Upgraded curriculum? An analysis of knowledge boundaries in teaching under the Swedish subject‐based curriculum*

This article offers a contribution to the current debate about knowledge and the curriculum, especially initiated by social realist writers. The enacted Swedish subject‐based curriculum for compulsory schooling is examined and is also used as a significant case with the aim of discussing practical implications of social realist claims regarding knowledge and the curriculum. Video‐recorded lessons from grade six in six different Swedish schools, in combination with teacher interviews, are explored within the scope of a curriculum theory framework with the purpose of illuminating dominant patterns of knowledge boundaries and knowledge conceptions. The study shows how the Swedish subject‐based curriculum frames teaching in a direction where a disciplinary knowledge conception with fixed knowledge boundaries predominates over other knowledge forms. The subject‐based curriculum also appears to produce an ‘overloading’ of content, which implies that pupils’ questions and experiences are avoided and dismissed in the teaching practice.