From vision to enactment: reflections on the practical impact of the Beyond 2000 report

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Beyond 2000 report (Millar & Osborne, 1998) argued that the school science curriculum of the late twentieth century was designed primarily to provide a sound preparation for progress to more advanced courses in science. It proposed that the curriculum for students up to the age of 16 should instead be designed to develop all students’ ‘scientific literacy’, through a focus on the major ‘explanatory stories’ of science and a set of key ‘ideas-about-science’. Have the recommendations of Beyond 2000 had any lasting impact on curriculum and instruction? I will explore this question by considering the most explicit effort to act on these recommendations, the Twenty First Century Science project (Millar [2006] Twenty First Century Science: Insights from the design and implementation of a scientific literacy approach in school science. International Journal of Science Education, 28(13), 1499–1521.). The development of this curriculum programme for 14–16 year old students in England illustrates the scale and nature of the task of transforming a curriculum vision into an operational reality, and highlights the challenges of achieving significant change, and the main sources of difficulty and resistance. Despite evidence of positive impact on student engagement, external influences have steadily diminished its initial impact and the science curriculum has returned to its late twentieth century emphasis. Yet the Beyond 2000 critique remains as valid today as twenty-five years ago. The science curriculum in most countries does not reflect a clear vision of the contribution of science to a general education. The practical response to Beyond 2000 suggests that significant change requires clarity on intended outcomes and how they might be assessed, and the building of professional and social consensus around them.