Journal of Curriculum Studies

ISSN: 0022-0272 (Print) 1366-5839 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tcus20

Teacher beliefs and the mediation of curriculum

innovation in Scotland: A socio‐cultural
perspective on professional development and
change

Carolyn S. Wallace & Mark Priestley

To cite this article: Carolyn S. Wallace & Mark Priestley (2011) Teacher beliefs and the mediation
of curriculum innovation in Scotland: A socio‐cultural perspective on professional development and
change, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43:3, 357-381, DOI: 10.1080/00220272.2011.563447

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2011.563447

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J. CURRICULUM STUDIES, 2011, VOL. 43, NO. 3, 357–381

Teacher beliefs and the mediation of curriculum

innovation in Scotland: A socio-cultural perspective on
professional development and change

CAROLYN S. WALLACE and MARK PRIESTLEY

The purpose of this study was to investigate socio-cultural factors underpinning curriculum
Journal
10.1080/00220272.2011.563447
TCUS_A_563447.sgm
0022-0272
Original
Taylor
2011
Dr
0000002011
00
csw0013@auburn.edu
CarolynWallace
&
and
ofArticle
Francis
Curriculum
(print)/1366-5839
Francis Studies(online)

change by examining teacher beliefs in the context of professional development. Scottish

teachers in the study were participating in policy implementation based on formative assess-
ment. Teachers were selected who were positive about the formative assessment initiative,
so as to examine the inter-relationships amongst beliefs, policy, and practices when teachers
intended to implement curriculum innovation. The aims of the study were to investigate: (a)
the nature of teachers’ beliefs about teaching, learning, and the professional development
programme; (b) how those beliefs influenced the teachers’ mediation of reform policy in
their own classrooms; and (c) points of resonance or tension between teacher’s beliefs and
the council’s philosophy towards and management of policy implementation. A qualitative
interpretive cross-case study approach was used with five participant teachers from different
secondary subject areas. Results suggested that the unique stance of district administrators
to give teachers the opportunity to create their own reform methods, a ‘bottom up’ mode of
implementation, appeared to be a significant factor in promoting the reform policy.

Keywords: professional development; teacher beliefs; formative assessment;

curriculum reform

Introduction

Change has become a dominant mantra of modern day life, and education
has not been immune to these tendencies. The last 25 years have
witnessed, in the words of Levin (1998), a worldwide epidemic of centrally
initiated innovation across the educational landscape. The results of this
have been felt in schools, as work has intensified, paperwork and bureau-
cracy have increased, and teachers have felt increasingly disempowered and

Dr Carolyn S. Wallace is an Associate Professor of Secondary Science Education in the

Department of Curriculum and Teaching, Room 5002 Haley Center, Auburn, AL, 36849-
5212, USA; tel: (844-334-0927), e-mail: csw0013@auburn.edu. She teaches undergraduate
and graduate classes in science education. Her research interests include teacher beliefs and
learning, collaborative professional development, the theory and practice of service learning
for preservice teacher education and the use of language in the construction science
understandings. She previously spent two years working at the University of Stirling in
Scotland, UK
Dr Mark Priestley is Senior Lecturer at the Stirling Institute of Education, Pathfoot
Building A40, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA; tel: +44 (0) 1786 466-272, email:
m.r.priestley@sir.ac.uk. He teaches classes in social subjects methods, supervises doctoral
students and is active in curricular consultation with Highland Council, an educational
authority in Scotland. His research interests include curriculum innovation and change, social
theory and curriculum policy and social subjects education.
Journal of Curriculum Studies ISSN 0022–0272 print/ISSN 1366–5839 online ©2011 Taylor & Francis
http://www.informaworld.com
DOI: 10.1080/00220272.2011.563447
358 C. S. WALLACE AND M. PRIESTLEY

