ABSTRACT
Attempts at theorising and systematising the late- and post-socialist educational and curriculum transition started as soon as the necessary time had elapsed for a thorough deliberation of the reforms. An influential systemic narrative was obviously necessary to gain public and political acceptance of the idea that teachers as a professional group were in need of substantial reform. Politicising education and curriculum issues has been considered to be an essential component of cultivating the neoliberal version of democracy, both in the global South and in the former socialist European countries. As Wolfgang Mitter observes, the ‘models of periodisation’ extended from ‘the assumption of linear progress derived from modernity theory and claiming universal validity’ to the direct ‘historical actuality of the post-communist region of Eastern and Central Europe’. Although many country-specific variations were inherited from the socialist period and before, curriculum transition has followed a similar pattern in most of the ex-socialist European countries.
