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A virtues-based approach to research ethics offers an alternative perspective to the rule-based approaches that dominate many current ethical regulations. For researchers engaging in insider resear...

Demands of a globalised knowledge economy and drive in accountability and performativity systems have seen top-down approaches to curriculum innovation dominate education reform efforts. Standards-based policies, prescribed curricula and standardised student assessment consistently challenge teachers’ agency. Although there is a growing interest in the role of teachers’ agency in curriculum reform contexts, limitations exist in the range of contexts explored, particularly those involving primary schools and dynamic top-down, bottom-up curriculum reform efforts. This article draws on a case study of an Australian primary school engaging in a top-down, bottom-up approach to curriculum reform from a teacher-researcher perspective. Framed within an ecological conceptualisation of teachers’ agency (Priestley et al. 2015), this article explores primary teachers’ reported experiences of agency and identifies potential enablers and constraints to agency in top-down, bottom-up curriculum reforms. Factors associated with assessment emerge as enablers and constraints to teachers’ agency in curriculum planning and teaching. Implications regarding the use of top-down, system-developed assessment and teachers’ assessment literacy exist for teachers, school leaders and governing authorities.

In this chapter we draw on the concepts of self- and collective efficacy to consider how teachers are positioned within school reform processes in the current education context. In particular, we examine a school reform context involving school-based curriculum development focused on the learning area of English in an Australian primary (elementary) school. We argue that in such literacy reform contexts, it is important to understand the varied perceptions and responses teachers have to change that are influenced by self- and collective efficacy beliefs. We use the term self-efficacy to describe an individual teacher’s beliefs about their capacity to perform certain ‘teacher’ tasks in a way that meet given educational goals (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010). Teacher collective efficacy in contrast aims to represent the teacher’s beliefs about the capacity of all involved in a school or system – for example all of the teachers in one school – to perform teaching in a way that creates quality outcomes for all students (Bandura, 2012; Goddard, Hoy, & Woolfolk Hoy, 2004). As such, collective efficacy refers to the capacity of a teacher to assess and evaluate the capacity of the whole staff to produce a positive impact on the students in the school (Goddard & Goddard, 2001). Much of the current research available in this area aims to define and measure these concepts, with a particular recent focus on comparing dimensions and measuring similarities between the two concepts (e.g., Malinen & Savolainen, 2016)...