Discursive institutionalism: towards a framework for analysing the relation between policy and curriculum

Abstract

Discourse approaches in education policy analysis have gained prominence in the last decade. However, though the literature on policy discourses is growing, different conceptions of the 'discursive' dimension and its potential for empirical analysis related to the field of curriculum policy have not yet been fully researched. To address this gap in education policy research, this article explores the framework of discursive institutionalism. Using background and foreground ideas and coordinative and communicative discourses on three analytically distinct levels, this article proposes and discusses a framework for empirically analysing, explaining and understanding education reforms on the transnational and local levels. The introduced conceptual framework represents an integration of discursive institutionalism (DI) and curriculum theory (CT) to provide a more multifaceted set of concepts to explore the lending and borrowing of transnational education policies and their application at both national and local levels. These concepts have been applied as analytical tools in a research study on the most recent curriculum reform in Sweden, and they may serve as an example of how different ideas, discourses and levels can be distinguished in research studies to maintain the complexity of education reforms.

Understanding Educational Leadership and Curriculum Reform

“…It makes sense to try to identify phases of this process. It also makes sense to describe the different discourses involved, within and between different levels and parties (Wahlström & Sundberg, 2018) in a historical and comparative perspective. In curriculum reform activity, initiating curriculum work is naturally different from implementing and enacting it.…”

Gendering the Representative Work of the European Parliament: A Political Analysis of Women MEP's Perceptions of Gender Equality in Party Groups

“…Thus, we analyze the perceptions of the women MEPs as they are expressed in the interviews in order to identify discourses which are simultaneously embedded in the institutional context of the EP and its party groups and expressed through their practices. Institutions contain a background, where ideas are expressed as ‘underlying assumptions’ and a foreground, where they are ‘conscious perceptions’ (Wahlström and Sundberg, , p. 169).…”

Evropská konference pedagogického výzkumu, 2.–6. září 2019, Hamburk

“…Armend Tahirsylaj a Daniel Sundberg si položili otázku, jaký výzkum v kompetenčním přístupu existuje, jak je rozrůzněn geografi cky a metodologicky. Teoretickým rámcem při tom byl diskurzivní institucionalismus (Schmidt, 2015;Wahlström & Sundberg, 2018) a klasifi kace kurikulárních perspektiv (Deng & Luke, 2008 Dokladem vůdčí role OECD je i probíhající studie International Curriculum Analysis, v jejímž rámci více než 35 zemí vyplnilo dotazník, kde uvedly své hlavní problémy v kurikulární politice. Joke Voogtová a Nienke Neiveenová představily rešerši znalostí o dvou z nejčastěji uváděných problémů, které jsou důležité z hlediska pedagogické praxe, ale byly dosud málo výzkumně studovány: zaměřily se na přetížení kurikula a na časovou prodlevu, jež uplyne mezi identifi kací potřeby nového nebo revidovaného kurikula, jeho vytvořením a dobou, kdy se efekty nového kurikula projeví v praxi.…”