School Leaders' Planning for Curriculum Reform in Norwegian Schools: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something True?

• In Event: International Considerations of Education Policy and Politics

Abstract

This paper investigates how school leaders in Norway prepared for the realization of the curriculum reform (LK20). The paper concentrates on preliminary steps of planning taken in schools. We investigate how the school leaders dealt with this preparatory phase, how they interpreted the policy intention of the reform in the planning procedures and what tensions may have appeared in the planning processes. Interviews and video-observations form the data for the study. Findings show that the school leaders interpret the policy intentions by acting as narrators enforcing meaning of the reform policy demands that connects to the schools’ organizational context. The planning process includes recycling of previous plans, and tensions represent possibilities for developing practices where the school leaders provide counter-discourses.

Authors

• Ann Elisabeth Gunnulfsen, University of Oslo

• Jeffrey Brooks Hall, University of Oslo