professionally marginalized (Helsby 1999, Goodson 2003, Hursh 2007,

Ball 2008). Elmore (2004) suggests, however, that much of the reform
activity of the last few decades, while well-intentioned, has been limited in
its achievement of espoused goals. Teachers are all too familiar with the
extra workload created by multiple and often competing reform initiatives.
They can point to the changes in paperwork and procedures that have
resulted from reform activity. However, it is more difficult to find evidence
that classrooms have improved or even fundamentally changed as a result
of the many reform initiatives; and indeed the persistent failure of educa-
tional change is a common theme in the literature (Sarason 1990, Fullan
1993, Cuban 1998, Spillane 1999).
Cuban (1988) suggests that many reform initiatives have been largely
unsuccessful at introducing what he terms second order changes. These are
changes to the fundamental structures, mechanisms, and social practices
that comprise schooling. Such dimensions have been referred to as the ‘core
of schooling’ (Elmore 2004) and the ‘grammar of schooling’ (Tyack and
Cuban 1995). These fundamental structures include curricula based around
discrete disciplinary subjects, examinations, and single teacher delivery of
content. This core of schooling is remarkable for its persistence in the face
of efforts to reform it.
This paper draws upon one attempt to address the challenges of curric-
ulum change at the classroom level and has emerged from an empirical study
carried out within a Scottish education authority, the Highland Council.
The teachers in the study were involved in a professional development
programme with a focus on collaborative inquiry designed to promote
Scotland’s national Assessment is for Learning (AifL) initiative (Hayward and
Priestley 2004 , Hutchinson and Hayward 2005). AifL, which has a major
focus on formative assessment, was implemented in Scotland between 2002
and 2008 following the widely publicized King’s Medway Oxfordshire Forma-
tive Assessment Project in England (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall and
Wiliam 2002). The focus of the AifL programme was to promote daily,
informal formative assessment so that both teachers and pupils may become
more knowledgeable about the children’s progress in learning. Self and peer
assessment are two teaching strategies that are central to the implementation
of AifL (Black et al. 2002). The central tenets of AifL include the importance
of teacher-to-student and student-to-teacher feedback on progress towards
the learning goals, the idea that feedback should be specific enough to shape
further learning, and the need for the learner to gain the metacognitive skills
necessary for effective self and peer assessment. The Highland Council, a
geographically large and diverse school authority, had twin goals: to promote
teacher professional learning; and to improve pedagogy through the devel-
opment of formative assessment strategies.
This article focuses on one dimension of this process, the impact of
teacher beliefs on the form that curriculum change has taken in this context.
In taking such a focus, we drew upon the realist social theory of Archer
(1995, examined more closely below), which provided an epistemological
frame for the analysis of case study data. We examined how teacher beliefs
entered into the dynamics of Archer’s societal elements including structure,
culture, and agency, to either maintain the status quo of the system or to
TEACHER BELIEFS AND THE MEDIATION OF CURRICULUM INNOVATION 359

begin social change. We investigated how individual agency in the form of

teachers’ beliefs interacted with the cultural influences present in both the
professional development groups and in classrooms, and with the structures
of public schooling in the form of the council’s initiative to promote forma-
tive assessment. Thus, the aims of the study were to investigate: (a) the
nature of teacher beliefs about teaching, learning, and the professional
development programme for those teachers who enthusiastically supported
the reform; (b) how those beliefs influenced the teachers’ mediation of AifL
reform policy in their own classrooms; and (c) points of resonance or tension
between teacher’s beliefs and the council’s philosophy towards and manage-
ment of policy implementation.

Literature review and theoretical framework

Teacher collaborative inquiry groups as professional development

Over the last decade, the nature of teacher professional development has
been reconceptualized as teacher educators have realized the ineffectiveness
of top-down mandates to implement reform (Putnam and Borko 2000,
Borko 2004). There has been a movement away from isolated workshops
towards the development of collaborative groups of teachers and researchers
engaged in contextually-based, co-constructed professional inquiry (Butler
et al. 2004, Leat et al. 2006, Meirink et al. 2009). Within this model, teachers
and researchers form groups based on similar interests to try out innovative
practices in their classrooms and evaluate the results.
Research has shown that strong professional communities can foster
pedagogical change, such as teachers’ increased use of cognitively challeng-
ing tasks and student explanations (Borko 2004). Some of the positive bene-
fits of collaborative inquiry as a mode of professional development include
the following: (a) teachers come to view themselves as theorizers, experi-
menters, and school leaders (Zellermayer and Tabak 2006); (b) teachers
often use knowledge of their colleagues’ teaching strategies to initiate
changes in their own practice (Meirink et al. 2009); (c) teachers can work
collaboratively to create curriculum, fostering a sense of ownership and direct
changes to classroom practice (Hinden et al. 2007, Priestley, Miller, Barrett
and Wallace 2010); and (d) there is evidence that teacher collaborative work
leads to a lasting impact on schools (Leat et al. 2006). Meirink et al. (2009),
in a study of secondary teachers in the Netherlands, reported that exposure
to the teaching methods of colleagues prompted teachers to experiment with
new methods of their own. The results of these experiments often resulted
in a positive change in beliefs towards the reform initiative in question. The
research group concluded that the exchange of ideas and experiences is not
necessarily enough to promote pedagogical change, but that exchange of
ideas in combination with personal experimentation in the classroom and
deliberate evaluation of experimentation is efficacious for lasting change.
Butler et al. (2004: 453) posited that ‘opportunities to co-construct
knowledge and revise conceptual frameworks through reflection on experi-
ence’ were necessary for deep-rooted change. Butler et al. recognized how
360 C. S. WALLACE AND M. PRIESTLEY

both individual cognition and situated learning are necessary for teacher
learning and belief change in an authentic collaborative activity. Her group
found that while teachers embraced a ‘community of practice’ setting for
professional development, including opportunities for observation, sharing
and distributed expertise, they also realized the benefits of self-regulated
learning, an individual activity. These studies suggest that collaborative
inquiry networks for professional development constitute a rich context for
studying teacher beliefs and curriculum innovation.

