The paper describes aspects and dilemmas concerning streaming of students according to ability in an ongoing developmental project in a small town in Norway. The project is part of a governmental effort to implement the New Norwegian curricula plan "Kunnskapsløftet1". This new plan introduces streaming of students, which is new in the Norwegian school context. The data presented are from focus groups involving teachers in which ideological conflicts are identified.
This article traces the travelling of neo-liberal learning discourses through and between international and local political documents and practices. It does so by focusing on professionalism in Norway's Early Childhood Education and Care. The investigation explores how particular discourses are taken up, merged and transformed in relation to the Norwegian tradition of child-centred pedagogy. Here, neo-liberal discourses can be seen as travelling through political and economic policies, as identified in documents and white papers produced locally and centrally. This travelling is further traced through the discursive positioning of professional pedagogues, as they talk about children's transition from ' barnehage1' (kindergarten) to school. The analysis shows how neo-liberal learning discourses appropriate and merge with traditional Nordic discourses of self-responsibility and independence, regulating spaces for professional positions in new, largely unnoticed ways in Norway.
