Transnational Competence Frameworks and National Curriculum-making : the case of Sweden

• Competence-Based-Approaces in Education (CBA) has become an important education policy idea internationally the last decades emphasizing a set of generic key competences as targeted outcomes of education and national curricula. However, a substantial body of research have suggested that in order to understand and explain its evolution there is a need to analyze curriculum-making as a complex and multi-layered practice taking place in a complex interplay between transnational, national as well as local arenas. In order to contribute to such a research this paper turn to discourse-institutionalism (DI) as outlined by Vivien Schmidt (2011, 2016) proposing a stratified understanding of ideas operating at different policy levels, ‘background ideas’ being very stable over time and ‘foreground ideas’ who can change more rapidly, capturing the translation of ideas travelling within and between different policy arenas and used by different actors. In this paper we will (1) compare ideas of competences as expressed in four influential frameworks for CBA, and secondly (2) we will exemplify how these ideas, with special reference to the OECD, have been translated when recontextualized within Swedish curriculum policy making using the most recent Swedish curriculum reform for the compulsory school as an empirical example. The result of the text analyses shows that when recontextualized within national borders transnational ideas of CBC are being translated in ways that enables for national politicians to adapt to transnational discourses while simultaneously maintaining public legitimacy. In the case of Sweden this political act of balancing different policy discourses has led to a national version of CBA, discussed in this paper as ‘hybrid competences’.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

competences/competencies

competence-based approaches in education

knowledge

discursive institutionalism

curriculum policy

transnational

Education

Pedagogik

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)