Nanotechnology in The Curriculum: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

Nanotechnology, highly important in the 21st century, is the field in which major sciences are joining, blending, and integrating. It is an interdisciplinary field that can be included in chemistry, physics, biology, environmental sciences, and engineering. Nanotechnology provides connections between the sciences. This connection helps students to develop an understanding of the relationships between disciplines. Education about nanotechnology should be gradual and introduced at early ages. For this purpose, most countries are focusing on how to tailor nanoscience to their schools’ curricula and how to fit nanotechnology into their science classes. When introducing nanotechnology to schools, researchers, project managers and teachers face a lot of questions: What subject to choose to teach about nanoscience? Can it be integrated into the school curriculum? In most countries, nanotechnology is not a mandatory subject, chapter or topic in the curriculum at any level, like Turkey, however, it can be integrated in the curricula in various ways. This study aims to identify the nanotechnology education in secondary schools of different countries and to focus on the possibility of integrating nanotechnology to their curriculum.