Conference Agenda

Curriculum change is a recurring feature of education systems globally, including Australia, where teachers must continually interpret new curriculum documents to support student learning (Ross, 2024; Superfine, 2008). Internationally, this interpretive work is recognised as central to teacher professionalism, yet it is increasingly shaped by policy pressures, accountability demands, and the proliferation of centrally produced curriculum materials. European research similarly documents tensions between teacher autonomy, curriculum standardisation, and workload intensification, particularly in systems undergoing reform or centralisation (Priestley et al., 2015). These shared challenges position the Australian case within a broader international conversation about the conditions that enable teachers to engage meaningfully with curriculum.

The literature commonly distinguishes between the intended curriculum (policy documents and official materials) and the enacted curriculum, the lived interactions between teachers and students (Ben‑Peretz, 1990; Ellis, 2004). While widely used, this dichotomy obscures the interpretive processes teachers undertake to transform policy into practice. This interpretive space has become increasingly important as governments seek to address teacher workload by reframing curriculum planning as an administrative burden (Stacey et al., 2024). Across Europe, similar policy moves have led to the adoption of scripted or highly standardised curriculum resources, often justified as efficiency measures but criticised for narrowing pedagogical decision-making and reducing teacher agency (Birch et al., 2021; Wyse & Ferrari, 2015). Research suggests that such materials can diminish teacher satisfaction and limit opportunities for professional judgement (Poulton & Mockler, 2024), echoing concerns raised in international analyses citing teachers as renting their curriculum vision rather than owning it (Sahlberg, 2015).

This study investigates the experiences of five Australian primary teachers using scripted mathematics curriculum materials. The guiding research question is: What process of curriculum interpretation is undertaken by primary teachers using scripted curriculum materials to teach mathematics?

To address this question, the study draws on Remillard and Heck’s (2014) Curriculum Policy, Design and Enactment framework, which provides a nuanced account of how curriculum is shaped across multiple layers of policy, design, and classroom practice. Although developed in the United States, the framework resonates with European and international contexts in which curriculum systems similarly involve interactions among national policy, resource design, and teacher interpretation (Jameson & Bobis, 2023). Its international applicability strengthens the relevance of this study beyond Australia.

Remillard and Heck distinguish between the official curriculum (policy expectations), the designated curriculum (approved or mandated support materials), and the operational curriculum (teachers’ plans and classroom enactment). Central to their model is the teacher‑intended curriculum, the interpretive layer in which teachers translate curriculum aims into instructional pathways. This layer is shaped by social, political, cultural, structural, and cognitive factors, including societal expectations, research on learning, teacher beliefs, resource availability, and contextual constraints. These influences interact in complex ways, shaping how teachers understand and enact curriculum (Ross, 2017; 2024).

The framework is particularly useful for analysing scripted curriculum materials, which occupy an ambiguous position between designated and operational curriculum. When positioned as “classroom‑ready” solutions, such materials risk displacing the teacher‑intended curriculum, reducing opportunities for teachers to exercise professional judgement. European debates about teacher autonomy, curriculum coherence, and the risks of over‑standardisation echo these concerns (Priestley et al., 2015), making the Australian case a valuable contribution to international scholarship.

By applying Remillard and Heck’s framework, this study conceptualises scripted curriculum not simply as a resource but as a structural intervention that reshapes the curriculum system. The analysis focuses on how teachers navigate, adapt, or resist these materials, and whether the promised workload reductions materialise in practice. In doing so, the study contributes to global discussions about curriculum reform, teacher professionalism, and the conditions necessary for meaningful curriculum interpretation.

Critical thinking, learner autonomy, and students' active engagement in knowledge construction are becoming increasingly important in contemporary education in Kazakhstani context. This shift requires moving from transmissive, teacher-centered models to dialogic practices that foster epistemic agency: the ability for students to independently inquire, reason, and co-construct meaning with their peers. Socratic seminars represent such practices, involving structured, collaborative dialogue centered on text analysis, where participants pose questions, challenge assumptions, and build collective understanding through reasoned discourse.

Most teachers in second or third language instruction contexts traditionally assume language learning occurs only through practiced limited methods: vocabulary memorization, grammar drills, reproductive tasks reproducing fixed models, and standardized test preparation. In this view, language serves primarily as an information transmission tool, not a means for thinking, argumentation, or social interaction.

This qualitative practitioner research draws on empirical experience implementing Socratic seminars with 11th-grade students at the Nazarbayev Intellectual School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics Medeu in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Despite students' high academic proficiency, implementation revealed profound challenges: learners were mostly unaccustomed to independent text reading, self-generated questioning, or peer-oriented analysis, relying instead on teacher directives and approval. This came from the school's science-dominant curriculum, where English instruction with concepts at its core focuses on exam preparation (IELTS, SAT) through controlled reading and writing tasks, mostly pushing aside open-ended speaking and collaborative discussion.

