Restructuring the science curriculum around grand challenges

Grand Challenges (GCs) are complex, global, and multifaceted science and societal problems such as climate change, viral pandemics, loss of biodiversity, and quests for new energy sources. In this article, we advance a position, based on current research and theory, that GCs should be a prominent feature of the science curriculum. This move towards a GC-based curriculum challenges the positioning of canonical scientific concepts as the central organising feature of the curriculum, which is typically the default position of most science education programmes. A GC-based curriculum can create natural avenues for students to learn science, develop an interest in science, and build media and information literacy skills to become informed agents of change. Design principles, which help to define what a GC curriculum can look like and guide creation of GC materials, are introduced. These design principles call for the GC curriculum to be contextualised in global issues with local connections, culturally responsive, practice oriented, attentive to student voice, and coherent within and across units. Examples are provided to demonstrate how these design principles are implemented in a sample curriculum.