State-based curriculum-making: approaches to local curriculum work in Norway and Finland

This article investigates how state authorities in Norway and Finland design national curriculum to provide different policy conditions for local curriculum work in municipalities and schools. The topic is explored by comparing how national authorities in Norway and Finland create a scope for local curriculum. The data consist of interviews with educational administrators as well as curricula documents and guidance material from the national level. The findings indicate two ways that state-based curriculum-making can provide conditions for control. In Finland, local curriculum work is constructed as a pedagogical process for developing local curriculum. In Norway, local curriculum work is constructed as a process for applying and thereby delivering the national curriculum. This illuminates that forms of state-based curriculum imply various ways of local curriculum control.