Inquiry-Based Learning in the New Greek Primary Science Curriculum: A Critical Reading of Policy Design and Implementation Conditions

Abstract

This paper offers a critical, comparative reading of the new Greek primary science curriculum, promulgated through the Official Government Gazette of the Hellenic Republic and enacted in the 2024 school year, which adopts inquiry-based learning (IBL) as its organising principle. Drawing on the documentary record of the reform and on the recent body of scholarship produced by members of the design team, the paper sets the curriculum within the comparative European literature on inquiry implementation and the policy-mobility framework of Rizvi and Lingard. The analysis identifies three structural faultlines along which the gap between intended design and classroom enactment is most likely to open: the limited capacity of in-service teacher professional learning, the persistence of summative assessment cultures, and the uneven distribution of material and digital infrastructure. The paper argues that the curriculum is conceptually coherent with European competence frameworks, but that the institutional conditions for its sustained enactment are only partially in place. The Greek case is presented not as a model of completed reform but as a productive instance of the vernacularisation of global IBL discourse within a centralised, examination-oriented system, with implications for comparative curriculum scholarship.