Conference Agenda

This paper seeks to describes inclusive micro curriculum-making practices during a teacher collaborative inquiry project in the Chilean context.

Inclusive education is a cornerstone of European and international educational policy and the core of worldwide agreements for education for all (Ainscow, 2020). This study defines inclusive education as a political and societal project of transformation (Slee, 2011) which seeks to assure the presence, participation and progress of all students (Echeita, 2019), promoting collaborative values for living together (Booth, 2018) driven by the principles of social justice (Sandoval Mena & Waitoller, 2022). Also, it represents an acknowledgement of the unequal structural and social relationships that frame and produce education exclusion as a substantial curriculum issue (Slee, 2019). Accordingly, inclusive education would be a constituted piece of education and, hence, an embedded element in curriculum development indicated by Priestley and Philippou (2019) as "the heart of the schooling".

However, the concept of an inclusive curriculum has been vaguely developed, limiting inclusion mainly just as an adjustment for students who are labelled as "different" (Nind, 2005) or as an orientation (Opertti & Brady, 2011) to the curriculum. This may partly be explained by a bulk of research that continues positioning inclusive education as a technical issue centred on students' deficits (Artiles, 2020), restricting a broad and comprehensive perspective to theoretical aspects (Amor et al., 2019).

At the same time, these conceptions involve the comprehension of curriculum as a prescription, which needs to be implemented or delivered by teachers and, therefore, adapted for those who do not fit into it. Following this vein, Deng (2020) argues that the curriculum discussion should go back to the content not as part of the learning discourse and focus on the academic outcomes necessary but on the purposes of education. An inclusive curriculum, therefore, would imply an ideology compromised with transforming society (Schiro, 2013) that would start with the recognition that education could reproduce social inequalities (Apple, 1990). From there, a broader understanding of curriculum development is needed to develop an inclusive curriculum, as exclusion is not just taught from the explicit, but also from the hidden (Kashimiro, 2000). In this way, efforts to develop an inclusive curriculum should be put into the day-by-day generation of knowledge in the classrooms in which inclusion- but also exclusion- is embodied.

Priestley et al. (2021) conceptualise curriculum-making as a social practice involving different practices that occur across multiple layered "sites of activity" subjected to diverse forms of influence. This model considers curriculum-making as a systemic activity undertaken by many social actors involving the production of various artefacts and practices. From this framework, teachers are curriculum makers, considering that curriculum is always interpreted by teachers and influenced by their beliefs, experiences, and aspirations (Rosiek & Clandinin, 2016). In that regard, inclusive curriculum-making would need teachers' development that emphasises their knowledge framed for the social context in which education occurs, problematising exclusionary logic (Allan, 2003).

From the pioneering work of Stenhouse (1975) in Europe, the teacher as a researcher has been positioned as a vein to foster curriculum decision-making addressing the particular context where teachers work (Craig, 2009). In that regard, collaborative inquiry as cyclical and dialogical practice (DeLuca et al., 2015) through teachers' reflexivity provides a starting point to make an inclusive curriculum, understanding critical teaching as a dynamic dialectic between doing and thinking about the doing (Freire, 2012).

This paper explores how local vocational education and training (VET) curricula is ‘made’ within two different types of vocational colleges in Sweden: Technical College (TC) and Health and Social care College (HSC). We present preliminary results from an ongoing pilot study on local VET curriculum making focusing on what is considered necessary knowledge and aspects of how the educations are gender-coded. Upper secondary schools stand for the provision of VET according to the national curricula, and TC and HSC were introduced a couple of decades ago to increase young people’s interest for a vocational career and to strengthen the influence of labour market institutions on VET programmes (Fredriksson & Stier, 2014; Hermelin & Rusten, 2016; Olofsson & Panican, 2020). Today they have a central role for accrediting schools, consisting of a national organisation but with locally organised steering groups of representatives from schools, employer organisations, industry, unions, and regions. However, we have limited knowledge about how the required knowledge and competences for the labour market are defined and formulated in these local arenas and what implications it has for teaching (Alvunger, 2024).

