Conference Agenda

This project explores antiracism as a dynamic curriculum practice. Antiracism practice is examined by focusing on how the interplay and tensions between discursive patterns and resistance manifest. The study follows a strand of curriculum research that engages with critical perspectives on the structural ideologies that curricula reproduce, as well as possibilities for transformation (see Schubert, 2018). Scholars have previously problematised how normalised discourses on what is “good” and desirable in European societies tend to reproduce problematic ideas about equality and people(s) (Hübinette and Lundström 2014). This study delves into this issue and explores various perspectives on racism and combating racism within antiracism practice, across the school as an institution.

By highlighting challenges and possibilities within teaching specifically, the study contributes to another, related strand of curriculum research. This strand explores pedagogical opportunities of European dimensions in education, while also considering potential dangers (see Philippou, 2005). The study contributes to this strand by examining the topic of colonialism in teaching, more specifically (cf. Araújo and Maeso, 2012; Jore, 2019; Nagre, 2025). As the study problematises, antiracism practice, partly connected to the topic of colonialism, is characterised by intersecting interests such as social justice, economic development, educational assessment, and friendships.

The project is guided by the overarching question: How is antiracism practised through discursive interplays in a Swedish compulsory school? To study this, the research questions are divided into three questions:

• How do students describe racism and antiracism?
• How are racism and antiracism displayed in relevant documents and classroom practice?
• What do students express about this classroom practice and the school practice in general regarding antiracism? What opportunities and limitations do students identify?

Theories on curriculum making (Priestley et al., 2021) and critical discourse analysis (Simpson et al., 2018) contribute to the theoretical framework, emphasising curriculum sites of activity and agency. The presentation specifically addresses how antiracism discourse spans the national curriculum, a teacher’s lessons related to racism, and students’ everyday life in school. Power is understood as routines and language sustained through discourse—in this case, antiracism discourse—and appears as natural and commonsense. The study explores discourse strategies and their links to ideology and resistance in antiracism discourse shaped through curriculum making. Some strategies are analysed as denials of racism, reflecting an ideology that reproduces racism structurally and often unintentionally characterises antiracism discourse in Sweden (Habel, 2012). This ideology manifests in expressions and practices of silencing, minimising, and denying racism, which uphold privileges for those who conform to white norms (cf. van Dijk, 1992; Bonilla-Silva, 2014; Lipsitz, 2019). Other strategies are analysed as discourse resistance to the denial of racism and offer insights into potentials for future antiracism efforts. They also represent possible ideologies of antiracism.

In this paper we present findings of a four-year curriculum study which has provided new insights into how Indigenous Knowledges and ways of knowing interface with western education systems and the curriculum produced and valued within such systems. In our multidimensional research project, we have empirically investigated the long-documented challenges that teachers, school leaders and policy makers encounter when attempting to include Indigenous content in their classroom curriculum; these challenges persist despite there being mandated content provided within the official curriculum as is the case in systems like Australia. The project has filled a critical knowledge gap within the curriculum field by delivering a comprehensive empirical understanding of teachers’ approaches, attitudes, and capabilities regarding their teaching of Indigenous curriculum content. With little evidence available on ‘how’ this content can be effectively planned for and taught in situ, or the values, attitudes and beliefs of teachers across different disciplines that influence the effective uptake of this content, there has been limited focus on identifying, or indeed redressing, the issues impacting teacher practices in this work and how these factors influence student learning experiences.

We use the case of Australia, which has a national curriculum with dedicated and mandated Indigenous content included as a cross-curriculum priority, meaning this content sits horizontally across eight school subjects. Thus, the study has implications for other systems where there is necessary impetus to provide culturally inclusive curriculum. By focusing on how teachers understand the task of teaching Indigenous content in the science and history secondary curriculum, we have built an evidence base to better understand how teachers plan for the incorporation of Indigenous content in their classrooms, and, in particular, how the disciplinary structures of curricula impact teachers’ practices, as well as hamper or support their capacities to foster genuine engagement with Indigenous content for their Indigenous students, and their non-Indigenous peers.

The study was framed by the following research questions:

RQ1: What does the positioning of Indigenous content within the official curriculum disclose about the evident epistemic, cognitive and socio-political inter-relationships?

RQ2: How do teachers’ personal beliefs and values impact on ‘how’ and ‘why’ they prioritise, plan, teach and assess Indigenous content?

