‘Same, same, but different?!’ Investigating diversity issues in the current Austrian National Curriculum for Physical Education

Abstract

Discussions on educational policy are shaped by current societal transformations associated with diversity. At the same time, the most recent reform of the Austrian National Curriculum for Physical Education (NCPE) was driven by the desire to stipulate standardised learning outcomes. Building upon Bernstein's framework, this paper explores to what extent issues of diversity are addressed in curricular documents, which inform and structure teaching and learning processes. Based on a qualitative content analysis, the General National Curriculum (GNC) and the latest NCPE were investigated. In a two-stage process, combining predetermined and emerging coding, significant themes were developed throughout the data analysis process. The findings demonstrate differing understandings of what diversity means and how it should be taken into consideration, indicating a less comprehensive way in the NCPE compared to the GNC. Since a uniform understanding of diversity is missing, this ambiguity fails to comply with a NC’s function to act as a systematic framework for teachers. There is friction at the level of education policy, as the NCPE should both reflect generally acknowledged societal transformations associated with diversity and be standardised at the same time. The paper concludes that future curriculum reforms should specifically address diversity-sensitive teaching and learning within the subject in a more comprehensive way, interlink the GNC and NCPE precisely and rethink the tension between diversity and standardisation in the NCPE.