Research topic/aim: The national curriculum, which serves as a discursive practice, is characterised by increased complexity involving a multitude of actors operating within and between different curriculum arenas and institutional levels (Uljens, 2018; Sundberg, 2021). This development places high demands ontheories and methodologies in terms of examining complexity, interaction, and change. The aim of this paper is to build an argument arounddiscursive institutionalism (DI; Schmidt, 2008, 2011) as a constructive theoretical contribution to this line of curriculum research.

Theoretical framework: Discursive institutionalism (Schmidt, 2008, 2011), as the most recent branch of new institutionalism, is thus used as a theoretical framework in this paper.

Methodological design: The discussion about DI is built around three of its core concepts: ideas, discourse and agency. DI distinguishes between different ideas at differentinstitutional levels, some of which are more volatile (typically policy ideas), while others are more stable (typically philosophical ideas). To understand why some ideas become more stable than others, DI also emphasises the importance of acknowledging the discursive interactions in which these ideas take shape. Here, DI distinguishes between a coordinative discourse, focused on the development of a shared understanding of what the policy problem is and possible solutions among policy actors, and a communicative discourse, focused on the ways in which policy actorstry to legitimate their shared ideas. DI also highlights the importance of agency in this discursive interaction, and who says what to whom plays animportant role in explaining why some ideas become institutionalised while others do not.

Expected conclusions/findings: In the final part of the paper, I argue that DI contributes to curriculum research in at least four ways. First, it bridges the classic contradictions between structure and agency in understanding institutions as internally constructed in the minds of curriculum actors. Second, it provides thetheoretical language to enable analyses of the complex interplay within and between different policy arenas and levels. Third, while other neoinstitutional traditions have focused primarily on institutional stability, DI provides the language through which to include analyses of institutionalchange. Finally, in its non-hierarchical positioning of social practices, I argue that DI facilitates critical approaches that acknowledge both structureand agency.

Relevance to Nordic educational research: DI is a relatively new approach in Nordic curriculum research. However, in recent years, several scholars have begun deploying it in a range ofresearch projects. This paper is relevant to Nordic educational research since it makes visible some of the possibilities that DI provides in advancing multidimensional and multilayered analyses in curriculum research.