In an era marked by post-truth discourses, alternative facts, and increasing challenges to democratic institutions (Wikforss, 2019), a central task of education is to provide students with access to powerful knowledge i.e. subject-specific and disciplinary knowledge that enables them to understand, interpret, and critically engage with society (Young, 2008). This research examines how such knowledge is represented and operationalised in Swedish curriculum and national tests in the social studies subjects of civics, geography, history, and religion. In a later stage, it will investigate students’ knowledge manifested in responses in the tests. The curriculum and National tests can be understood as institutionalised expressions of a collective standard of knowledge (Bernstein, 2000; Lynch, 2021), defining what is considered legitimate, valuable, and assessable within a given education system. Because the social studies subjects address issues central to democratic participation such as governance, historical consciousness, spatial understanding, religion, ethics, and citizenship, they provide an important site for examining how knowledge standards are constructed and communicated. The overarching research question is: What views of knowledge, educational purpose and abilities are expressed in Swedish national tests in social studies subjects, and to what extent do the tests provide students with access to powerful knowledge? More specifically, the study asks: 1. What forms of subject matter knowledge and disciplinary reasoning are emphasised in syllabi and national tests in the social studies subjects of civics, geography, history, and religion? 2. What similarities and differences can be found between syllabi and questions in the national tests in relation to the analytical framework of the study? 3. What collective standard of knowledge and competence is communicated through the curriculum and test questions? The study is grounded in a social realist theory of knowledge, drawing primarily on the work of Young and Muller (2010, 2016) and their concept of powerful knowledge. From this perspective, powerful knowledge is characterised by its disciplinary structure, conceptual coherence, and capacity to transcend everyday experience. It is distinguished from generic skills or context-bound knowledge and is seen as central to educational equity, as it provides all students, regardless of background, with access to forms of understanding otherwise reserved for social elites. This research contributes theoretically by operationalising powerful knowledge as an analytical lens for assessment studies, and empirically by providing a systematic analysis of national tests in four social studies subjects. Disciplinary reasoning is treated as a key indicator of powerful knowledge. Tasks that require students to reason according to the epistemic norms of a discipline, such as historical causation, geographical interpretation of maps, ethical reasoning grounded in formal models, or political argumentation, are understood as expressions of a social realist educational tradition (Moore, 2013). In contrast, tasks that rely primarily on factual recall are associated with essentialism, while tasks drawing on personal experience or generic reasoning are categorized as social constructivist. The study addresses issues of relevance within European and international educational contexts. Across Europe, national testing regimes play an increasingly significant role in curriculum governance, accountability, and standard-setting (Au, 2011). Yet, questions of what knowledge is assessed, and how this relates to democratic education and equity, remain underexplored. By conceptualising national tests as expressions of collective knowledge standards, this study contributes to comparative discussions about how different education systems balance disciplinary knowledge, generic competencies, and accessibility. The findings are relevant not only to the Swedish context but also to other European systems grappling with similar tensions between competence-based curricula, disciplinary knowledge, and democratic aims of education. Moreover, the focus on powerful knowledge resonates with ongoing European debates about curriculum content, social justice, and the role of schooling in countering epistemic relativism (Deng, 2020).

This study is a qualitative document analysis to examine what conceptions of powerful knowledge can be found in the civics, geography, history, and religion syllabi in the Swedish 2011 Curriculum for the Compulsory School (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2011). The various knowledge aspects identified in the social studies syllabi for Grade 9, and national tests given in Grade 9, were interpreted as expressions of three educational traditions: essentialism, social constructivism, and social realism. In the preparatory phase of the project, we developed an analytical framework (Börjesson & Lilliestam, 2025), inspired by Young and Muller’s (2010), Three futures for the curriculum. This framework incorporates three educational scenarios: a traditionalism, a social constructivism, and a social realism. The analytical framework was developed to three educational models in relation to an analysis of the Swedish 2022 social studies curriculum for the compulsory school. After continuous deliberations we have continued to develop the analytical framework, and instead of models we now describe them as curriculum traditions, and for traditionalism we now choose to use the label essentialism as we think this term is more neutral and better captures the foundations of this curriculum tradition. The framework operationalises these traditions through analytically defined indicators. The essentialist tradition is characterised by an emphasis on subject matter knowledge, an established cultural canon, fundamental methodological skills, and an orientation towards social cohesion. The social realist tradition is operationalised through a focus on subject-specific and disciplinary knowledge, the development of analytical reasoning at all stages of schooling, and equitable access to powerful knowledge. The social constructivist tradition is operationalised through indicators such as subject integration, generic competencies, knowledge grounded in students’ everyday experiences, and orientations towards equality and social change. The subject syllabi in the 2011 Swedish curriculum consist of four components: aims, focus points, content, and knowledge requirements. Each sentence in these components is analysed in relation to the three educational traditions. The tasks included in the national tests were categorised using the same analytical framework. Similarities and differences will be identified in relation to the analytical framework between the curriculum and the national tests. Finally, in future studies students’ answers to the test questions will be analysed using a phenomenographic approach (Marton & Booth, 1997), with the aim of identifying qualitatively different manifestations of knowledge and abilities.

The results show that all four social studies syllabi contain elements of all educational traditions and prescribe a foundation of factual knowledge. However, the balance between the different traditions varies. Civics shows strong features of a social constructivist tradition, with knowledge closely connected to students’ lives and their development as citizens in a democratic society. History is dominated by issues aligned with a social realist tradition, in which disciplinarily oriented methodological and procedural abilities are given considerable prominence. Geography contains strong elements of essentialism and is clearly focused on factual knowledge. While religion is situated within an essentialist tradition, with a strong emphasis on factual knowledge and a society-preserving ambition that is close to students’ lives, addressing issues of worldviews and personal ethics. It is also noteworthy that there are internal differences in the syllabi. In the sections describing the aims of the subject, all educational traditions are present, whereas the knowledge requirements are strongly dominated by demands for disciplinarily oriented reasoning of various kinds, in the analysis interpreted as social realism. This internal difference is most evident in the civics syllabus, where the purpose section is characterized by social constructivism and closely linked to students’ development as citizens, while students are assessed on their ability to reason in a disciplinary and analytical manner. The test questions are viewed as further indicators of socially desirable knowledge and abilities, a collective standard. In geography and history, test questions primarily demand factual knowledge and discipline-related reasoning while the civics and religion tests also contain strong elements of a social constructivist tradition, including reasoning based on students’ everyday knowledge. A tentative interpretation of the student responses suggests that students’ manifested knowledge often consists of factual and everyday knowledge, with less evidence of ability to disciplinary reasoning in a social realist tradition.

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