Chapter 3: The Ongoing Curriculum Reform in Portugal: Highlighting Trends, Challenges and Possibilities

The aim of this chapter is twofold: first, it will discuss the roots and the aims of the curriculum reform launched in Portugal in 2017, suggesting that it shows the influence of international policy borrowing. Secondly, it aims to present and to discuss the trends that this reform is putting in place, highlighting some successful practices as well some misconceptions and controversial practices. To accomplish such aims, it follows the analytical framework that inspires this book, namely the approach that understands curriculum making as a dynamic process of interactions between different layers of the system, emphasizing the meso and the micro layers of curriculum decision-making. The focus on the experimental period that this chapter narrates is also an opportunity to analyse dynamics among the layers of curriculum making.