From Resistance to Agency: Defining and Unfolding a Curriculum Design Space for Future Capability Development

This chapter explores the reinterpretation of curriculum design space for implementing transformative graduate capabilities in higher education (HE). Using the development and implementation of the Nordic Nine (NN) graduate capabilities at Copenhagen Business School as a case study, it formulates an approach for supporting and guiding faculty’s NN implementation that could also apply to other HE contexts. The educational developers involved in the process encountered distrust and resistance due to prevalent confusion and frustration about the project’s history. The proposed approach, born out of these experiences, is centred around the model for curriculum design, where teachers are invited to discuss and create connections between NN, their curriculum, and their teaching philosophy. With the goal of establishing teacher ownership and agency in the implementation of NN, the authors propose leveraging both top-down and bottom-up processes. They define and unfold a guiding framework by bringing in insights from sensemaking and participatory design. This approach aims to create a more effective and inclusive process for implementing graduate capabilities in HE settings.