Defining curriculum policy through slogans

A Royal Commission on Education recommended extensive changes to schooling in the province of British Columbia. Out of these recommendations arose a curriculum policy for guiding school programmes and student assessment over the next decade. This paper describes the context and production of this policy, and argues that it was characterized in large part by a system of vague slogans. One of these slogans ‐ integration ‐ took on particular significance because it was debated widely by educators, and was not clarified very well in subsequent curriculum documents. Some of the reasons for the emergence of this slogan and its consequences for developing new school programmes in the province are analysed.