Umeå University's logo

The aim of this study is to contribute with knowledge about the negotiations behind formulating part four of the Swedish curriculum Lgr 11, with a focus on pedagogical codes and power relations between school and school-age educare (SAE), as well as the negotiations that are expressed when the curriculum text is interpreted and realised in SAE practice.

To reach this aim, parts of Bernstein’s code theory is used. The strength/weakness of the classification and framing of a pedagogical practice constitutes an important basic structure in what Bernstein calls the pedagogical code (Bernstein, 2000). 

In the formulation arena, a thematic analysis was conducted on comments in working-documents, to identify the major negotiations throughout the formulation process. In the realisation arena, interviews with principals and staff were conducted in six SAEs, to capture unique features and identify common patterns both of interpretation of the curriculum text, and how the curriculum was realised in SAE practice.

The results show that the comments indicate that the commenters perceived the proposal texts as too strongly educational-pedagogically coded, and during the formulation process they influenced the text so that its social-pedagogical and leisure-pedagogical coding was reinforced to some extent.

In the realisation arena, the acceptance of the strongly educational-pedagogical coded concept of teaching was greater than in the comment material. In particular, staff with pedagogical education at university level with a focus on SAE had reinterpreted the concept of teaching and given it a wider meaning so that it better suited their social-pedagogically and leisure-pedagogically coded practices. The introduction of the curriculum text had also contributed to increased legitimacy for the SAE practice and strengthened the SAE staff in their professional role. However, frame factors like the organisation of the practices, the access to shared planning time, the access to their own premises, and whether the staff had educational training at university level with a focus on SAE affected the staff's ability to carry out the teaching as outlined in part four. Unequal power relations between SAEs and schools emerged in both the formulation arena and the realisation arena, and the weaker classified and framed SAE was often subordinated to the more strongly classified and framed school in the realisation arena.

This shows that the formulation and realisation of a curriculum text is a complex process and that there are negotiations in the realisation arena about how the formulated curriculum can be interpreted and realised in pedagogical practice. Those who are supposed to interpret and realise the curriculum in practice, work in contexts characterised by pedagogical traditions and under different conditions, which means that a curriculum text receives somewhat different interpretations and is therefore realised in different ways in different practices.