OCEAN LITERACY IN FRENCH SCHOOL CURRICULA

Sammanfattning

The ocean shapes every human life and human actions also profoundly influence the ocean. At a time when ocean health is increasingly at risk, education represents one of the most powerful levers for driving the behavioural and societal change needed to reverse the trend. This study presents a content-analysis of the French school curricula, from kindergarten to upper secondary, to assess how Ocean Literacy is embedded across subjects and grade levels. Each of the 365 learning goals were individually analysed against a codebook including 5 variables (Fauville et al., 2026b). The findings reveal that in nearly half of the learning goals the ocean could meaningfully support student learning, while less than a quarter of learning goals explicitly introduce ocean-related content, pointing to a substantial gap between potential and actual ocean integration. This pattern aligns with findings from the Swedish curricula (Fauville et al., 2026b), suggesting that an ocean blind spot in formal education may not be unique to France but rather a broader structural tendency, despite France showing comparatively higher inclusion of ocean-related content. This study offers curriculum developers a clear, evidence-based foundation for targeted reform, and provides a model for other countries seeking to evaluate ocean literacy integration in their own national curricula.