RQ3: How do disciplinary structures impact on ‘how’ teachers are able to interpret, prioritise, plan, teach and assess Indigenous content across different curriculum areas?

The Australian education context is a cautionary tale for other culturally diverse contexts. Including Indigenous content in the curriculum has been a major policy initiative of successive governments in Australia for more than four decades. These moves have been a legitimate part of (perhaps) well-intentioned attempts to simultaneously improve schooling outcomes of First Nations’ students and supporting national reconciliation more broadly. The inclusion of this content is thus designed to achieve the dual goals of engaging First Nations students in schooling and improving the knowledges that non-Indigenous young people have about the rich First Nations’ Australian cultures and knowledges. However, evidence has demonstrated that despite its inclusion in the official curriculum, Indigenous content has largely failed to resonate within local school curricula. To date, educational authorities have largely responded to this problem through standardisation, developing decontextualized Indigenous curriculum content that removes the need to localise learning (Harrison et.al., 2019). We would argue that standardizing curriculum removes the nexus between Indigenous content and local communities and pays insufficient attention to how content is instantiated in classrooms Our point is that despite the official inclusion of First Nations’ content, the barriers teachers face in developing coherent programs and approaches that specifically address the needs and aspirations of First Nations’ young people and their families and communities have not been removed.

Across Europe and beyond, happiness and wellbeing have become central reference points in contemporary educational policy and curriculum reform. International frameworks such as the OECD’s work on student wellbeing and initiatives like Happy Schools promote happiness, wellbeing, and resilience as key educational goals that can be fostered and embedded within schooling (OECD, 2013; OECD, 2024; UNESCO, 2016). While these developments respond to pressing societal concerns, they also raise fundamental questions about the nature of educational aims and the forms of knowledge through which these aims are articulated and governed.

This paper approaches happiness not primarily as a psychological outcome, but as an educational ideal with a long and complex history. Its immediate point of departure is the subject Glück (Fritz-Schubert, 2012) and the ongoing debate in Germany. In some schools, Glück has been introduced as an explicit subject or curricular focus, framed as an innovative response to contemporary wellbeing challenges. Rather than evaluating this subject as a curricular model, the paper uses it as an entry for a broader theoretical inquiry into the implications of institutionalising happiness as an educational aim.

Taking the German notion of Glück as an analytical starting point, the study examines how ideas of happiness have been conceptualised within pedagogical theories over time and how these conceptions are transformed when happiness is translated into curricular goals in contemporary wellbeing discourses. The objective of the paper is to clarify the epistemic and normative assumptions underlying current approaches to happiness in education and to reflect on their implications for curriculum theory in international contexts.

The paper is guided by the following overarching research question:
How has happiness functioned as an educational ideal within pedagogical thought, and what epistemic shifts occur when happiness is translated into a curricular goal in contemporary educational discourse?

This question is further specified by asking:

• How have pedagogical theories historically conceptualised happiness in relation to education, subjectivity, and society?
• Which continuities and ruptures become visible when these conceptions are systematically related?
• What implications do these transformations have for current curriculum debates on wellbeing and educational aims?

The theoretical framework of the study is grounded in educational philosophy and curriculum theory. Drawing on the tradition of German educational theory, education is understood as a normative and reflexive practice rather than as a purely instrumental process (Benner, 1989). Educational ideals such as happiness are therefore not treated as fixed concepts, but as historically situated orientations whose meanings emerge in relation to broader educational, philosophical, and socio-political contexts.
Within this framework, contemporary wellbeing discourses—such as positive education, resilience programmes, and happiness-oriented curricula—are situated within a longer educational tradition that includes classical references to Aristotelian eudaimonia as well as modern pedagogical theories of Bildung (MacIntyre, 2007). While contemporary approaches frequently invoke ideas of flourishing, the paper argues that these references often involve selective and decontextualised appropriations. Ethical, political, and educational contexts in which these concepts originally functioned are frequently omitted, resulting in a transformation of happiness from a shared normative educational orientation into an empirically measurable construct of individual optimisation.

By critically examining the curricularisation of happiness, the paper contributes to European and international debates on educational aims, wellbeing education, and curriculum reform. Using nationally situated developments as a theoretically informed point of entry, the study highlights how educational ideals circulate across policy contexts shaped by OECD and UNESCO discourses (OECD, 2013; UNESCO, 2016). Rather than proposing a specific model of wellbeing education, the paper provides conceptual resources for rethinking how happiness and wellbeing are framed and justified in contemporary educational systems.