Teacher beliefs and teacher sense-making

The construct, teacher beliefs, has been used to characterize the cognitive
structures that teachers bring to bear on classroom decision-making (Nespor
1987, Pajares 1992, Woolfolk Hoy et al. Pape 2006, Meirink et al. 2009). We
adopted the seminal definition of Nespor (1987), who characterized teacher
beliefs as being affective, narrative in nature, and relying on correspondences
with evaluations from the past, such as a particular student being ‘immature’
or ‘bright’. Nespor (1987) posited that the rapid pace and ill-structured
nature of the classroom demands an affective and evaluative method of deci-
sion-making, rather than a slower problem-solving system. The teacher
beliefs construct continues to be a useful frame for contemporary research
into teacher learning and change. For example, Meirink et al. (2009) recently
employed teacher beliefs to include feelings, intentions, expectations, and
attitudes in relation to teachers learning to teach for student self-regulation.
We also followed Richardson’s (1996) view that teacher actions are a key
component of evidence regarding teachers’ beliefs. Both the observation of
classroom actions and self-report mechanisms, such as interviews, are neces-
sary to formulate a complete profile of a teacher’s belief system and we incor-
porated both of these sources of data into our study.
The relationships among teacher beliefs, teaching, and reform-based
changes have been explored for many years, with the most common result
being that teachers transform reforms according to their own beliefs (see for
example, Yerrick et al. 1997, Cuban 1998, van Driel et al. 2001, Woolfolk
Hoy et al. 2006). Even within restrictive environments created by prescriptive
policies such as England’s National Curriculum (Department of Education
and Science 1989), teachers quickly find ways to mediate the curriculum,
filtering ‘change through their own values, which are in turn influenced by
gender, social class, previous experience in the classroom, professional train-
ing and other historical and biographical factors’ (Osborn et al. 1997: 57).
Recent studies continue to show that when curriculum designers ignore
teacher beliefs, teaching can be strikingly different than intended. For exam-
ple, Cotton’s (2006) study of geography teachers in the UK indicated that
teacher beliefs in the importance of value neutrality in the classroom signif-
icantly impacted their enactment of a new environmental curriculum.
A related construct, known as teacher sense-making, is also relevant to
our study. ‘Sense-making’ refers to the cognitive activities associated with
teachers constructing meaning for policy messages. It provides a theoretical
framing that is complementary to teacher beliefs, yet adds meaning in terms
TEACHER BELIEFS AND THE MEDIATION OF CURRICULUM INNOVATION 361

of teachers responding to reform-based policy initiatives. Spillane et al.

(2002) assert that teachers’ prior knowledge, experiences, beliefs, values,
and emotions all influence the sense-making process. For example, teachers’
emotions such as the sense of being powerful or powerless in reform efforts,
especially in regards to their own classrooms, can greatly affect the sense-
making process (Schmidt and Datnow 2005). Spillane et al. (2002) have
outlined three core elements that form an integrative cognitive framework
for policy interpretation: (a) the individual implementing agent; (b) the
social context in which sense-making occurs; and (c) the role of policy repre-
sentations in the sense-making process. These elements can result in vastly
different teacher interpretations of the same policy messages and highlight
the importance of the social interaction among individual agents and social
collectives in the school (Spillane et al. 2002).
Woolfolk Hoy et al. (2006) have proposed an ‘ecological model of
teachers’ knowledge and beliefs’ which is similar to the Spillane’s notion of
teacher sense-making. The ecological model indicates a nested set of influ-
ences on beliefs with the teacher as self in the centre. Concentric rings indicate
how immediate factors in the social context including students and content;
state and national factors, such as standards and reforms; and cultural factors,
such as the meaning of schooling, all shape beliefs and their subsequent enact-
ment in classroom practices. The constructs of teacher sense-making and a
nested ecology of beliefs both aid in conceptualizing how teachers may not
construct the same understandings of reform philosophy as the creators of
the reform.
While there are many examples of how teacher beliefs can diminish the
effects of curriculum reform (Cronin-Jones 1991, Tobin and McRobbie
1996, Osborn et al. 1997, Yerrick et al. 1997, Munby et al. 2000, van Driel
et al. 2001, Cotton 2006), the current study contributes to the literature by
examining how teacher beliefs can contribute positively to the implementa-
tion of policy initiatives. Some studies (Butler et al. 2004, Meirink et al.
2009) have reported that teachers working in collaborative professional
development groups can support and enact reform-based initiatives. Our
study examines the role of teacher beliefs in promoting a reform policy
initiated by the government in the context of collaborative professional
inquiry. In particular, we chose to investigate how the beliefs of teachers who
enthusiastically embraced the reform initiative might play a role in expanding
policy implementation. This research deepens our understanding of teacher
beliefs by examining a positive example of the relationships amongst beliefs,
practices, and policy as a vehicle for promoting reform-based change.

