A Comparative and Analytic Study of Senior Secondary School Chemistry Curricula of India and Abroad

The present new age learning of today’s world is characterized by the ever increasing demands and expectations posed by the society on our education system. The scientific and technological revolution and knowledge explosion have great bearing on how our children make choices while selecting the subject stream at specialized level and how their parents and other influencing stakeholders pose on them to take up a particular subject group specially in senior secondary grades. If we look into the schooling processes closely, we find that despite all booms in other subject disciplines like chartered accountancy, management and other subject areas, science stream has still not lost its lustre. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the structural nuances of chemistry curriculum at senior secondary school levels in India and a few developed countries of the world. The paper delineates various programmes of science teaching and chemistry teaching specifically that have been conceptualized and implemented across some of the most advanced countries of the world in different periods of time. The purpose of juxtaposing the curricula of different countries is to have a comparative perspective in the context of senior secondary school chemistry curriculum. This may develop further insight into exploring various dimensions of curriculum in the comparative mode and bring out some useful and meaningful ingredients for future research in the area of science education and pedagogy of chemistry.