The Implementation of the National Curriculum

Start date: 1 January 1993
End date: 31 January 1995
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
Primary investigator: 00027076

This project, which ran from 1993 to 1995, was funded by the ESRC, and studied the implementation of the National Curriculum for science, with a particular focus on the compulsory place of so-called investigations in the approach which teachers were required to use. It involved extensive interviews with teachers and a national questionnaire, together with a study of the process by which the policy was conceived and introduced. Its main findings were published in a book:

DONNELLY, J., BUCHAN, A., JENKINS, E., LAWS, P. and WELFORD, G. (1996). Investigations by order. Policy, curriculum and science teachers' work under the Education Reform Act. Nafferton: Studies in Education, 260pp. ISBN 0-905484-57-6.

In addition, this project, together with two others - Practical Assessment in Secondary Science and Change and Continuity in Classrooms - have been brought together with other work into a book entitled: Science Education. Policy, professionalism and change, published in 2001 by Paul Chapman Publishing. ISBN 0-7619-6444-4.