Theoretical framework

Critical realist social theory (Archer 1988, 1995, 2000) provides a useful
epistemological framework for understanding how and why change occurs
(or fails to occur) in social settings. Archer’s frame allows us to theorize the
dynamics of social change, showing the interplay between societal factors
and individual factors, such as beliefs. In conducting such an analysis, we
follow Biesta and Tedder (2007), who suggested that agency, such as that
362 C. S. WALLACE AND M. PRIESTLEY

achieved by teachers engaging with innovation, depends on the interaction

of both personal capacities for decision-making and the ecological
conditions within which teachers work. Figure 1 illustrates how a social
system might be represented in this way.
Archer’s theory, termed Morphogenesis/Morphostasis (Archer 1988;
Figure 1. Archer’s (1995) model of factors influencing social change and stasis.

hereafter abbreviated as M/M), posits a realist ontology and a social

constructivist epistemology for describing how knowledge and practice are
created in complex social settings, such as schools. As a methodological tool,
it provides researchers with a basis for examining the language and actions
that occur at the centre of the system, the zone of social interaction (see
figure 1). The term ‘morphogenesis’ is derived from biology and literally
means ‘beginning of the shape’. Archer uses the term to signify the emer-
gence of change in any complex social system. ‘Morphostasis’, on the other
hand, refers to the stability of a structure and is used by Archer to refer to
continuity in the system (Archer 1988).
M/M facilitates our understanding of how change and/or continuity
occur in social systems. First, society is stratified. It consists not only of
people, but also of social structures and cultural forms. The former
comprises entities (e.g. school departments), relationships between such
entities, and the emergent properties of these social relationships, including
power (Porpora 1998, see Elder-Vass 2008 for a fuller discussion of
these issues). The latter includes enduring social norms, values, ideas, and

Figure 1. Archer’s (1995) model of factors influencing social change and stasis.
TEACHER BELIEFS AND THE MEDIATION OF CURRICULUM INNOVATION 363

knowledge (Archer 1988). Individual strata include what Archer (2000)

describes as personal emergent properties, such as beliefs and identity.
Second, M/M asserts that social objects, such as customs and traditions, are
real in that they persist in time and space, existing independently of and ante-
rior to the knower, and exerting causative influences on social events and the
actions of people (Archer 1995). Third, there is the concept of emergence, the
notion that social relations can change or preserve existing social objects,
such as classroom routines, as well as leading to the evolution of new
cultural, structural, and individual forms (Archer 1995, Elder-Vass 2008).
Archer suggests that we may separate cultural forms, social structures,
and human agencies for the purposes of analysis, allowing us to tease out the
relative contributions of each to the unfolding of any given social situation.
For example, M/M may allow us to analyse how ideologies relating to
accountability (cultural forms) enable the persistence of power that is an
emergent property of certain roles and systems in schools (social structures),
how these roles constrain teacher agency, and how certain teachers are able
to bring to bear particular experiences and values in acting within these
constraints. In the case of the research reported in this paper, it allows us to
show how existing individual beliefs might act back on society, via social
interaction, to facilitate or impede reform-based teaching over time.

Methods

Context of the study

Highland Council is a geographically large school district with urban,

suburban, and rural schools, extending across Scotland from the east coast
to the west coast. The council includes a substantial number of small rural
schools in remote areas, with the possibility of only one to a few teachers of
a subject at one school. Opportunities for professional collaboration are
therefore much needed, but at the same time logistically challenging. The
Council has developed a distinct approach to enacting the AifL programme
in schools, based around context-embedded professional inquiry processes.
This professional development model deliberately sought to engage teach-
ers fully with formative assessment and other participative pedagogies
through the invention/modification of their own strategies. The programme
is based on four underpinning pedagogical principles, which have been
developed by the council in collaboration with external partners, including
university academics. These principles are: participation, engagement,
dialogue, and thinking, and are intended to highlight the active cognitive
engagement of both pupils and teachers with content ideas supported by
formative assessment.
The immediate context for the research was the establishment of five
subject-based Associated Schools Groups (ASGs) for secondary teachers,
set up with government funding (a separate programme was established for
primary schools). The groups were comprised of teachers in English,
mathematics, modern languages, science (biology, chemistry, and physics),
and the social subjects (geography, history, and modern studies). Each
364 C. S. WALLACE AND M. PRIESTLEY

group included from 10–20 volunteer teachers of the same subject (e.g. all
English teachers together). Each of the five groups was supported by a
university researcher, and guided by a clear but open-ended remit to
develop self/peer-assessment strategies for the classroom. All five of
the ASGs chose to engage in action research projects during the year of the
study. A second objective was for the teachers to develop links between the
AifL programme and Scotland’s new national Curriculum for Excellence
(CfE). The ASGs met several times during the school year, forming collab-
orative networks of teachers and providing the impetus for a wider trans-
formation of classrooms across the district. Most of the participating
teachers chose to implement their action research projects around the
development of self/peer-assessment (AifL policy), although one sub-group
of the science teachers chose to engage action research projects on a new
emphasis for numeracy across the curriculum, in line with CfE.

