One of the current global educational trends sees a shift towards competency-based education (CBE), emphasising the need for students to obtain skills and knowledge useful for future life. Competency-based education responds to accelerating production of knowledge, technological change, and evolving labour market demands by focusing on learning outcomes and attained competencies rather than on acquisition of knowledge (Mulenga & Kabombwe, 2019; Moon, 2007). In many countries, competency-based education is implemented within competency-based curricular documents which organise aims, content, and assessment around explicitly formulated key competences and expected learning outcomes (Curry & Docherty, 2017; Anderson-Levitt & Gardinier, 2021; OECD, 2018). At the same time, gender equality is increasingly highlighted as one of the key priorities of education with the focus on integration of gender dimension and gender perspectives within the education process and content. Gender equality is considered in national education and equality strategies and is debated in connection to curricular reforms and revisions (Donovalová, 2024). With the emergence of these trends, gender competencies are becoming important competences both for students and teachers.

The Czech curriculum has recently undergone a major curriculum reform, resulting in a new Framework Educational Programme for Basic Education. The revised curriculum is explicitly oriented towards competency-based education and states that developing key competences and basic literacies for the 21st century is a central aim of the reform, alongside a stronger focus on equality and gender issues. These declarations are aligned with strategic documents concerning education in Czechia: The Czech Strategy for the education policy of the Czech Republic up to 2030+ (2018) and Gender Equality Strategy 2021–2030, both of which highlight the development of competencies and gender equality to play a more prominent role within the education system.

This qualitative documentary analysis aims to map the approach towards gender competencies within the Czech education system and to thematize and conceptualize gender competencies. While previous research has documented an implementation gap between political and strategic commitments and their translation into educational practice (Nehoda et al., 2024), there is limited evidence on how this gap manifests within competence frameworks especially concerning gender competencies. The study aims to answer these research questions: (1) How do Czech political and strategic documents conceptualize gender competencies in education? (2) To what extent does the new curricular framework align with the aforementioned documents concerning gender competencies? (3) What expectations regarding teachers’ gender competencies are formulated and how do these expectations relate to the curriculum’s competency-based approach to gender equality?

The study employs policy borrowing which examines how global trends in education are adopted and adapted by local actors and conceptualises educational reforms as globally circulating agendas that are selectively translated and recontextualised in national contexts (Steiner-Khamsi, 2014). This perspective examines how competency-based education and gender equality appear as legitimising discourses in Czech policy and curricular texts, and to what extent they are translated education practise. The study draws on the concept of gender competence as an integrated configuration of knowledge, skills and attitudes. The initial deductive coding framework is based on the concept of gender competencies by Mahr et al. (2021), which conceptualises gender competence as (a) knowledge of gender-related issues and inequalities, (b) skills to apply this knowledge in educational practice, and (c) approaches/communication that enable gender-sensitive interaction and reflexive professional conduct.

This study provides an integrated analysis of how gender competence is operationalised – whether it is explicitly articulated, framed through broader concepts such as diversity and inclusion, or rendered invisible through generalised competence language. It presents implications for curriculum design and teacher education and provides a relevant example for other education systems undergoing similar reforms.

This study is designed as a qualitative documentary analysis (Bowen, 2009). It examines strategic and policy documents concerning education, recently revised curricular document and a competency framework for future teachers and maps how gender competence is conceptualised within the Czech educational system and curricular document which during the last two major curriculum reform shifted towards competency based education (Češková, 2021) and which declares stronger focus on gender issues in education. Czechia is a suitable example of an education system that recently underwent a major curricular reform that explicitly aims to strengthen a competency-based orientation. It presents an analytical contradiction – while national policies and strategies simultaneously articulate commitments to gender equality in education, the country performs comparatively weakly on the EU Gender Equality Index, suggesting a potential gap between strategic commitments and their implementation within education. The analysed data set consists of four interconnected national documents: (1) the Strategy for Education Policy of the Czech Republic until 2030+, (2) the revised Framework Educational Programme for Basic Education, (3) the Competence Framework for Teacher Education Graduates, and (4) the Gender Equality Strategy 2021–2030. In addition, the analysis draws on the official webpage on the national curriculum portal presenting key competences as supplementary data of the competence framework. These sources were selected to capture how commitments and expectations travel across levels of governance and professional regulation. The documents are analysed through qualitative content analysis. The qualitative content analysis is used to comprehensively describe the conceptualization and thematization of gender competencies and to map the approach towards gender competencies throughout different documents. The documents were coded using both deductive and inductive coding. To operationalise the gender dimension, the study applies the concept of gender competence. First, deductive coding is based on Mahr et al. (2021), defining gender competence as (a) knowledge of gender-related issues and inequalities, (b) skills to apply this knowledge in educational practice, and (c) approaches/communication enabling gender-sensitive interaction and reflexive professional conduct. Second, inductive coding was used to capture emergent patterns, including generalisation (gender competence under broader concepts of equality, diversity etc.), abstraction, omission, and contradictions across documents. Cross-document comparison was used to assess the alignment between strategic commitments, curricular formulations of student competences, and expectations for teachers’ professional competences. This approach provides a robust methodological framework for examining and conceptualizing gender competencies and offers valuable insights into the implementation of supranational education trends within the Czech education system.

The analysis of the policy and strategic documents, curricular document and competence framework shows an uneven and non-systematic approach towards conceptualization and subsequent implementation of gender competencies within the Czech education system. While all the policy and strategic documents formulate competencies and gender equality as two of the key concepts and agendas within education, this emphasis does not align with the operationalisation of gender competencies in the curricular document nor the competence framework. The analysis shows clear implementation gap – the policy and strategic declarations do not Gender-related commitments are more explicit at the level of strategic policy than in the core competence formulations of the curricular framework. In particular, references to equality appear frequently in abstract or neutral language, while direct phrasing of gender issues is limited. The cross-document comparison is expected to reveal partial coherence and non-systematic approach: while the curriculum and teacher framework may include generic expectations linked to inclusive education and non-discrimination, an explicit conceptualisation of gender competence as a distinct, developable competence with concrete pedagogical implications is lacking. The teacher competence framework is positions gender equality largely at the level of professional attitudes and communication, with less emphasis on structured competence development (e.g., recognising gendered patterns in learning environments, curriculum content and assessment). The operationalisation of gender competencies is not systematic – there is no clear alignment across the analysed documents in terms of definitions, scope, or expected learning/professional outcomes. This suggests that without explicit and coherent operationalisation of gender competence, competence-based reforms risk remaining at the level of rhetorical commitment rather than providing structural support for gender equality.

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