Teaching in Primary Education in Luxembourg: the History of Science Curriculum, Practices and Professionalization

Luxembourg is a country with a rich migration history and where almost 50% of its resident population consists of foreigners. Currently, children are exposed to Luxembourgish, German and French throughout primary schooling, whilst many children speak at home a different language other than the languages of instruction. This multilingual school system leads to almost half of the overall number of classes from the curriculum to be allocated to language instruction, and it can pose challenges and opportunities for teachers and students, and impact students' school track options.
Using the exploration of the history of primary science education in Luxembourg as a starting point, we aim to present how the different histories of primary school education (e.g., curriculum, teacher education, school organization, science education, educational organizations) have shaped primary science education in Luxembourg. Starting the historical reflection from the beginning of the 20th century, science is presented in the curriculum in different formats throughout the years, from implicit themes to a subject with allocated time for teaching. The Law of 10 August 1912 states that the teaching of science should contain the usual elements of natural sciences and aim the application to agriculture and horticulture and manual professions. Then, in 1964, the Luxembourgish curriculum (also addressed as Plan d’Études) started to address science by providing guidelines for developing scientific skills such as observation and experimentation. In the 1989 Plan d’Études, science emerges as a subject (under the name Éveil aux sciences), keeping the pedagogical guidelines from 1964. The recent reform in 2009 led to the new 2011 curriculum to be competence-based and science education is presented on the intersection of six competences and six themes.
Alongside the history of the curriculum, teacher education is also being provided in different formats. Post World War II, in 1958, the Institut pédagogique was created towards giving conditions for teacher professional development in Luxembourg. Then, after the publication of the 1964 Plan d'études, we consider the foundation of the Institut supérieur d’études et de recherches pédagogiques (ISERP) in 1983 and the University of Luxembourg in 2003, and initial teacher education slowly shifts as new structures towards continuous education are established, such as Institut de formation de l'Éducation nationale (IFEN) in 2015. Looking into mainly official documents and contents from interviews with stakeholders, we will build a timeline covering these histories, in order to address the following questions:
- How are the different topics of history of primary education intertwined?
- What shifts are identified?
what resources are arranged/set to address teaching and teacher education?
Through historical lenses, the timeline will be presented as a metalevel tool to understand how primary education has been established in Luxembourg and how science is placed within it, considering the different topics within its history of education and the challenge that reforms in curriculum doesn't go alongside reforms in schoolbooks and teaching materials.