Research design, data collection, and data analysis

The researchers utilized a qualitative, interpretive case study methodology

(Creswell 1998) that was undergirded by symbolic interactionism as a theo-
retical perspective (Blumer 1969, Crotty 1998). Case studies represent the
collection of in-depth information on an object (person) bound in time and
space (Creswell 1998). We felt the collection of rich data on individual
teachers was appropriate for our study of how teacher beliefs and social
interactions mediated teaching. Five case study participants from the
collaborative professional development groups were purposefully selected
for in-depth data collection and analysis. Both within and across case stud-
ies were conducted in the course of the analysis. In this article we present
the results of the cross case analysis, including themes that arose for all five
case study teachers and notable exceptions. Symbolic interactionism
(Blumer 1969) supports our methodology of observing language and
actions of the teachers as representative of their intentions in the social
sphere including the ideas that: (a) humans act towards objects based on
the meanings they have for them; (b) meaning derives from social interac-
tion; and (c) social interaction requires language, thus, meanings are
revealed in symbol systems (Blumer 1969). We viewed symbolic interac-
tionism as a good fit with Archer’s central element for ‘social interaction’
within the critical realist social theory.
The research was undertaken during the 2007–2008 school year at five
school sites and various meeting facilities of the Highland Council adminis-
trative offices. We collected data including individual semi-structured
interviews (two per teacher); informal interviews (three-to-five per teacher);
and field notes from classroom observations (four-to-five observations per
teacher). The four researchers who participated as subject-specific consult-
ants for the five ASGs also conducted the data collection for each subject
area participant (one researcher worked with two subject area teachers).
The researchers had subject-specific research expertise in the subjects that
the teachers taught (English, social subjects, science, mathematics, and
foreign languages), and thus were well-versed in the nuances of classroom
TEACHER BELIEFS AND THE MEDIATION OF CURRICULUM INNOVATION 365

observation for each subject area. Frequent meetings of the team, approxi-
mately every 2 weeks, insured that the data collection procedures were
uniform across the four researchers, including a common semi-structured
interview protocol.
The purpose of the individual interviews was to elicit information about
the participants’ beliefs concerning the purposes of teaching their subjects,
the disciplinary nature of their subjects, pupils, work in the ASG professional
development groups, reasons for undertaking the project, and their action
research projects. A complete list of interview questions is included in the
Appendix. The individual interviews were audio recorded and transcribed in
full.
Informal interviews were conducted by the same four researchers during
their visits to the participants’ schools in various locations such as the class-
room or lunch room. The informal interviews consisted of follow-up ques-
tions arising from the classroom observations and allowed further
explication of the teachers’ classroom decisions. Field notes were recorded
from these conversations after they had occurred. Observations represented
a range of the classes the teachers taught including various grade levels. At
least two of the observations took place in classes where the teacher reported
s/he was currently implementing her/his action research project and two in
classes where the teacher reported that s/he was not implementing action
research to get a more well-rounded view of the teachers’ practice as repre-
sentative of their beliefs (Richardson 1996).
All data were typed, parsed into meaning units that ranged from a phrase
to a few sentences, and coded. The first author conducted the first round of
coding utilizing both descriptive and interpretive codes (Miles and Huber-
man 1994). Data were initially coded with descriptive codes to help the
researchers identify general areas of interest in relation to the research ques-
tions such as teachers’ beliefs about pupils, the work of the ASGs, or their
own action research projects. The purpose of the second layer of coding was
to apply interpretive codes based on the meanings of participants’ actions
and utterances. Some examples of interpretive codes included questioning,
self-assessment, responsibility, autonomy, communication skills, socializa-
tion, and ethics. After the initial round of coding for three of the participants,
the first author met with the research group to discuss the emerging coding
schemes. Approximately 20 examples of interpretive codes were examined
and the group reached consensus on these codes names and meanings.
Following the research group meeting, the first author recoded the data
according to the revised coding scheme and coded the data for the remaining
two participants. A data matrix (Miles and Huberman 1994) was established
to identify commonalities and individual differences across the cases. Major
ideas emerging from the matrix were used to build assertions, which were
tested against the data through the location of exemplars.

