Evidence informed policy? The Australian Education Research Organisation’s borrowed knowledge-rich curriculum dispositif

'Knowledge-richness' is now being promoted in Australia by the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO). Knowledge richness is part of a curriculum dispositif which sutures together methods drawn from cognitive science, a subject driven approach and performance based summative assessment. Based heavily on the English instantiation of knowledge-richness, the dispositif potentially heralds radical changes in the Australian curriculum and the ways in which it is taught. A discourse analysis of AERO's A knowledge rich approach to curriculum design (2024) report shows (1) a politics of omissions, a (2) a politics of definition and (3) a politics of evidence. I argue that we might expect better from a national evidence body but that surfacing alternative understandings of knowledge-richness opens space for important debates about a more socially just national curriculum.