Outlines an approach for interpreting the influence of social factors on the directions in which secondary school science curricula have developed and explores the influence of the institutional context of comprehensivization on emerging science curriculum in Great Britain in the 1960s. (Author/DS)

Comparing the secondary physics courses developed by West Germany's Institute for Science Education (IPN) with similar British curriculum projects, the author argues that the differences in style, content, and reception of these curriculums are related to the social locations of the British teachers and the German academics who devised them.…