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Background: Within classroom research, there has long been agreement on the importance of dialogue and discussion for student learning. However, how the concept of knowledge influences classroom conversation needs further investigation, as this has key implications for students' active participation. Purpose: Our research sought to conceptualise the assumption of knowledge in standards-based curricula and explore some implications of teaching based on this kind of curriculum. To do this, we drew on a larger research project undertaken in Sweden, which involved a comparative classroom study. Methods: Four natural science lessons were examined in terms of student's opportunities to engage in the teaching content. The analytical framework was based on curriculum theory, the concepts of a lesson as a curriculum event, and students as co-authors of teaching content. We analysed two concepts of knowledge - social realism and transactional realism - in relation to an openness towards 'critical moments' during lessons, either noticed or unnoticed, and related them to the logics of curriculum and knowledge. Findings: When framed by classroom teaching designed from knowledge criteria, students' opportunities for acting as co-authors can become restricted, with critical moments overlooked because of a teaching focus necessarily limited by curriculum. Thus, opportunities for creating spaces to pay attention to students' questions and reactions can be constrained. Conclusions: Standards-based curricula, a concept of knowledge with a strong focus on subject-specific facts and ways of reasoning, together with high-stakes assessment, may lead to fewer openings for genuine discussion and student reflection. This highlights the need to leave larger spaces for teachers and students alike to influence content that engages students.

How could the technicality arising from eleven percent of students being excluded from a PISA test in Sweden trigger a polarized debate followed by investigations by both the OECD and national authorities? This question is explored in the study by drawing on discursive institutionalism, especially the concept of normative background ideas, communicative discourse, and the "power in ideas". Communicative discourses can be referred to as discourses explained by logics of position and logics of ideas. The normative background ideas are related to a critique or acceptance of receiving a high number of immigrants during a short period of time a few years before the 2018 PISA test was conducted. The concluding reflection poses the questions of at what point it is reasonable for newly arrived students to participate in the PISA test and whether the PISA test really measures the quality of the school system, as suggested by the OECD.

The aim of this article is to explore the interrelationships between a national government and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in terms of the power and legitimization of education reforms, here based on the reciprocal dependence of the two actors. Although the current case study only analyses the shifting relationships between Sweden and the OECD, the assumption is that the case is quite representative of the ambiguities of power in the relationships between the OECD and its smaller member countries and the Nordic countries in particular. To explore the relationship between the Swedish national government and OECD, we make use of discursive institutionalism as a general framework. For a closer understanding of the standpoints of the OECD and Sweden on different matters and at different times, two explanation logics are used. The discourses we found characterizing the different kinds of relationships over time are a discourse of opposition, a discourse of mentorship and a discourse of subordination. We argue that there are both ideational and institutional reasons affecting the conditions for cooperation on educational policy. Although institutional reasons strengthen the maintenance of the cooperation, ideational reasons both challenge and develop the nature of the collaboration between the OECD and Sweden.

The purpose of this study is to explore the implications of a standards-based curriculum for what constitutes knowledge in different teaching contexts. The research question is as follows: How is the logic of uniformity within curriculum standards recontextualised into actual teaching in different school environments, here focusing on the concepts of the knowledge underpinning the teaching? Many national school systems have adapted to the current accountability movement. The accountability movement is characterised by seemingly simple and reasonable logic that defines objectives to specify what schooling should result in for learners, evaluates the result and then uses the result to improve the schooling process. In reality, however, the recontextualisation of the subject curriculum to teaching practice is a complex process. This article draws on interviews with two teachers focusing on eight recently completed lessons. The analysis reveals two approaches to curricula--integrated and performance--underpinned by two different views of knowledge: transactional realism and social realism. Although the key aim for teaching based on transactional realism is 'coordinating the students' interest in' the curriculum and teaching content, the key aim for teaching based on social realism is 'giving the students access to' specialised knowledge.

Purpose: The aim of this article is to critically explore the complex relations among the triad comprising standards-based curriculum, the curriculum concept of 'competences' and the subject of civics in Swedish curricula. Design/methodology/approach: The theoretical framework is based on Bernstein's (2000) two models of pedagogy, the competence model and the performance model. Following Deng and Luke (2008), we analyse the conceptions of 'knowledge' in the subject of civics and explore how a civics syllabus in a standards-based curriculum can be understood and expanded in relation to a classical typology of social studies by Barth and Shermis (1970). Finding: The syllabi of civics includes a clear orientation towards social efficiency. Moreover, the abilities, the concept used instead of competences, are strongly linked to the subject matter. Civics is thus understood as a mélange of abilities and in-built subject-specific content. We identify a new category in the typology of social studies, which is social studies as performance-based generic competences.

In this article, the central question is how the relationship between democracy and education can be understood in terms of civic literacy. By taking as a point of departure John Dewey's basic understanding of democracy in terms of communication and experience, which also forms the basis for the pragmatist knowledge concept of "transactional realism," this study explores transactional realism in relation to how this concept of knowledge can promote a democratic stance in the teaching of different school subjects. Thus, the focus is on how a democratic stance is an important part in the selection of teaching content and teaching activities in the classroom in a time when democracy is challenged from different angles. The concept of "civic literacy" is here understood as developing knowledge about the world, learning to act responsibly in the world and realising oneself in the world. Civic literacy is both about knowledge of facts and events and about a classroom discourse opening for responsible and reflective conversations outwards from the subject, towards the social and physical environment.

