| Summary: | The aim of the study is to analyze how the concept of responsibility is used within Swedish and Finnish educational discourse. The basic claim is that the concept of responsibility has many different meanings, which makes it problematic to use as a guideline for teaching practices, as well as understanding what values actually are foundational. Using the discourse theory and method of Ernesto Laclau combined with theoretical insights of Bauman, Habermas, Foucault, Rose, Piaget and Säljö, eight different curricula published between 1994-2015 are analyzed. The main conclusions of the study is that the concept of responsibility in some aspects has remained the same and changed in others. The trend of responsibility as something that is primarily linked to the individual rather than the group, has been persistent throughout. In Swedish curricula, however, responsibility has become more synonymous with what Rose and Foucault calls governmentality, and in Finnish curricula, the concept of responsibility has become more diversified and has obtained a distinct link to collective and democratic values and practices. In my concluding remarks I ask whether it would be better to limit the language use of responsibility as to decrease the confusion. I also state that Laclau’s discourse theory is useful for analyzing curricula, however, it contains deficiencies in terms of grasping the relationship between economy and educational discourse.
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