Integrated science education, STS education and interdisciplinary science courses have had a strong impact on the way we see scientific literacy today. These approaches were a response to declining student enrollment, lack of meaning and the needs of school students who do not plan to study science or become engineers. Even though the problems of science education did not fundamentally change (Osborne & Dillon 2008), curricular orientations got little public attention in recent years. Did the discourse on science education merely focus on standards or did new ideas and trends emerge that are not captured by traditional approaches? If so, what are their main goals, curricular emphasis and impact on teaching and learning? How are they embedded in disciplinary science curricula that precede or succeed integrated courses? How is the transition between integrated and disciplinary curricula shaped?

The questions raised in the proposal will be answered by a review of journal articles, books and educational data bases, a re-analysis of empirical studies and Internet searches.

The literature search for trends in integrated science has shown a decline of activities over the past 5-10 years. At a closer look, however, some of the known experiences re-appear in a new outfit or slightly modified way. Among them are scientific literacy courses based on STS philosophy, science for public understanding and context-based science education. In this presentation these trends will be discussed and their impact compared. Then we will ask what the literature tells us about the transition between disciplinary and interdisciplinary courses, how teachers construe a “red thread” of concepts, facts and methodological knowledge, and how they deal with mostly disciplinary science standards.