Participants

All references to participating teachers are pseudonyms and ethical consid-

eration of human subjects was in accordance with the guidelines established
366 C. S. WALLACE AND M. PRIESTLEY

by the British Educational Research Association. The participants in the study

were purposefully selected to represent: (a) each of the five subject-based
groups; (b) teachers who enthusiastically embraced AifL tenets; (c) a variety
of levels of teaching experience; and (d) both genders. Thus, we sought to
get variety in the case study participants on all dimensions except one, atti-
tudes toward AifL. The purpose of this was to examine the inter-relationship
amongst beliefs, policy, and practices when participants intended to enact
classroom curriculum innovation. After one or two ASG meetings, in which
the researchers met and talked with the teachers, the researchers suggested
that s/he would be looking for a volunteer for one of the case studies. In two
cases, teachers volunteered to be a case study participant. In three cases, one
of the researchers approached a potential participant who met the above
criteria and asked the individual to participate in the study. In these cases,
all three teachers consented. As is common in Scotland, all five teachers
taught a variety of preparations across at least three grade levels. They were
all natives of the UK and were all of Caucasian ethnicity. A brief biographi-
cal profile of each teacher follows. A summary table of teacher characteristics
may be viewed in Table 1.
Helen is an English teacher with an additional assignment in student
guidance who had been teaching for 9 years at the time of the study. She
teaches at a small school drawing from both suburban and rural neighbour-
hoods. Prior to teaching, she had a career in bookselling, working her way
up to management. She had enjoyed the collaborative aspect of the book
selling work and was especially interested in building long-standing rather
than superficial relationships with people. This general philosophy has
informed her teaching and influenced her involvement with the Highland
project. She viewed her involvement in the project as a good opportunity to
reflect upon and develop her own teaching, especially in the area of peer
assessment.
Drew is one of only two mathematics teachers at a small rural school and
had been teaching 5 years at the time of the study. He came to teaching rela-
tively late in life after a varied biography that included being an engineering
graduate, hippy, bus driver, parent, and boat builder. He was working on a
Master’s degree in education during the study period, which is linked to
Chartered Teacher status.1 Drew’s motivation for being involved in the
project stemmed from his desire to transform his own practice and that of
his colleagues. In his current department, he finds the system constraining
and is aware that the school’s current high attainment levels in mathematics
render change problematic. He believes that traditional, content-driven
teaching methods in mathematics, while successful in preparing pupils for
exams, are less satisfactory in terms of student motivation, engagement, and
the development of useful knowledge.
Sophie teaches in a small-to-medium-sized school which serves a small
town in the Highlands of Scotland. Prior to participating in the project, she
had taught modern languages for 7 years, and, like Drew, was working on
her Master’s degree at the time of the study. She has taught both French and
German. Sophie, herself, is half French and she enthusiastically embraces
the notion of children learning about cultures other than their own. She
relates the learning of another language to developing awareness of and
Table 1. Summary of participant teacher characteristics.

Name Helen Drew Sophie Vanessa Fiona

Subject/grade level English, grades 7–12 Mathematics, French/ Science, grades 7–12 Social subjects, grades
grades 5–11 German, grades 7–12
7–12
School environment small, rural and small, rural medium, rural small, rural large, suburban
suburban
Years of teaching 9 5 7 15 3
experience
Years prior experience 1 1 2 0 1
with AifL programme
Teaching interests student collaboration motivation and multicultural scientific thinking in teacher and student
and dialogue math literacy knowledge a global society relationships
Personal reasons for collaboration with anti-traditional personal growth concern for quality of favourable school
participation in AifL peers beliefs and social schooling, new ideas environment, negative
project learning experiences as a student
TEACHER BELIEFS AND THE MEDIATION OF CURRICULUM INNOVATION
367
368 C. S. WALLACE AND M. PRIESTLEY

empathy for others. She doesn’t want her teaching to stagnate and enjoys
thinking of new ways of doing things; this has led to her involvement with
the AifL project. She hoped to engage in action research to improve her
pupils’ autonomy as learners in reading French.
Vanessa is a science teacher who is qualified to teach biology, chemistry,
and physics. At the time of the study, she taught chemistry and biology at a
rural secondary school. Vanessa had 15 years of teaching experience at the
time of the study, including 12 years at an urban school in England. She
had already attained Chartered Teacher status. She has a strong interest in
involving children in decision-making for scientific issues such as genetic
engineering, carbon dioxide emissions, biofuels, and genetically-modified
foods. Vanessa was already using a range of AifL formative assessment strat-
egies, such as self-assessment, at the time the research took place. She was
the only one of the case study teachers who chose CfE innovation, in partic-
ular numeracy across the curriculum, as the topic for her action research
project rather than AifL innovation. She was interested in joining the
project because she feels a sense of responsibility to deliver high quality
teaching to pupils and their parents and because she wants to remain fresh
in the field.
Fiona, the social subjects teacher, was the least experienced teacher
among the participants, having only 3 years of teaching experience at the
time of the study. Her primary teaching subject is modern studies,
although she also teaches geography and history to junior classes (ages 12
and 13) in a relatively large secondary school. Fiona suggested that she
worked in an environment that was conducive to the sorts of innovation
encouraged by AifL and CfE, including the attitude of her departmental
colleagues. Fiona’s personal background is significant in influencing her
current approaches to teaching. She reported an unhappy experience of
secondary school as a student, particularly in terms of what she character-
ized as poor teachers who were not interested in their pupils and who did
not communicate well with one another about their teaching. A very strong
feature of Fiona’s persona is her strong emphasis on staff/staff and staff/
student relationships.

