In Sweden, a reform effort is currently underway to develop the third curriculum for compulsory school, with a pronounced focus on facts and subject knowledge, to be launched in 2028—a course restructuring for Swedish schools which, according to the government, will affect all principals, teachers and students in compulsory education. As part of the project The Fact-Based Curriculum – Origin, Content and Realisation (DeFakto), we examine how this curriculum reform is legitimised among policymakers and explore what makes a new fact-based curriculum possible and desirable at this point in time, despite the fact that schools have only recently begun implementing the 2022 curriculum. Furthermore, we investigate why national politicians are once again choosing the same solution as in the two previous curricula in terms of a facts-based knowledge orientation, despite their own analysis that the Swedish school system—in light of the deteriorating PISA results in 2022—is in a serious crisis. At the same time, research on how the idea of a Swedish fact-based curriculum has been developed and legitimised in national education policy is quite limited.
The aim of this critical examination is to contribute, from a curriculum theory perspective, to an understanding of how the idea of a ‘fact-based curriculum’ emerges as a policy discourse to combat what domestic politicians refer to as a crisis within the national school system. Analytical focus will be directed towards what problems this idea supposed to solve and how is a fact-based curriculum understood as a solution to these problems. The examination is guided by the following research question:
How is the idea of a fact-based curriculum reform constructed and legitimised in national curriculum policymaking?
Conceptually, the study is located within the field of curriculum theory (Wyse et al., 2016). From the 2010s onwards, there has been growing interest in the field of how global education policies travel between different countries—so-called ‘travelling policies’—and how they are translated when recontextualised in new settings (Nordin & Sundberg, 2014). Previous research has shown that the national context plays an important role in how global policy ideas are translated into local contexts (Anderson-Levitt & Gardinier, 2024; Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012). One such travelling policy idea that has recently had a major impact on national curricula, primarily in the English-speaking world, is that of so-called ‘knowledge-rich curricula’ (Deng, 2022; Rata, 2019; Surma et al., 2025), which is based on Michael Young’s (2008) concept of powerful knowledge. The analysis of the Swedish curriculum reform in this paper builds on and contributes to this branch of research. In addition to the spatial dimension of national curriculum reform, our analysis also sheds light on the temporal dimension. In line with Steiner-Khamsi (2025), we argue that research on political reforms needs to pay greater attention to aspects of the timing and pace of reforms in order to understand what makes them desirable and possible as solutions to certain policy problems (Béland & Howlett, 2016).
Methodology
In the DeFakto project, we examine the national curriculum as a discursive practice operating at three intertwined levels (Deng & Luke, 2008): (i) the societal/ideological level, (ii) the programmatic level and (iii) the classroom level. In the present study, however, the focus is primarily on the societal/ideological level.
To gain insight into the discourses, ideas and actors at the societal/ideological level of the curriculum, we use discursive institutionalism (DI) (Carstensen & Schmidt, 2016; Schmidt, 2008, 2010, 2011). DI is an institutional theory that directs analytical focus towards questions of institutional continuity and change and has been applied within curriculum research (see Nordin & Sundberg, 2018). DI enables us to focus analytically on how ideas are discursively legitimised among policy actors within and between different arenas (Schmidt, 2011). As a way of differentiating discursive legitimation, DI distinguishes between coordinative and communicative discourse.
Coordinative discourse refers to the discursive interaction between different policy actors aimed at coordinating understandings of what the problem is and what needs to be done, something that is often made possible by actors forming discourse coalitions—that is, agreeing on a common stance on a particular issue. Communicative discourse refers to policy actors’ deliberate attempts to influence the perceptions of the public and other stakeholders. With regard to ideas, we draw on DI’s differentiated conceptualisation in order to address the temporal dimensions analytically. Here, DI distinguishes between volatile policy ideas, which can appear quickly and disappear just as quickly; programmatic ideas, which have gained broader legitimacy and been incorporated into programmes and policy documents, such as a curriculum; and philosophical ideas, which are the most institutionalised and thus the most inflexible. These refer, for example, to how cultural, religious or ideological assumptions—so-called background assumptions—affect how policies are received, understood and translated by different actors.
To capture the coordinative discourse, the empirical material consists of political directives, government public investigations, government bills and consultation responses (2007–2025). The communicative discourse comprises material from leading Swedish newspapers and teacher union journals, situating the curriculum reform within its broader societal context, including professional, media/cultural and research arenas. The empirical material is analysed using the DI conceptual toolbox in order to capture which ideas have been influential and/or neglected, as well as which actors and arenas have been important in the processes of coordinating and communicating these ideas.
Expected outcomes/conclusions
This study will contribute new theoretical and empirical insights into how curriculum reforms are legitimised through discursive strategies in national policymaking, with a particular focus on the political use of crisis narratives. First, the analysis will advance curriculum theory by showing how coordinative and communicative discourses operate together in shaping the idea of a ‘fact-based curriculum’ and how volatile policy ideas are selectively stabilised into programmatic and philosophical ideas in moments framed as crisis. The outcomes will thus highlight how crisis functions not only as a contextual condition but as a deliberate political strategy enabling reform.
Second, by examining the Swedish case in detail, this study will shed light on the dynamics, actors and temporalities that shape national curriculum reform processes. The findings will illuminate the ways in which transnational ‘knowledge‑rich curriculum’ discourses are translated into the Swedish policy context and how a highly uniform national discourse with limited actor diversity creates a constrained arena for curriculum debate and policy development.
Finally, the results have broader European relevance. Across Europe, governments face similar pressures to respond to perceived educational decline, a perception often linked to international large-scale assessments. Therefore, the Swedish case will serve as a comparative reference point for understanding how crisis-oriented policy framing, selective borrowing of global policy ideas and accelerated reform cycles influence curriculum debates in other European countries. The study will thus offer both conceptual and empirical tools for analysing how crisis discourses justify rapid curricular change, centralise policy authority and narrow curriculum deliberation—issues that are increasingly visible across diverse European education systems.