ABSTRACT
Every country that participated in our international study is dissatisfied with the education of its students in science, mathematics or technology. Every country is trying to make changes. Some of the changes are (at least for the moment) small in scale: for example, the project to improve the participation of girls in the work of one classroom in British Columbia. Others aim to affect a whole region, such as the programme in Ontario to diminish the distinctions between the different subjects within science in all the schools in the province. Several of our initiatives aim to achieve their changes within just a few years, such as Japan’s new curriculum in environmental and life sciences for elementary schools. Others assume longer time-lines: even the title of the US 2061 project declares a conviction that significant change takes much longer than is imagined by most policy makers and the public they represent. Every country seems to be more or less unhappy with what it has today.