Roles of the researchers

The researchers involved in the project included five academics from two
universities in Scotland. The researchers took dual roles in the study. In the
first role, they provided collaborative support for the five ASGs. This
included activities such as presenting sessions on the initial ‘kick off’ day of
the professional development programme, attending the ASG meetings as
critical friends, observing teachers and giving feedback, and providing
support for teachers regarding their action research designs. The second role
of the researchers was to conduct research regarding how curriculum policy
was socially interpreted and mediated through the Highland Council profes-
sional learning programme. The researchers separated these roles by
performing only one of these functions at any particular time and making
explicit to the participants under which role they were currently functioning.
TEACHER BELIEFS AND THE MEDIATION OF CURRICULUM INNOVATION 369

Results

The data from the five case studies suggested a number of common teacher
beliefs which impact upon teacher interactions with pupils and upon their
classroom practices in relation to the AifL policy. In the sections following,
we describe the teachers’ beliefs drawing upon examples from the data, orga-
nized under five assertions. We also show whether and how these beliefs
articulate with the AifL policy. It is important to note that it can be assumed
that this discussion reflects the common beliefs articulated by all five of the
teachers, unless otherwise stated; a lack of space precludes the use of exam-
ples from each teacher for each theme, and examples used should be seen as
illustrative rather than comprehensive.

Theme One: Participating teachers believed that the purpose of teaching

their subjects was for pupils to develop academic and personal
characteristics necessary for constructive participation in society

All of the teachers evidenced a striking similarity in their beliefs about the
purposes of teaching their subjects, even though their subjects were differ-
ent. They viewed teaching as a broad and philosophical venture; as more
than conveying the content or preparing pupils for further education. They
emphasized that pupils needed to develop life skills. Some of the most
common themes were responsibility, informed decision-making, critical
questioning, communication, and diversity. For example, Helen described
the purpose of teaching English as ‘grappling with ideas’. She viewed
English as a vehicle to promote questioning, skepticism, dialogue, and
ethics.
Helen: But I’ve more and more come to realize that you don’t really teach
English when you teach English, because the pupils already speak
English. Of course, I know it is to help them communicate and
increase their vocabulary, but a lot of what you do is, say, in your ques-
tioning—it’s a lot philosophical. And a lot of the stuff I enjoy doing is
philosophical. You know, it’s challenging, looking at ethical issues. I
think it’s to encourage pupils to be questioning and resourceful. There
is a sort of acceptance that this is the way things are but questioning,
‘Why is this the way things are? How can things be different?’ (inter-
view, 19/02/08).
Sophie, the modern languages teacher, emphasized learning about diver-
sity in terms of understanding different cultures and adopting tolerance,
empathy, and linguistic awareness of other people in the world. Sophie also
believed that that questioning, logic, and problem-solving were integral parts
of learning a language:
Sophie: When I try to teach the grammar, I try to get them to look at language,
not just French, but English as well, and say, why is it like this and ask
themselves questions. And so, almost using logical skills, asking ‘Why
is it like that? Could it be like this? How could it work?’ And trying to
apply patterns in developing that awareness of logic, and problem-
solving and pattern building. (interview, 10/01/08)
370 C. S. WALLACE AND M. PRIESTLEY

Teachers’ beliefs about the importance of pupil responsibility, question-

ing, problem-solving, and logic were congruent with the underlying philos-
ophy of AifL regarding self/peer-assessment, especially the notion of
children taking responsibility for their own learning. Sophie stated, ‘I’m
obviously inspired by AifL’, and related how she had taken on a role as a
teacher leader for AifL. Sophie’s beliefs in the power of self/peer-assessment
for language learning were reflected in her lesson on analysis of reading
mistakes. After having year 4 pupils (age 15) answer reading questions in
French with practice materials from the national exam, she demonstrated
the thinking behind how such answers would be marked by a teacher. Pupils
were then paired and marked each other’s papers in a peer assessment exer-
cise. Following this exercise, the pupils, still working in pairs, analysed the
reasons for their mistakes using a guideline that Sophie had prepared.
During three other observed lessons, Sophie similarly engaged pupils in
assessing their own French writing (field notes, 10/01/08 and 31/01/08).

