The current crop of published curriculum materials for elementary and middle school makes various claims about their relevancy to the student and their alignment with national standards. Although it may appear that they show improvement in their pedagogical practices and use of recent research it is argued that they still are founded on questionable assumptions about student learning. The general approach of these curriculum programs is examined in relationship to issues such as the context of learning the relationship between domain general and domain specific knowledge and the essential role that aesthetics and personal frameworks play in conceptual change. An alternative paradigm of curriculum development is presented based on the theory of situated cognition. This approach starts with context rather than concept gives greater weight to students interpretative frameworks and provides for a more holistic development. A grade 1 ndash 8 framework is presented having archetypal phenomena and technologies as the focus of investigations. copy 2002 Wiley Periodicals Inc. Sci Ed86 481 ndash 501 2002 Published online in Wiley Interscience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/sce.10026