A comparative study of primary school science curricula in five Anglosphere nations

Abstract

This thesis compares primary school science curricula across five English-speaking jurisdictions: England, New Zealand, Scotland, Wales, and Australia. Using Schiro's (2008) curriculum ideology framework, which identifies four ideological positions (Scholar Academic, Social Efficiency, Learner-Centred, and Social Reconstruction), it examines the holistic visions for the different curricula, and how the stated purposes of science and content at the upper primary level reflect or diverge from those visions. Documentary analysis at three levels (overarching purpose, science purpose, and upper primary teaching content) forms the basis of the study. Semi-structured interviews with curriculum experts from each jurisdiction support and clarify the documentary findings and provide valuable perspectives on curriculum development processes, the political and institutional forces shaping science content, and implementation challenges. The findings reveal the challenges of translating high-level curriculum goals to subject-level content. England shows how a narrower knowledge focus translates more readily down the curriculum. Its Scholar Academic ideology is consistent throughout, from overarching purpose to detailed year-by-year science objectives. New Zealand, Scotland, and Wales represent what Priestley and Biesta (2014) define as the ‘new’ curriculum articulating Learner-Centred, Social Efficiency, and Social Reconstructionist goals in highly similar terms at the top level. All face challenges translating these goals into subject-level content, though each navigates this differently. Australia's national curriculum forms a third group, occupying a middle ground between England and the “new curriculum” in its overarching aims and level of prescription at the science content level. The science curricula share persistent structural elements. All organise content by traditional disciplinary categories, though they may not be explicitly named as such (for example, biology is "Living World" in New Zealand). They vary in the amount of knowledge students are required to learn, the specificity of that knowledge, and the emphasis placed on disciplinary knowledge in relation to nature of science and scientific inquiry skills. England places scientific inquiry beneath disciplinary content, New Zealand positions nature of science above it, Wales and Australia present strands alongside each other, and Scotland integrates skills within content statements. Levels of prescription vary significantly, from England's detailed year-by-year specification to New Zealand's minimal framework. The curricula also vary in the degree to which they emphasise personal and societal relevance of science, and whether this is embedded directly in content or left to teachers and schools to enact. This study contributes to comparative curriculum scholarship by taking a whole-curriculum approach utilising multiple complementary analytical frameworks. It shows the difficulties of squaring different ideologies at the overarching level with subject-specific content, particularly in science with its strong academic traditions and conventions. This is particularly true of the ‘new’ curriculum where disciplinary knowledge is downplayed in favour of future-focused transferable skills at the front-end. It also contributes to the limited scholarship on primary science curriculum, which has historically received less attention than secondary.