Talk, decisions, and action in curriculum-making: reflections on the ILS and L97 case studies

Previous papers in this issue of JCS have presented case studies of the state-based curriculum commissions that developed the Illinois Learning Standards of 1997 and Norway’s Læreplanverket 1997 (L97) (1997). The studies were developed using as a framework a body of German research that sees state-based curriculum-making as a tool for managing the interface between school systems and states’ publics and politics. The principal question for this cross-case analysis is the portability of the German framework to the ILS and L97 cases. There many features of the two cases that do mirror the characteristics of Germany’s state-based curriculum-making, which leaves the questions ‘How, when and why was this transnational model of state-based curriculum-making invented?’