In this article, we explore the processes of transfer and translation of education policy in a study focusing on the relationship between the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Sweden. The purpose of the study is to investigate how selective borrowing occurs both in terms of references to different types of knowledge sources underpinning the arguments and shared discourse formations. The data were obtained from two policy reports: an OECD review report of the Swedish school system and a Swedish follow-up report proposing actual school reforms. The method was twofold: first, mapping, categorizing, and counting all the textual references in the two documents; second, critically analyzing the discourses emerging in the two policy texts. The results show that international references play a significant role in substantiating arguments for Swedish education policy. Both policy texts share a policy discourse characterized by suspiciousness toward the professionalism exercised by teachers and local education authorities.

Literary education exposes students to unpredictable critical moments in their encounters with a text. Drawing on Dewey's transactional realism and actor-network theory, this theoretical and conceptual study explores the performativity of things and materials as they shape reading and teaching bodies. This transactional performativity extends beyond the physical positioning of the body to the power relations enacted in text situations. The conceptual rationale is illustrated by a story about a reading chair in a detention home for detained young men--an environment where power issues come to a head. The story illustrates a theoretical discussion of what might be characterized as performing 'the critical' in reading and how potentialities for students' experiences are created in text situations by the different components involved. The purpose of the article is to explore the potentialities of performing critical aspects of reading to challenge, to transform, and to encourage resistance.

The purpose of this keynote address is to discuss how curriculum theory can make a specific contribution to research on transnational education policy; in particular, curriculum theory has implications for national policy due to the interest in exploring educational phenomena at different levels of the school system. From a Swedish perspective on curriculum theory, the coordinative transnational policy ideas of having 'high expectations' and 'raising standards' are traced through three levels of analysis: the transnational/national societal arena, the programmatic curriculum arena and the classroom/teaching arena. The transnational policy idea of 'international standards' underpins the idea of standards-based curricula, with a focus on the need to reach certain standards of knowledge and obtain equity in assessment; accordingly, such objectives have certain implications for curriculum structure and content as well as for actual teaching in the classroom. At each level of analysis, some concepts are introduced because of their potential to contribute in both exploratory and clarificatory ways. The analysis indicates that there is a need to uphold the role of the curriculum as a framework for genuine "educational" standards, with the professional teacher serving as the main actor for building educational relationships; otherwise, there is a risk that curriculum standards will degenerate into the instrumental standardisation of knowledge and teaching.

This article explores how John Dewey's concept of democracy can contribute to our understanding of what is required from education amid growing nationalism and populism, even in what are usually perceived as established democracies. The purpose of the study is to explore how standards-based curricula for citizenship education can be problematised in relation to the broad concept of democracy. The meaning of citizenship education in curricula is examined through two cases from western countries (Sweden and the USA) with standards-based curricula. These social studies curricula deal with democracy as something 'to teach about', rather than focusing on helping students learn to understand and recreate democracy for their own generation. However, the concept of democracy, as a moral and ethical ideal, becomes difficult to express in a curriculum logic of standards and knowledge outcomes emphasising measurability. Now, when democracy is challenged, also seems to be the right time to confront the logic of a standards-based curriculum and the selective traditions of subjects within the social studies, as well as to ask the questions 'why?' and 'what for?' in relation to basic social values and students' competences.

In this article, we analyse key policy documents on teacher quality produced by the OECD and the EU during the period 2005 to 2017 using an educational connoisseurship and criticism approach. The purpose of this article is to explore how Eisner's concepts of educational connoisseurship and educational criticism can be understood and used to analyse educational policy, especially how teacher quality is discursively constructed in transnational authoritative texts on education policy. Eisner's three aspects of criticism, description, interpretation and evaluation can be utilised in a differentiated critical approach to the analysis of transnational policy documents on education. While the critical descriptive discourse can be viewed as 'identifying a simple relationship' between social development and educational needs, the interpretative critical discourse can be regarded as 'recognising the complexity' of teachers' tasks in changing societies and the critical evaluative discourse as 'recognising and problematising contradictory interests' that affect teachers' work. We argue that the philosophical concepts of connoisseurship and criticism contribute to policy research by demonstrating that a multifaceted concept of teacher quality is needed to capture the complex nature of education.

Against the backdrop of the push from the European Commission and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development for competence-based curricula, this article problematises the complexity of developing twenty-first century skills, such as critical thinking, by addressing the role transnational and national policy contexts play in realising critical thinking in the national contexts of Sweden and Kosovo. The article distinguishes between "policy-critical thinking" and "civic-critical thinking." Relying on analyses of curriculum and policy documents, it is concluded that while in the Swedish context critical thinking competence (or ability) seems to be much more implicit than explicit, in Kosovo, the national curriculum makes explicit references to "thinking competences" as a form of policy-critical thinking and "civic competencies" as a form of civic-critical thinking. Thus, students in both contexts have opportunities to develop critical thinking skills. Furthermore, Sweden emerges as a "divergent case" and Kosovo as a "convergent case" with regard to transnational policy flow research paradigms.

This study focuses on the different ways in which teachers relate their situational agency and professional assignment to the national curriculum content and curriculum dilemmas. It builds theoretically on transactional realism and empirically on analyses of interviews with teachers, exploring the nature of teacher agency during the enactment of a new Swedish curriculum reform. To uphold a dual perspective of teachers' relation to the curriculum as both collectively and individually experienced and as both an ideal and realistic--practical relation, we term the future as 'projective experiences', the presence as 'practical-evaluative experiences' and the past 'iterational experiences' in relation to agency. Especially, we are interested in the 'what' in the curriculum--what the teachers find intriguing, important or impossible and what affects how they relate to the curriculum as part of the multidimensional structures influencing their agency. This approach reveals that the crucial issue of teacher agency is related to the policy discourse on knowledge and equity as standards and the uniformity of assessment and its pedagogical consequences.