Conference Agenda

In many countries, curricula operate with various descriptions of student mastery (Højgaard & Sølberg, 2023). However, curricula descriptions of mastery differ, through various use of terms like competences, skills, and knowledge. Of the three terms, competences represent a clear ambition to set student mastery as a goal for education (Højgaard & Sølberg, 2023). Major international organisations, including the OECD, UNESCO, the World Bank, and the European Commission, promote a competence-based educational orientation which especially influenced European curricula, peaking in the early 2000s (Tahirsylaj & Sundberg, 2020).

Consequently, competence has become a central organising concept in many primary and lower secondary curricula (e.g. Education Scotland, 2009; Gordon et al., 2014; Ministry of Education and Research, 2019), although no consensus exists regarding the meaning of the term (Ropohl et al., 2018; Tahirsylaj & Sundberg 2020; Christiansen, 2025). In other curricula terms such as skills or capabilities (e.g. in England and Australia) are used in ways that arguably reflect similar competence-oriented intentions (Anderson Levitt, 2017).

Naturally, science education has likewise adopted competence-based goals, though with substantial variation across countries (e.g. Waddington et al., 2007; Mathelitsch, 2013). In Denmark, the compulsory primary and lower secondary science curricula are organised around four competence goals (Ministry of Children and Education, 2019):

1) Inquiry competence – the ability to design, conduct, and evaluate inquiries/investigations in biology, physics/chemistry, and geography;

2) Modelling competence – the ability to apply and critically assess models within biology, physics/chemistry, and geography;

3) Perspective-taking competence – the ability to relate biology, physics/chemistry, and geography to societal and environmental contexts, and to connect subject content to the development of scientific understanding; and

4) Communication competence – the ability to communicate scientific issues within biology, physics/chemistry, and geography

The curricula emphasise that competence exceeds the mere accumulation of knowledge and skills. It includes the capacity to independently and responsibly reflect on their application in specific science related situations, thereby enabling critical thinking and informed action (Ministry of Children and Education, 2019).

According to an executive order from the Ministry of Children and Education, primary and lower secondary students should come to recognise science and technology as part of culture and worldview, strengthen their sense of responsibility toward nature and resource use, and develop confidence in their ability to take a stance and act (Ministry of Children and Education, 2024).

Especially, the ability to act is a central goal in Danish primary and lower secondary competence-oriented curricula, with an underlying competence definition comparable to that of Adelsberger et al. (2008), who describe competence as “the ability to act in unknown areas, using knowledge, skills, and attitudes” (p. 4070). Thus, competence concerns the ability to respond appropriately to challenges in both familiar and unfamiliar contexts. It is performance based and reflected in observable actions and choices. Being competent requires not only qualification but also the willingness and ability to apply one’s qualifications.

These four areas of science competence constitute the framework Danish primary and lower secondary teachers are required to work with. However, competence-oriented teaching appears challenging for both teachers and students (Christiansen, 2025). To better understand the roots of these challenges, this study examined, through interviews, students’ and teachers’ perceptions of science and science education in relation to formal science competence goals, pursuing the following questions:

1. What do students and teachers say about science competence and what it means to be good at science?

2. To what extent is there alignment between the official science curricula's description of educational goals and teachers’ and their students’ perceptions of educational goals, and to what extent would possible differences pose a problem?

The dilemmas and challenges of curriculum reform concern 1. the document itself (national curricular framework) and the process of “curriculum development “, as well as 2. its implementation into practice – broader “curriculum making” taking place in schools and other settings (Priestley & Philippou, 2018) and 3. other aspects of the educational system and the wider social situation that can function as enabler or barrier of the reform. Of course, these aspects cannot be completely separated in practice; however, in this paper I focus mainly on various aspects related to the design and development of the document itself. As international comparisons show, it is very difficult to find a balance between having too much or too little specifications in the curriculum. While an overloaded curriculum limits teachers’ flexibility, reducing content too much can mean that students aren’t guaranteed access to important knowledge and skills, exaggerating the injustice. "Specificity about what is to be learned in a curriculum is important for clarity, progression, and equality. Systems which have less-specific curricula have experienced teacher confusion, increased workload, inequalities between schools, and difficulties with student progression at transitions. “ (Crehan et al., 2025) This paper shows the difficulty of finding the optimal form of a national curriculum in a post-socialist context.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR) in 1991, fifteen independent states emerged across a vast territory covering approximately one-sixth of the world’s land surface. These states inherited a common educational legacy shaped by the late Soviet model of general and higher education, characterized by a highly centralized national curriculum, narrow specialization, tuition-free education at all levels, and guaranteed—yet compulsory—employment for graduates. Over the subsequent three decades, however, the political trajectories, social structures, and educational policies of these former “brotherly” nations have diverged significantly.

