Voices in Tension: A Complexity Perspective on Conflicting Curriculum Stakeholder Views

Abstract

This paper examines the persistent tensions and lack of consensus among key curriculum stakeholders, policymakers, teachers, industry players, and learners, about what curriculum should be, what it should include, and how it should be developed. These disagreements become especially visible within dynamic educational contexts and during periods of reform. Drawing on a qualitative study of three translator training institutions in Ghana, the research brings together perspectives of 28 participants to examine how these conflicting views emerge and play out in practice. Using complexity theory as an analytical lens, the study argues that such divergence should not be seen as evidence of dysfunction. Rather, it reflects the inherently adaptive and evolving nature of curriculum systems. By framing stakeholder tensions this way, this article offers a fresh theoretical lens for understanding curriculum development, not as a linear top-down process, but as a dynamic and interdependent system shaped by multiple actors in constant interaction.