At the heart of all development in education lies the question of what should be learned in schools, which serves as the basis of the school curriculum (Biesta, 2015). The educational opportunities that are available to pupils rely heavily on the complex socio-cultural priorities and decisions of various curriculum stakeholders, such as policymakers, school principals, and teachers (Schiro, 2013; Ten Brummelhuis, 2022). An analysis of the dynamics within an educational system can help grasp why certain educational opportunities arise or fail to materialize (Engeström & Sannino, 2011).

Achieving educational goals becomes even more complex in a multilingual setting. Socio-cultural factors shape educational ideologies and practices, influencing the extent to which linguistic diversity is accommodated. When linguistic diversity is not adequately addressed, students whose home language differs from the school language often face achievement gaps (Cummins, 2000; Duarte, 2020; Duarte et al., 2021).

Tackling these achievement gaps is a daily challenge in the multilingual province of Fryslân, especially for the 40-50% of students who have Frisian as their mother tongue and the 7-9% that speak a migrant language (Inspectie van het Onderwijs, 2019; Varkevisser et al., 2023). Despite the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages ensuring the protection of the Frisian language and its mandatory inclusion in the curriculum since 1981, more than 70% of schools in Fryslân fail to fully meet the provincial government's legal requirements for Frisian language and culture education. Disparities in attention paid to Frisian in a predominantly Dutch context, along with migrant languages in the bilingual Frisian/Dutch setting, impact the equality of opportunity for all students in Fryslân (Hoekstra et al., 2023; Varkevisser et al., 2023).

This research focuses on understanding the dynamics between the Frisian language and culture curriculum as intended at the macro (provincial government)- level and as implemented at the meso- (school) level in all 369 regular primary schools in Fryslân (Van den Akker et al., 2006). It navigates the cultural-historically founded perceptions of school principals regarding the implementation of the curriculum in their own schools. The central research question is:

In what ways does the interaction between Frisian language and culture educational policy and school principals' perceptions of its implementation in primary education reveal the factors that hinder or facilitate effective practice in Fryslân?

The Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) provides a valuable framework for further interpreting the qualitative analysis of assessments and practices. This approach helps understand how actors at both the macro and meso levels—along with their goals, tools, rules, communities, and divisions of labor—engage within the educational system, influenced by the broader cultural and historical context (Engeström & Sannino, 2021). When different activity systems intersect and cross boundaries, the differences in these goals, rules, tools, and other elements can create tensions, which manifest as contradictions. These tensions are not merely obstacles; they are opportunities for expansive learning (Akkerman and Bakker, 2011).

By analyzing system-level interactions via the CHAT framework, we can identify the contradictions that facilitate or hinder effective curriculum implementation, which will serve as the starting point for devising strategies for the implementation of a new curriculum that is set to roll out in 2026. Additionally, the study's findings offer valuable insights for other international contexts dealing with similar challenges in minority language education.

The Cultural-Historical Activity Theory may offer an innovative framework that can be adapted to other linguistically diverse contexts, with the goal of ultimately contributing to the broader discourse on educational equity in a multilingual society.

In this study, we specifically looked at practitioners at the management level of the school. All 369 regular primary schools in Fryslân were visited following a letter from the provincial government mandating their participation. School principals have been asked to fill out a structured questionnaire together with the teachers of the corresponding course. Following these questionnaires, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the principal, in some cases joined by the language coordinator, to delve deeper into questionnaire responses. The data that was collected can be divided in the following categories: A. General Information about the School: Includes details on student and teacher populations, as well as the schools' policies and underlying rationale. B. Subject-Specific Information: Focuses on the implementation of the Frisian language and culture subject using the Curricular Spiderweb framework (Van den Akker et al., 2006), and Frisian as the medium of instruction. C. Rationale for Implementation: Includes principals' reasoning behind the current subject implementation. D. Self-Reported Attitudes: Covers self-reported attitudes towards the Frisian language and culture subject. E. Schools' Ambitions: Includes general goals and specific ambitions related to the Frisian language and culture. After data collection, quantitative data have been analyzed via SPSS 29.0 and qualitative data have been coded via Atlas.ti. Statistical dimension-reduction analyses were applied to subject-specific data to identify the key variables driving variance. Subsequently, relationships between these variables, general school characteristics, self-reported attitudes and ambitions, and coded data on principals’ implementation rationale were examined to identify factors that facilitate or hinder an effective curriculum.

Although analyses are still ongoing, preliminary qualitative results indicate that approximately half of the principals view their current implementation of education in Frisian oral communication (55.6%), reading (48.2%), and writing skills (50.7%) as satisfactory. In contrast, 20.6%, 29.5%, and 27.1% of principals, respectively, consider these implementations undesirable. Principals that are satisfied with their curriculum implementation highlight alignment with students' linguistic backgrounds, enhanced Frisian proficiency, integration into Frisian-speaking society, and cultural preservation as key strengths of their curriculum. Their perspectives range from academic priorities to the goal of broader societal efficiency or reconstruction, reflecting differing views on the relationship between students, society, and knowledge (McKenny et al., 2006; Schiro, 2013). The next step is to examine the correlation between satisfaction levels and actual curriculum implementation, as well as how differing rationales for the current implementation influence this relationship.

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