exploratory teaching are both broad and vague.

Andreassen, S.-E. (2016). Forstår vi læreplanen? Doktoravhandling. Tromsø: UiT, Norges Arktiske Universitet. https://hdl.handle.net/10037/9671 Asdal, K. Reinertsen, H. (2020). Hvordan gjøre en dokumentanalyse En praksisorientert metode. CAPPELEN DAMM AKADEMISK. Borgen, J. S., & Engelsrud, G. (2020). Språkbruk om kroppsøving: Et kritisk blikk på ny læreplan i Fagfornyelsen (LK20). Acta Didactica Norden, 14(1), 19 sider. https://doi.org/10.5617/adno.8099 Goodlad, J.I. (1979). Curriculum Inquiry: The Study of Curriculum Practice. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hopmann, S. (2015). ‘Didaktik meets Curriculum’ revisited: historical encounters, systematic experience, empirical limits. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 2015(1). https://doi.org/10.3402/nstep.v1.27007 Karseth, B., Kvamme, O.K. & Ottesen, E. (2020). Fagfornyelsens læreplanverk. Politiske intensjoner, arbeidsprosesser og innhold. Hentet fra (EVA2020, Rapport 1). Fagfornyelsens læreplanverk – politiske intensjoner, arbeidsprosesser og innhold | udir.no Kunnskapsdepartementet. (2016). Meld. St. 28 (2015–2016), Fag – Fordypning – Forståelse – En fornyelse av Kunnskapsløftet. Oslo: Kunnskapsdepartementet. Hentet fra Meld. St. 28 (2015–2016) - regjeringen.no Kunnskapsdepartementet (2019). Skaperglede, engasjement og utforskertrang. Praktisk og estetisk innhold i barnehage, skole og lærerutdanning. Strategiplan. Hentet fra https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/c8bbb637891443fea7971ba8e936bca4/skaperglede-engasjement--og-utforskertrang.pdf Pinar, W. F. (2004). What is curriculum theory? Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Sundby, A. H., & Karseth, B. (2022). ‘The knowledge question’ in the Norwegian curriculum. The Curriculum Journal, 33, 427– 442. ‘The knowledge question’ in the Norwegian curriculum (wiley.com) Utdanningsdirektoratet (2018) Retningslinjer for utforming av nasjonale og samiske læreplaner for fag i LK20 og LK20S. Retningslinjer for utforming av nasjonale og samiske læreplaner for fag i LK20 og LK20S | udir.no Utdanningsdirektoratet (2020). Læreplanverket. Hentet fra https://www.udir.no/laring-og-trivsel/lareplanverket/