The Science in Intended Curriculum and Framework Documents in Selected Countries

The main aim of this study is to enrich the discourse on developing an intended form of the science curriculum in different country contexts. A multi-case study research design uses methods of content and comparative analysis to find answers to the research questions. The empirical part of the thesis consists of single case studies of England, Finland, Scotland and the United States of America containing contexts of the current curriculum development, description and interpretation of analysed structural and content phenomena in the curriculum of primary (ISCED 1) and secondary education (ISCED 2). Based on the single case studies of curricula, a comparative multi-case study is conducted, which focuses on the identification and interpretation of common and different features in the structure and content of the curricula to be compared. The studied documents can be divided into competency- oriented and subject-oriented curricula, nevertheless, each curriculum contains elements of both approaches. The subject content of the contemporary curricula seems to be more elaborated or at least more detailed than in documents of the previous decade. It is possible that even in the field of curriculum development there is political influence of neoconservative forces or an intellectual influence of so-called..