Abstract:

Education is a priority for all countries, and the rapidly changing world has led to curriculum revisions in many European countries.

In the Czech Republic, curriculum innovation for ISCED1 and ISCED2 is underway, which is a good opportunity for learning from the experience of other countries. An effective tool for gaining insight into the educational standards of other countries is comparative analysis.

For the purpose of the analysis, curricula of European countries and regions with a mandatory integrated science were selected. These are the UK (more specifically England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland), Ireland, Italy, Catalonia and Norway (Norway – both current version and version valid from September 2021). The curricula currently valid in these countries and, in particular, the section on science education were retrieved.

Eight above curricula were compared with the Czech curriculum and similarities and differences were sought. This inductive comparative analysis revealed several individual scientific themes rising from science disciplines - biology, chemistry, physics, geology and physical geography. We focused also on more complex concepts like development of scientific thinking and reasoning of students, or students´ ability to apply their scientific knowledge in everyday life. Special attention was paid to the role of the concept of sustainable development in curricula which plays in the curricula strong integrative role.

Most of the studied curricula show a shift from subject-based curriculum to competency-based curriculum. The Czech curriculum still in force is one of those subject-based curricula, although since year 2007 it has provided schools with the possibility to integrate subjects of educational areas, e.g. the area of Man and Nature (physics, chemistry, biology, geography). However, most of the schools/teachers remain in the long term-established traditional system of teaching individual subjects. In accordance with analyzed curricula we argue that the concept of sustainable development can be seen as a first step for breaking the barrier of traditional subject based approach. Inspiration in setting the national curricula can be find in above curricula in terms of policy learning.

Keywords:

Integrated science curriculum, comparative analysis, ISCED2, curriculum revisions, policy learning.