Unpacking the Geographies of a Swedish Educational Reform

Educational reforms have wide-reaching consequences, as they shape and structure future citizens by equipping them with the capacities to engage in an increasingly complex world. In particular, this case study examines the 2023–2024 Swedish education reform (SOU 2024:81), which mandates the integration of cognitive science into public school teacher training. While the reform is presented as a technical enhancement of educational quality through evidence-based methods (e.g., memory and information processing), this study applies a geographies-of-knowledge lens to uncover the spatial and epistemic tensions inherent in such a transition. By analyzing the reform through classical geographical concepts (place, scale, sustainability), processes (diffusion, cumulative causation, peripheralization), and critical frameworks (spatial justice, deterritorialization, representation), the study seeks to explore how educational knowledge is produced, legitimized, and unevenly distributed across space.