Aligning science curriculum renewal efforts and assessment practices

Change in education is easy to propose, hard to implement and extraordinarily diffi cult to sustain. Pilot projects show promise but are rarely converted into successful system-wide change (Hargreaves and Fink 2006 ). Unfortunately, these general observations are equally valid for renewal initiatives in the domain of science education (Atkin and Black 2003 ; Kuiper 2009 ). The fate of improvement initiatives in science education should prevent us from being overly optimistic about the chances for success, especially preventing us from expecting quick results (van den Akker 1998 ). Most changes hardly ever pass the stage of intentions, as the implemented curriculum tends to be very durable. There is far more continuity in what teachers actually do in their classroom than is suggested by changes in the intended curriculum (Cuban 1992 )