Strategic Curricular Change: A Case of the Norwegian Medical School in Tromsø

In this qualitative study, we aimed at exploring acurriculum development process that took place at theMedical School of the University of Tromsoe during aperiod ofseven years. We applied the literature onorganizational change in order to understand thecurriculum development process. Our findings show thatthis process can be seen asa strategic organizationalchange, in which strategic actors act as sense makers forthe rest of the organization. Our study contributes to the literature on the curriculumdevelopment process by emphasizing the role oforganizational actors and strategies used in order to bringaboutthe desired curriculum change. One importantimplication of our study is the strategic dimension ofcurricular change, which emphasizes an important butpoorly understoodaspect of the curriculum developmentprocess. One limitation of this study is that we focusedmainly on the initial stages in the process