Grammar school curricula in multilingual Switzerland: a subject-specific analysis of educational goals, transdisciplinary and disciplinary competences exemplified by economic education

Abstract

Curriculum design is influenced by education policy guidelines and subject-specific conceptions. This article examines grammar school curricula in Switzerland in an exemplary mode for economic education. The comparison takes into account educational goals, transdisciplinary and disciplinary competences. We compiled a representative document corpus, qualitatively analysed the textual data and compared it along structural characteristics (subject category, curriculum language). Our results show to what extent curricula follow different subject-specific conceptions and linguistic-cultural traditions. These findings may guide curriculum analyses of other grammar school subjects and the future curriculum design, especially in the domain of economic education.