Of all the subjects in the school curriculum, science has been a most common target of the reformer’s zeal. As a consequence, school science has featured frequently in studies of change in evaluation exercises and has also attracted the interest of social scientists. There have been others who have studied the effects of innovation in this field not as evaluators, nor as scientists, but as students of curricular problems. Such work is represented in this book, originally published in 1982.

It is particularly concerned with the way in which teachers use innovation and how this can assist policy making in the curriculum field. By focusing on the science curriculum the contributors examine in detail the way in which teachers cope with daily problems and with the demands that new ideas make on the systems to which they are accustomed.

The relationship between the school and the community is also dealt with in these case studies, all of which have implications for policy and research in the curriculum field.