In this paper we will address the impact of Europeanisation on national curriculum reforms with empirical reference to the Swedish compulsory school, and based on the concept of competence discuss the question of transnational curriculum convergence. The main interest is directed towards how the answers to the question of what counts as knowledge and skills are changing in national curricula. The analysis shows that the recent Swedish compulsory school reform converges to the broader European knowledge discourse on the underlying level of philosophical ideas, but also that several core concepts used in European policy texts are being reconceptualised and given a different meaning when recontextualised in the national arena.

Around the mid-2000s a crisis discourse emerged in educational policy-making in the EU and in Sweden. Using the EU and Sweden as empirical references, this article explores how this crisis discourse has been and is employed by politicians and NGOs. Discourse Institutionalism is used as an overall theoretical framework focusing on how the crisis discourse is coordinated among powerful policy actors and communicated to the public, while critical discourse analysis is used for the systematic analysis. The crisis discourse implies that action has to be taken immediately and that there is no option other than to act, and the result shows that this normative discourse is becoming an important and powerful instrument in the hands of both national and transnational actors seeking public legitimacy for extensive reforms.

The article aims to explore to what extent and in what ways discourse institutionalism can contribute to the understanding and analysis of curriculum change in a globalized context. By focusing specifically on curriculum change, this article proposes how discourse institutionalism can contribute to the so-called 'crisis of curriculum theory' by addressing (i) the non-linearity of change, (ii) the process of the translation of ideas and (iii) actor agency. The text is structured in three sections. In the first section, we elaborate on the notion of curriculum change as a vital concept for the field of curriculum theory in a globalized context, focusing on processes of recontextualization and the translation of curriculum content. In the second, we elaborate on discourse institutionalism as a contributing approach to the analysis of such processes of curriculum change, constructing a conceptual framework. In the third and final section, we give some examples of how the conceptual framework can be used in analysing curriculum change, using the 2011 Swedish curriculum reform (Lgr 11) as an empirical reference, and the result shows that the conceptual framework offers a wide repertoire of possible approaches to analysing curriculum change, both vertically and horizontally.

In the European neo-liberal policy context, there has been an increase in pressure on teachers to exercise a type of professional responsibility that contributes to the development of a competitive knowledge-based economy. From a communication theory perspective, this paper examines if it is at all possible to talk of professional responsibility in a policy context characterised by individualisation, standardisation and accountability. Methodologically, this text joins a critical tradition of educational policy research, which emphasises the need to combine critical examination with empirical analysis. Critical discourse analysis has been used for the systematic analysis portion of this text. Central official policy texts from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European Union and the 2011 school reforms in Sweden have been analysed. The results show that while demands for increased professional responsibility among teachers have been made by policy actors at different levels, the neo-liberal policy context offers limited opportunities for teachers to actually exercise this type of professional responsibility, if seen as a communicative practice based on the idea of relative autonomy. The paper concludes with a prospective discussion in which teacher professionalism is linked to the creation and maintenance of 'spaces of communication', as well as a look at the challenges faced by policy makers at all levels if they are to facilitate such spaces.

In this article, we present a comparative research project on municipal school policy in Sweden 1950Á2010 which in our view contributes to the research fields of education policy and curriculum theory. Our project which started in 2014 links to a line of international research on education policy concerned with the tensions between decentralisation and globalisation and comparative research investigating transnational transfers of education policy ideas. In this article, we provide some preliminary findings which display municipal school policy dealing with national and transnational school initiatives and affecting local school actions. Most of the findings in this article concern the time period 1950Á1975, during which the present two Swedish school forms, Grundskolan (a 9-year comprehensive school) and Gymnasieskolan (upper secondary school), were introduced and established. We compare local policy, through six interrelated indicators, in two municipalities with different structures and origins. On the basis of our findings, we conclude that municipal school policy research in a comparative and historical perspective is an important field of research as it reveals the complexity of school governance. Historical studies of municipal school policy and practice are crucial for exploring different dimensions of curriculum theory, including the transnational dimension.