Forging the visions: senior school science education across Australia

In Australia, education is the responsibility of each of the six states and two territories. Consequently there are significant differences between the science curricula offered by these eight educational authorities. This research analyses the educational significance of these curricular variations. A five‐level categorization of curriculum was used as the framework for the analysis. These five levels extend from the statement of the vision for the learning of science to the assessment of learning. The goal of the analysis was to determine the individual visions and whether they were consistently expressed in the syllabus documents published by the authorities. The study was restricted to physics, biology and chemistry in the senior school. The conclusion is that there is a richness of curriculum design within Australia and much can be learnt from the implicit curriculum experiment that is being undertaken with Australian school students.