In international research, scholars have identified both advantages and risks with local partnerships between industries and schools. When partners interests, commitments and views on curricula are aligned, local partnerships may thrive (Huddleston & Laczik, 2018), but the co-operations may be vulnerable due to incompatible interests or economic changes (Ehlen, van der Klink & Boshuizen, 2016), and conflicting ideas on curricula, leading to ‘dead ends’ for the students and difficulties for the students to be employed (Hodgson & Spours, 2015). In the Swedish context, we know that relationships between industry and schools in the local community effect students’ vocational learning (Persson Thunqvist & Gustavsson, 2021), but know the less about how local actors are makers of VET curricula. Vocational educations are positioned in a kind of borderland between school and working life (Broberg 2014; Mårtensson, 2021) where they on the one hand are supposed to provide relevant competence for the labour market (Panican & Paul, 2019) while they on the other hand, as all upper secondary education, shall contribute to young people’s possibilities to independently influence and shape their lives as members of society (Rosvall & Nylund, 2022). These separate logics of school education and working life are not easily reconciled (Johansson, 2019; Jørgensen, 2004) and creates tensions and conflicts of interests on local level (Köpsén, 2022; Nilsson, 2015).

The analysis is based on a theoretical framework of curriculum making as social practice, which means that curriculum is something that is ’made’ and created in interactions between ideas, actors, and contexts across different layers of the education system (Alvunger et al, 2021). The analytical focus is on what is referred to as the meso-, micro-, and nano-levels (Priestley et al, 2021), with the aim of analyzing how different actors assess and define knowledge in various contexts (local steering groups and classrooms). To analyse how necessary knowledge for the students are defined and valued in different regulatory documents and contexts where VET curricula and teaching is discussed and negotiated, Bernstein’s (2000) concept ’discursive gap’ is employed. This may involve how local steering groups respond to policy pressures related to skills supply and labor market needs. In turn, school principals and vocational teachers (micro-level) work with but also make concerning activities to achieve set goals – frameworks for organizing teaching, and selection of content and knowledge for instruction. In the classroom (nano-level), vocational teachers and vocational students create different ‘curriculum events’ (Doyle, 1992) through pedagogical interaction, actively shaping the curriculum in teaching (Priestley et al., 2021).

In recent years, as part of a global shift reflecting policy-borrowing, many countries have reimagined their national curricula, fostering 21st-century skills, student-centred learning, and innovative pedagogical approaches to improve student performance and enhance teacher agency. This study aligns with the ECER conference theme 'Education in an Age of Uncertainty: memory and hope for the future' by focusing on these widespread curriculum reforms' impact on teacher agency, particularly exploring how such changes shape teachers' roles in a landscape marked by past practices, present adaptations, and hopes for future educational resilience (Priestley & Biesta, 2013; Sinnema and Aitken, 2013; Lingard, 2021).

The most recent major iteration of curriculum reform within the state of Georgia has been structured and implemented with a specific emphasis on these particular areas, which is an unprecedented occurrence in the history of education in this country (Silagadze, 2019; Li et al., 2019; Djakeli, 2019; Erickson, 2017). Since Georgia is treading in uncharted waters with these changes, it remains uncertain as to the effects these structural shifts are having on the teaching profession and the extent to which they are fulfilling one of their stated objectives of enhancing teacher’s role in curriculum-making. This study aims to provide an in-depth evaluation of the ways in which the ongoing re-structurisation of the Georgian National Curriculum for Primary and Secondary schools enable or constrain teachers as curricular agents.

The central research question the thesis intends to answer is the following: Do the recent changes in the Georgian National Curriculum enable or constrain teacher agency?

The study also aims to answer the following subsidiary research questions:

- How does curriculum-making take place across different institutional sites in Georgia (from macro to nano)?

- How is teacher agency articulated in Georgia’s National Curriculum and associated texts?

- How do teachers perceive and exercise their agency in the classroom within the frames of the new National Curriculum?

- Overall, do the recent changes in the Georgian National Curriculum enable or constrain teacher agency?

The study will draw upon the conceptual lens developed by Priestley and Philippou (2018, p. 154) that regards curriculum-making as a complex series of processes taking place across multiple sites that intersect and interact with one another in ‘unpredictable and context-specific ways’, often leading to differential practices and realities ‘wherein power flows in non-linear ways, thus blurring boundaries between these multiple sites.’

This will enable a systemic understanding of curriculum-making as dynamic interactions ranging from individual pupils and teachers (nano) to the international layer (supra). Further, this conceptual framework will enable an in-depth examination of how different actors interact across multiple sites with a particular focus on teachers as curriculum makers and therefore as agentic practitioners within the context of the new National Curriculum. The study will rely on the ecological model of teacher agency consisting of three core dimensions: Iterational, projective and practical-evaluative (Biesta et al. 2015). The three-dimensional model will facilitate an understanding of how teacher agency is enabled and/or constrained by cultural, structural and material sources available in multiple sites of curriculum-making in Georgia. Further, the ecological approach to teacher agency will enable to explore how teachers interpret and execute the new curriculum in ways that may contradict policy goals, and if such actions result in a discrepancy between intended and actual outcomes, as well as unforeseen consequences.