Table of Contents

Introduction: Teachers matter – but how? 1. Bearing witness to teaching and teachers 2. Global injustice, pedagogy and democratic iterations: some reflections on why teachers matter 3. Talking about education: exploring the significance of teachers’ talk for teacher agency 4. Curriculum policy reform in an era of technical accountability: ‘fixing’ curriculum, teachers and students in English schools 5. Accountability and control in American schools 6. Enacted realities in teachers’ experiences: bringing materialism into pragmatism

About the Author

Ninni Wahlström is Professor of Education at Linnæus University, Sweden. Her current research focuses on transnational and national policy discourses and their implications for national curriculum and classroom teaching from a perspective of critical curriculum theory. She is also interested in educational philosophy and theory, specifically in pragmatism. She is the author of Transnational curriculum standards and classroom practices: The new meaning of teaching (with Daniel Sundberg, 2017).


Daniel Alvunger is a Senior Lecturer in Education in the Department of Pedagogy and Learning at Linnæus University, Sweden. He is a member of the Studies in Curriculum, Teaching and Evaluation research group and his research concerns curriculum theory with a special focus on the complex and intertwined relations between transnational policy, national educational and curriculum reforms and the implications of reforms in local schools. His interests also include curriculum innovation, school development and educational leadership.


Daniel Sundberg is Professor of Education at Linnæus University, Sweden, where he is the co-leader of the Studies in Curriculum, Teaching and Evaluation research group. His main field of research is education reforms, curriculum and teaching, where changes over time and place in what counts as knowledge are central. More recently, he has investigated changing relations between educational research, politics of education and teaching practices from historical and comparative perspectives.