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Multiple Aims in the Development of a Major Reform of the National Curriculum for Science in England

In the context of a major reform of the school science curriculum for 14–16‐year‐olds in England, we examine the aims ascribed to the reform, the stakeholders involved, and the roles of differing values and authority in its development. This reform includes an emphasis on socioscientific issues and the nature of science; curriculum trends of international relevance. Our analysis identifies largely ‘instrumental’ aims, with little emphasis on ‘intrinsic’ aims and associated values. We identify five broad categories of stakeholders focusing on different aims with, for example, a social, individual, political, or economic emphasis. We suggest that curriculum development projects reflecting largely social and individual aims were appropriated by other stakeholders to serve political and economic aims. We argue that a curriculum reform body representing all stakeholder interests is needed to ensure that multiple aims are considered throughout the curriculum reform process. Within such a body, the differentiated character of the science teaching community would need to be represented.

School Teachers’ Experiences of Science Curriculum Reform

We examine teachers’ experiences of a major reform of the school science curriculum for 14–16-year olds in England. This statutory reform enhances the range of available science courses and emphasises the teaching of socio-scientific issues and the nature of science, alongside the teaching of canonical science knowledge. This paper examines teachers’ experiences of the reform and the factors that condition these experiences. A designed sample of 22 teachers discussed their experiences of the reform within a semi-structured interview. Our analysis considers how the external and internal structures within which teachers work interact with the personal characteristics of teachers to condition their experiences of the curriculum reform. In many cases, personal/internal/external contexts of teachers’ work align, resulting in an overall working context that is supportive of teacher change. However, in other cases, tensions within these contexts result in barriers to change. We also explore cases in which external curriculum reform has stimulated the development of new contexts for teachers’ work. We argue that curriculum reformers need to recognise the inevitability of multiple teaching goals within a highly differentiated department and school workplace. We also show how experiences of curriculum reform can extend beyond the learning of new knowledge and associated pedagogies to involve challenges to teachers’ professional identities. We argue for the extended use of teacher role models within local communities of practice to support such ‘identity work’.

Policy networks and boundary objects: Enacting curriculum reform in the absence of consensus

This article uses the concept of ‘boundary object’, first developed within science studies by Star and Griesemer, to analyse curriculum policy implementation. It employs as a vehicle a significant but contested reform of the science curriculum in schools in England from 2006 onwards, drawing empirically on an extended study of the reform, using public documentation and fieldwork in schools. The focus of the article is on the processes of mediation which are invoked during the implementation process. Star and Griesemer characterized boundary objects as entities which are shared across institutional and other social boundaries, but are sufficiently flexible and indeterminate to satisfy diverse agendas. In this study a curricular element called How Science Works is constituted as a boundary object. Its implementation is set within a network of institutions with different imperatives. The overall effect is to distribute the implementation process, and localize the meaning of the reform. This in turn enables what Star called ‘co-operative action in the absence of consensus’. Complementing and sometimes working against this are mechanisms of accountability dependent on public information. These create pressures for standardization of practices, and thus of meanings, which can both undermine the working of the network and lead to reification of professional practices. The article concludes with some reflections on the implications of this analysis for curriculum developers.

The Impact of a Context-Led Curriculum on Different Students’ Experiences of School Science

The aim of our research was to understand the classroom experiences of 14–16-year-old students studying science in England where a more context-led curriculum had been introduced into government-funded schools. We were interested in how students following different courses talked about their desires for, and experiences of, school science. This is in a context where most teachers have had little if any involvement in the development of the reform and in most cases limited training in the new curriculum content. Students from 19 schools across England took part in group interviews. We analysed students’ talk about what they want and what they get from school science, with particular emphasis on the newly introduced context-based content. Findings indicate that students taking three separate science qualifications (considered a ‘high-status’ academic route) tend to want to learn more canonical science since this interested them and would be useful for the future. Students taking applied science (a ‘lower-status’ science route) tend to want to learn more ‘real-life’ science since this would be useful in their future lives. The content of ‘real-life’ science was hard for many students to define but was generally not the broadly canonical science they typically experienced in the classroom.