The challenges of schooling and curriculum reform in post-socialist countries continue to stimulate the development of educational theory and research (Goodson & Mikser, 2023; Silova et al., 2017). One of the major issues concerns the reliability and interpretation of data and sources.

During the Soviet period, educational research tended to idealize socialist education and emphasize its supposed superiority over Western systems. While traces of this perspective persist, recent literature often reflects the opposite tendency, emphasizing systemic deficiencies in ways that may serve to justify international development assistance. Simplified negative portrayals of the Soviet curriculum model frequently emerge within this discourse.

While Central European countries that were Soviet satellites experienced a shorter period of communist rule and retained greater curricular continuity and autonomy, former Soviet republics faced a higher level of curricular harmonization and a more complex post-Soviet transformation.

Focusing on Georgia, this study highlights the complexities of curriculum development in a conflict-torn country and examines the ongoing search for balance between school and teacher autonomy and the structured guidance provided by the national curriculum. It also illustrates the ambiguous effects of importing international models of curriculum, teaching, and assessment into the post-Soviet context.

In 2009, a longitudinal study by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) revealed a significant misalignment between Irish post-primary education and student needs. At the time, the three-year Junior Cycle mirrored the Senior Cycle: a collection of siloed subjects assessed by a centralised, terminal examination (Smyth, 2009). This “Junior Cert" model exerted a negative backwash effect on the purpose, processes, and practices of schooling (Doyle, 2019). Following disappointing PISA results in 2009, macro-actors sought a radical departure from this state-certified, examination-led status quo (Perkins et al., 2011).

The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) responded by designing a lower-secondary framework vastly different from previous iterations. This new ideology prioritised student learning and holistic development through an overarching framework of 24 statements of learning, eight principles, and eight key skills (NCCA, 2012). Crucially, it championed a constructivist pedagogy (Vygotsky, 1978), moving away from rigid syllabi toward subject specifications defined by learning outcomes. Assessment was no longer about performance but about supporting learning. This policy shift demanded that teachers evolve from curriculum "deliverers" to curriculum "makers", an aspiration that proved premature, resulting in a hybridized approach to design. Instead of a pure transition to a constructivist, student-centred model, what emerged was a mixture of epistemologies and curriculum paradigms (Gleeson, Doyle & O’Neill, 2025).

Over the last decade, Irish upper-secondary reform has adopted a "backward design" approach, informed by these previous curriculum reform cycles. To avoid a disruptive overhaul, and acknowledging the immense pressure of the high-stakes Leaving Certificate, the NCCA began by rejuvenating subject specifications through learning outcomes. However, the recent introduction of a "content column" alongside these outcomes suggests a regression toward "teacher-proof" lists and a behaviourist model of delivery. While these pre-determined outcomes offer a form of contractual certainty for high-stakes examinations, they simultaneously highlight the friction between reformist ideals and the systemic weight of traditional assessment.

This paper investigates the perspectives of key macro-actors: the Department of Education (DoE), the NCCA, and the State Examinations Commission (SEC), on the curriculum-making process and endeavours to signpost issues that hinder and assist changemakers in bringing about reform. Specifically, it explores how the decision to utilise pre-determined learning outcomes influenced curriculum making during the Junior Cycle reform and how those implications are now manifesting at the Senior Cycle. Our research asks: What were the rationale and implications, from the perspectives of macro-stakeholders, for introducing learning outcomes in recent post-primary reform? In the landscape of Irish education, progress is rarely linear; it is often a series of calculated retreats and advances.

The theoretical framework in this study is based on Haraway’s (2016) concept of Speculative Fabulation which prompts us to search for the ideas, thoughts and knowledge behind the dominant narratives of learning outcomes. The framework understands that different patterns of threads are made and unmade as curriculum develops at different points in time, they are passed on in different twists that require ‘passion and action, holding still and moving, anchoring and launching’ which allow the actors to render each other capable by becoming-with each other within each pattern. Curriculum making through this lens is a practice and a process of becoming-with, and the way to map it in order to learn from the process is to unpick the threads in order to see ‘what thoughts think thoughts’, because this matters. The thread that an actor brings to the table in curriculum making is never what they leave the table with, it is within the encounter with others that the curriculum is conceived, developed and made.