SCIENCE - THE SALTERS APPROACH - A CASE-STUDY OF THE PROCESS OF LARGE-SCALE CURRICULUM-DEVELOPMENT

The Salters' curriculum development projects provide complete applications-led science or chemistry programs for students ages 11 - 18. In terms of the scale of their adoption by teachers in the UK and the interest they have generated in other countries, the developments have been successful. This article is a retrospective analysis of the process of large scale curriculum development. It locates the projects and their development within the range of approaches advocated in science education and considers the practical decisions taken during the development in relation to theories of curriculum development and change. A case is made for regarding large scale curriculum development as a form of technological problem solving, starting from an analysis of the needs of teachers and the formulation of design criteria, and then drawing, when needed, on a range of theoretical ideas concerning content selection, how young people learn and how change is managed. The implications of this view for curriculum evaluation are considered. (C) 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.