The aim of this study is to explore Swedish upper elementary school students’ experiences of mathematics teachers’ assessment practices, with a focus on educational goals communicated between the teacher and the class. In this multiple-case study with an ethnographic approach, three cases are viewed from a holistic perspective, by adapting Visual model of the curriculum policy, design and enactment system by Remillard and Heck (2014) to a Swedish context.

Results of the study show the complexity and variation of the communication about educational goals in relation to the syllabus in mathematics. Students in all three cases express and show a lack of knowledge of syllabus in mathematics and the textbook is considered as a concretization and visualization of the syllabus content. Teachers’ expressed lack of knowledge about the syllabus in mathematics is probably due to insufficient implementation efforts of the curriculum, Lgr11.