The point of departure in this paper is my previous research in which I analysed how the idea of problem solving is recontextualised into the mathematics curriculum for upper secondary school in Sweden and how this increases the risk for excluding lower SES students from future power. I discuss how this research could be followed up through a suggestion of how problem solving could be viewed in three different ways: as an ideology, a competence and an activity. Bernstein's pedagogic device and dichotomy of vertical and horizontal discourses are crucial in this suggestion. By seeing problem solving as an activity, and connect this to what Bernstein labels the evaluative field, I thereby tie the whole pedagogic device together by taking an overall view of problem solving as global policy-speak.