The study aims to assess the potential of Socratic seminars as a dialogic instrument for redefining teacher roles in exam-oriented settings and promoting epistemic agency. It addresses three research questions:

(1) How does participation in Socratic seminars shape high school students' epistemic agency?

(2) What resistances and difficulties emerge when transitioning from exam-focused to dialogic pedagogies?

(3) How does the teacher's role evolve during Socratic seminar implementation?

Data come from classroom dialogues, participation observations, and student reflections, focusing initially on Ken Liu's "The Paper Menagerie" (first term). Subsequent seminars analyzed Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" (second term) and Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" (third term), exploring themes of tradition, conformity, time's fragility, and consequences.

Theoretically, the study integrates dialogic pedagogy (Mercer, 2000; Wells, 1999), where language acts as a tool for joint thinking and knowledge construction, with epistemic agency frameworks (Damşa et al., 2010). In Kazakhstan's context, it bridges local high-stakes testing to global demands, preparing learners for diverse university environments where collaborative inquiry prevails. By democratizing classroom discourse, Socratic seminars counter rote learning's limitations, empowering students as epistemic agents in international academic landscapes.

This paper examines how the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), developed by the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development (OECD), has conceptualised teacher autonomy from its first cycle in 2008 to the most recent edition in 2025. Across these years, international large-scale assessments have grown into powerful global policy instruments, shaping how teachers are perceived, governed, and evaluated. While teacher autonomy is widely regarded as central to professionalism and curriculum‑making, international large-scale assessments often frame autonomy in ways aligned with accountability and performance discourses. This study synthesises conceptual, methodological, and discursive patterns across TALIS cycles and investigates how OECD’s constructions of teacher autonomy elevate or shadow different dimensions of teacher professionalism.

The teacher autonomy framework (Frostenson, 2015; Salokangas et al., 2019; Wermke & Salokangas, 2019) combined with governance perspectives (e.g., Ball & Olmedo, 2013; Pettersson et al., 2016; Pignatelli, 1993; Sobe, 2014) are the analytical lens to capture the continuities and changes in the conceptualisations of teacher autonomy by OECD TALIS in multiple periods and its implications for teacher professionalism and curriculum making.

In short, the teacher autonomy framework can be described including three levels of autonomy—classroom, school, and profession—and identifies four domains in which autonomy is exercised: educational (instruction, planning, assessment), social (discipline, student support, grouping), developmental (professional learning and choices about competence development), and administrative (resource allocation, scheduling, organisational decisions). Teacher autonomy is therefore not limited to instructional choices but distributed across different organisational layers and responsibilities, highlighting how teachers’ space for action is shaped by structural and cultural conditions.

The analysis identifies key continuities. First, teacher autonomy is consistently framed as an important component of an effective teaching profession, particularly in linking autonomy to job satisfaction, motivation, and the attractiveness of teaching careers. This emphasis persists from early cycles, where autonomy was largely implicit, to TALIS 2013 and 2018, where autonomy is directly tied to improving instructional quality and advancing system performance. Second, TALIS has consistently foregrounded autonomy at the classroom level, particularly concerning instructional choices, while giving limited attention to teachers’ roles in curriculum development or broader policy influence. As a result, autonomy is frequently equated with teachers’ individual perceptions of control over pedagogical decisions rather than with their capacity to collectively shape school practices or engage in curriculum making.

At the same time, important changes emerge. The introduction of a dedicated teacher autonomy indicator in TALIS 2018 marks a shift toward measurable, standardised constructs of autonomy, operationalised through scales emphasising satisfaction with classroom control. By 2024–2025, TALIS expands this view to include autonomy in administrative, developmental, and social domains at both school and classroom levels, acknowledging greater contextual diversity. These expansions suggest a growing recognition of the multidimensional nature of teacher autonomy. However, they continue to privilege autonomy at the individual level rather than as a collective professional capacity embedded in institutional structures.

Through a governmentality lens, the paper argues that TALIS operates as a technology of governance: shaping what counts as meaningful autonomy, steering national policies toward particular forms of professional accountability, and constructing teachers as curriculum implementers within performative systems. TALIS thus functions not only as a descriptive tool but also as a normative framework, promoting an understanding of teacher autonomy aligned with OECD’s broader priorities. By foregrounding classroom-level autonomy and largely omitting teachers’ roles in shaping curricular purposes and content, TALIS contributes to a narrowing of teacher professionalism to technical implementation rather than deliberate curriculum making understood as the achievement of teacher agency, according to Priestley et al. (2012, 2015).