Comparison of selected disciplines of educational area Man and Nature of the Czech curriculum with the integrated subject Natural Sciences in European curricula

Education policy is one of the important goals of any country, as it affects the lives and employment of its people. Compulsory education in the Czech Republic is defined by the Framework Educational Programme for Basic Education (FEP BE), with science education set out in educational area called Man and Nature. Although this is divided into individual educational fields, its framework concept allows the content of the fields to be integrated according to school programme. However, science has been taught separately in most basic schools for several decades, and any integration efforts are burdened by a lack of examples of good practice. The aim of this paper is therefore to perform comparative analysis of the educational area Man and Nature of the Czech FEP BE and integrated science curricula of selected European countries at the level of lower secondary education (ISCED 2). The analysis identifies topics that are included in foreign curricula but not in Czech curriculum and can thus be an inspiration (in the sense of policy learning), what integrative topics to include in the science education at basic schools. The theoretical part of the thesis describes the integration of natural sciences, both from a historical and curriculum development perspective. Theoretical models describing different..