Science and technology have got many common points. Similar skills and mental habits are used in both scientific research and technological design processes. The main feature that discriminates science and technology is to have different goals. In this context, the goal of science is to attempt to explain and comprehend the natural world, while the goal of technology is to make changes on the natural world to satisfy the people’s needs and desires.
Nowadays, rapid changes have been occurred in the field of science and these changes have also influenced the views on science education. The main goal of science education is to help students become aware of whether they understand the fundamental concepts or not and to remove the misconceptions by providing scientific thinking discipline. At the same time, it is aimed to gain students positive behaviors through science education. Additionally, the effects of science and technology on daily life have increased day by day. Thus, UNESCO (2001) emphasizes the significance of involving science and technology as a priority in the teaching programs. Likewise, in one of the program reforms the United States of America, “Project 2061: Science for all Americans”, it is suggested to add technology aspect to the science programs. Thus, technology aspect is added to science education and the relationship between science and technology is explained together. The studies conducted in the field of science education have been focused on what and how students learn. The individual differences in learning have been considered as important, student is in the center of learning and students take the responsibility of their learning. Within this context, during learning-teaching context, there are different approaches that would activate students. One of these approaches is layered curriculum. The layered curriculum was developed in 1990s by Dr. Kathie F. Nunley who studied in the field of educational psychology in the USA. According to Nunley (2004) through this approach learners are provided opportunities to learn on their own and they take the responsibility of their own learning styles. The layered curriculum enables students to learn in line with students’ different abilities and individual learning goals. At the same time, the layered curriculum is on the basis of learner-centered approach and it gains students the skills of choosing, responsibility and high level thinking.On the basis of assumption that students have different learning ways and area of interest, the layered curriculum is a kind of way to arrange learning with the understanding of students’ attaining information, using the obtained information to solve problems, analyzing the events in the lights of data, thinking critically and bringing forward new ideas. The layered curriculum is predicated on the fact that each learner’s learning styles, intelligence level, readiness, and thinking systems are different. In other words, learners have different structures in terms of all features. The layered curriculum provides tasks with rights to choose, and ranging from difficult to easy, indicating layered relationships. The learners are in charge of performing the expected activities within the tasks they chose at each layer. The layers have the path from comprehending the basic information and skills to high level thinking skills.