Outlining the History of Primary Science Education in Luxembourg: From Normative Education Acts to Stakeholders’ Voices

Luxembourg is a state where several ethnolinguistic communities co-exist, and three administrative languages are used concomitantly. The migration history of the country led to the current foreign population scenario, which represents almost 50% of the residents (Statec, 2021). Luxembourgish, German and French compete on the different uses (Reisdoerfer, 2009; Horner & Weber, 2008), setting a multilingual context on the population daily life. This scenario is reflected in the education system, where these three languages permeate school instruction in different years and subjects. In addition, for many students, the language spoken at home can differ from the language(s) of instruction, leading this multilingual scenario to be confronted with the schooling dynamics, and then, impacting students' educational paths (Siry, 2017; Loureiro et al., 2019).
In Luxembourg, mandatory schooling starts at the age of 4 (ISCED 0), when students are in Cycle 1 (European Commission, 2022). While these children are exposed to Luxembourgish as the language of instruction, when they enter Cycle 2, they learn how to read and write in German, and then German becomes the lingua franca and the language of instruction for science. As French is also introduced, considering the remaining ISCED 1 years (Cycles 3 and 4), language instruction takes almost half of the overall number of allocated classes (MENFP, 2011). However, this is the current scenario.
Following the PISA results from early 2000's, a debate emerged on curricular reform, which led to the first law reform of the organisation of the primary school in 2009 (Loi du February 6, 2009) since 1912 (Loi du August 10, 1912). Even though one might find science contents and, latter, guidelines throughout different schooling documents, allocation number of classes for natural science only appear on the curriculum (Plan d'Études) from 2011 (MEN, 1964; MENJE, 1989; MENFP, 2011).
Using qualitative reearch approach (Cohen et al, 2018), this contribution aims to present an outline on the history of (primary) science education in Luxembourg through the analysis of normative acts (using document analysis – Asdal & Reinertsen, 2022) layered with a European report on a new teaching approach to science (Rocard, 2007), and data from the project "Science Education, Innovation, and Policy in Modern Luxembourg – SciPol:Lux" (four individual interviews and one focus group, by using conten analysis – Bardin, 1979). As data analysis is being conduted at this time, we expect to present the shifts on policies to show how science education was positioned within the curricular reforms and what key stakeholders from the last reform say about this positioning and forcoming expectations to the inclusion of science in the curriculum.