In this article we will address the impact of Europeanization (Lawn 2011) 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 (Andersson-Levitt 2008). The main interest is directed towards how the answers on the question of what counts as knowledge and skills are changing in national curricula. The research questions of this article are: (i) what explanatory frameworks are plausible to make sense to processes of curriculum change in the interface between transnational and national arenas? (ii) to what extent and in what ways can the Swedish compulsory school reform (Lgr 11) be seen as an expression of a European educational policy discourse when it comes to conceptualising knowledge? (iii) how are transnational elements re-interpreted and translated into the Swedish national curriculum policy agenda in conceptualising key competencies?

      Theoretically we draw on discursive institutionalism (Schmidt 2008, 2011) using a differentiated concept of curriculum as a way to capture the complex dynamics of contemporary curriculum change. We argue that this discursive institutional framework is necessary in order to explain curriculum changes in the nexus of the transnational and the national, tracing discursive processes of coordination and communication to analyse why some discourses prevail and becomes institutionalised while others don’t. Central policy texts have been analyzed as simultaneously a written text, discourse practice (that include text production and interpretation) and socio-cultural and political practice (Fairclough, 1995). Taken this methodological point of departure a step further the analysis has also combined a discursive institutionalism approach. Processes of discourse formation in policy-making have been investigated as dialectical to processes of re-contextualisation and institutionalization of specific discourses.

      A conclusion is that the recent Swedish compulsory school reform converges to the broader European knowledge discourse on the level of philosophical ideas underpinning curriculum change but that several core concepts used in European policy texts are being reconceptualised and given a different meaning when re-contextualised in the national arena. Exploring new methodological approaches in the analysis of curriculum change is highly relevant as transnational discourses have an increasing impact on Nordic curriculum policy.