The sharing of meaning between educational policy and science education in practice

Science is now a key area of the curriculum for the whole of schooling in Australia. Educational policies and their implications for the curriculum are often couched in terms that make sense at the general level of schooling, but do not easily translate into operational meaning for the teaching of science. The case of ‘quality in Australian education’ is used to illustrate the problems associated with this sharing of meaning at different levels of educational discourse.