The emergent curriculum: navigating a complex course between unguided learning and planned enculturation

Although systemic reform seems to be a broadly accepted framework for educational change, concrete reform projects still face the uncertainty of how to meet the necessary requirements. This paper considers the case of a curriculum reform process in primary mathematics education that has a focus on the involvement and influence of parents. The data consists of a short address to the parents of first‐graders printed in the teacher’s version of a textbook. In this address, the parents are introduced to the new concept of active‐explorative learning and allocated a specific role within the process of change. By means of discourse analysis and the sociological ideas of exclusion/inclusion, autonomy, and expert/non‐technical discourse, the long‐term consequences of the social role assigned to parents in the programme is discussed.