Curriculum and Narrativity: Understanding Curricula as Narratives

Narrativity of curricula is gaining increasing interest from curriculum researchers. We argue that narratives serve important roles in human sense-making and learning. Consequently, it is important to understand the narrative messages of curricula to teachers and young people. We discuss four types of narratives in the current curricula, namely grand narratives, such as the Bildung theory in the Finnish core curriculum and the Pancasila in the Indonesian curriculum. We also discuss narratives of phenomena, narrativity of the competence-based curricula, and cultural narratives. As an example, we describe how Sámi education is described in the Nordic curricula. It is evident that curricula are narrative in many respects. Narratives can also be restricted, based on limited scientific foundation, ethically limited, or unfair. It is important that those narratives are societally discussed and accepted as the basis for education.