Periods in the evolution of the science curriculum as revealed by curriculum

The analysis of various government policy documents, reports and other documentation, alongside versions of the SNC with reference to the NoS, tells an interesting story. Across time we have an unfolding narrative that pits educators against politicians and policy against practice. Overall, looking across all versions of the SNC analysed in

Chapter 6,7 and this Chapter, the curriculum seems to have gone through three distinct periods.

Period One – The decision to create a NC was essentially a political one. There are clear political influences in how the curriculum was constructed, which subjects should be included as well as how it should be structured. The politicians who made the decisions about how and when the curriculum would be enacted were essentially traditionalists with respect to education and wanted to perform what Ball (1995, p.87) calls ‘cultural restorationism’. From a curriculum analysis perspective (Posner’s (2004) set one and two), there were tensions with respect to the situations that resulted in a curriculum and how it was documented. Politicians decided that a curriculum should be developed, science educators decided on the content, within a structure devised by politicians with an eye on making schools and teachers more accountable.

The science education community was empowered by Government to devise its ‘ideal’ curriculum. This allowed educational influence to take precedence over the political influence. The education community was given almost free rein to dictate the content of science education from age 5-16, something that had never been done before. The idea was to create a ‘curriculum of consensus’. The problem, an inherent flaw in such an approach, is that the full corpus of scientific knowledge is far too big to teach and the competing interests of different subjects, disciplines, professional subject associations, employers etc. resulted in a very complex content heavy curriculum that was unmanageable and not deliverable in schools. While this period had within the curriculum a good view on the NoS, a lack of understanding within the science teacher community at large meant that it was unlikely this would be seen by many teachers as an essential aspect of science to teach (Donnelly, 2001). It could have been the basis of a coherent curriculum that finally brought the different disciplines of science together by explaining the structures of science and its epistemology. It could have significantly aided scientific literacy. The organisational influences of delivering such a heavily content driven curriculum meant that it was virtually impossible for the curriculum to survive for long. Period two – The failure of the initial science curriculum was perhaps predictable given the competing influences and the tensions of trying to satisfy the large number of potential stakeholders consulted. Soon after the 1989 curriculum launch, the Government begins to rein in the science education community and requires the content to be slimmed down. With respect to Posner’s (2004) framework and set two, the revised curriculum for 1991, fundamentally changes the structure and organisation of the curriculum, which had been topic based. A small team of science HMIs revert to a more

traditional ‘three sciences’ model for the curriculum and the NoS is relegated to the Programme of Study. The political vision of a knowledge-based, ‘three sciences’ was delivered over the more child-centred inquiry led and integrated curriculum originally developed by educationists.

In curriculum analysis terms, the purpose of the curriculum is becoming clearer. The Government see the purpose of the curriculum still in terms of the need to produce an effective and trained workforce for the economic good of the country. More importantly, it now has a way of holding school and teachers more accountable using outcomes from the curriculum, measured by new tests at age 7, 11 and 14.

Politicians were exerting more centralised control over schools and teachers. The change of focus in the end of Key Stage tests, by Kenneth Clarke, is one example of overt political influence. The move from internal teacher assessment of children’s progress with tasks designed to enable teachers to understand how well (or not) children were progressing in their understanding, to measures of performance of teachers and schools, via pen and paper national tests taken by children at key ages reveals that accountability, an emergent theme, was a dominant purpose of the curriculum.

Period Three – In this phase the curriculum content is reduced with the view of returning more ‘content control’ to teachers. In Curriculum analysis terms, this represents yet another change in the organisation of the curriculum. There is also a change in educational influence with control of some content being returned to teachers from what was content determined by unknown educationists.

The concept of the three sciences recedes again, so the political influence that specified a traditional ‘three sciences’ approach was lessened and educational influence over how science content is presented is returned to teachers.

The curriculum, in terms of its breadth of coverage, while not quite concept or topic based, is more ‘clustered’ with related ideas brought together, e.g. Environment, Earth and universe in the 2004 version; energy, electricity and forces in the 2007 curriculum. The NoS is still present in the form of HSW, but its importance, with respect to those teachers who had to enact the curriculum, was still not comparable to the transmission of knowledge of scientific concepts and skills in experimental science.