In 1962 the OECD established an Educational Investment and Planning Programme for
its industrial member countries. Ireland was assigned to the ‘Northern Group’ which
included Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Part of that programme was to encourage new
approaches to the teaching of science as well as highlighting the interdependence of
science education and the national economies which demanded that governments
formulate science policies rather than regard science as a culture entity (OECDa, 1965).
This study focuses on how Ireland and five other European OECD countries – Denmark,
Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden- addressed the challenges of developing an
upper secondary physics science curriculum during the period 1960s-2010s. These six
countries share many similarities – moving from an agrarian based economy of the 1960s
to a technological/industrial one of the 21st century, a relatively stable homogenous
population and moving towards adopting a national policy of inclusive education. A
decade-by-decade time-line approach is used to discuss how the upper secondary school physics curriculum evolved over the past fifty years.