Abstract
This study aims to research the process of curriculum development in Salters Advanced Chemistry (SAC) and show a model of it. SAC has been developed for GCE-A level students in England and Wales who wish to go on to tertiary level science education. SAC is a complete curriculum based on the "Salters Approach", which is a context-based approach. We found two things. Firstly, that the curriculum development didn't draw on specific theoretical ideas at the early stage, so the detailed aims and objectives were discovered along the way rather than starting with them. The decisions on content, contexts and learning activities emerged in the process of developing the materials. Secondly, that SAC is very different from the prevailing 'centre-periphery' model of curriculum innovation, which requires decisions made by a group of centrally based policy-makers to be implemented by teachers. Instead it involved teachers positively in all stages of development, ranging from initial decision-making on content and structure, through the writing, to the process of dissemination. As a result, SAC was developed as a form of technological problem-solving. Its major curriculum innovation is that it adopts a context-based approach.