Theme Two: The participating teachers’ beliefs about pupils reflected the
idea that children have the capacity for the challenging activities of self
and peer-assessment, but need to build confidence

The five participants all expressed the belief that pupils can conduct the
critical thinking necessary for self and peer-assessment, although they high-
lighted this belief in slightly different ways. Helen stated that pupils ‘lacked
confidence’ and were afraid to make their ideas public. Consequently, her
classroom activities focused on explicit instruction regarding complex
questions and answers vs recall questions and answers, and giving pupils
time to expand their commentary on others’ responses. Many of her teach-
ing actions were devoted to promoting extended dialogue. Helen’s beliefs
that pupils need opportunities to develop confidence in communication,
use scrutiny, and formulate their own questions were observed in her
lessons. In one lesson, year 3 (age 14) pupils reading the play Hobson’s
Choice, were asked to respond in writing and orally to a series of questions.
When holding the oral discussion, Helen was observed to regularly request
pupils to give evidence, add to their peers’ answers, and probe with further
questions. Pupils were given and used plenty of time to think about their
responses (field notes, 18/02/08). In the identified action research lesson,
year 4 pupils (age 15) had the goal of developing their close reading skills,
by ranking possible answers to close reading exam questions from best to
worst and justifying their choices with their peers. The culminating activity
in both of these lessons involved pupils in writing their own questions.
Helen’s beliefs that pupils need opportunities to expand dialogue, engage
with peers, and provide justification were clearly mirrored in her classroom
teaching.
Fiona, the social subjects teacher, echoed others’ comments about
pupils’ need to build confidence and the positive benefits of self and peer-
assessment in that regard:
Fiona: It gives them confidence to learn from each other because when
before, when I asked a question I wouldn’t have any hands going up
TEACHER BELIEFS AND THE MEDIATION OF CURRICULUM INNOVATION 371

or anything like that so … But as we do it more they begin to learn

from each other. (interview, 04/03/08)
Vanessa’s case stands in contradiction to the practices of the other teach-
ers in relation to theme two. Her data indicated that she had competing
belief sets regarding pupils. Competing belief sets have been reported in
other studies of teacher beliefs (Wallace and Kang 2004) On the one hand,
Vanessa encouraged pupils to think for themselves, promoting the idea that
they had important autonomous understandings. Another of her positive
beliefs about pupils was that they take a role as leaders in the classroom,
‘They have changed my teaching practice, because they have come up with
techniques they find really helpful …’. Third, Vanessa seemingly placed
confidence in pupils’ ability to assess their own progress in learning as she
made frequent use of pupils signalling their understanding with green,
yellow, and red cards (understand, not sure, do not understand, respec-
tively). In contrast, however, Vanessa also believed that pupils were disorga-
nized, irresponsible, and lazy, as evidenced in the language she used scolding
and reprimanding them, especially the youngest class. She told one student
she was ‘aggravated’ because he was disorganized and did not have the
homework assignment written down. On another occasion, she spoke
sharply to this student again, as he had started doing the homework instead
of participating in class discussion, ‘Are you doing your homework? Why? Is
this home? That’s made me cross. You will come see me tomorrow at lunch-
time’ (field notes, 18/03/08).
Vanessa’s class discussions also indicated her belief that pupils were
unable to think critically. This was demonstrated several times during her
lessons while she engaged pupils in rapid closed questioning. Her classroom
actions indicated she did not support giving pupils time to think on their
own, but rather quickly interrupted with the right answer. For example, in
one exchange, she attempted to have pupils hypothesize which energy
sources lead to global warming.
Vanessa: Of these energy sources, how many contribute to global
warming? Stop cutting and pasting. Put your hands up.
Student 1: Gas.
Student 2: Coal.
Various pupils: Nuclear.
Vanessa: Why nuclear?
Student 3: Because nuclear energy is chemical energy.
Vanessa: Yes, its chemical energy, but do we burn it? No, we don’t
burn it, so it doesn’t produce carbon dioxide.
Student 3: But some people don’t want to use it because they think it’s
dangerous.
Vanessa: [Ignores comment].
[approximately 20 minutes later]
Vanessa: On average all energy is 79% from fossil fuels. What other
energy could be used during the day [besides in the house-
hold].
[Pupils make various guesses]
Vanessa: Cars and vehicles use up a great deal of the 79%. (field notes,
18/03/08)
372 C. S. WALLACE AND M. PRIESTLEY

We interpret these excerpts from class discussion to indicate that

Vanessa used questions that had a ‘right answer’ such as ‘it doesn’t produce
carbon dioxide’ and ‘cars and vehicles use up a great deal’ and that she inter-
rupted pupils’ thinking by quickly supplying these answers when the pupils
did not immediately respond the way she expected. She did not take oppor-
tunities that pupils introduced to discuss issues they saw relevant including
the nature of chemical energy, nuclear safety, or other uses of fossil fuels. In
this way, Vanessa’s beliefs resulted in a version of AifL/CfE policy that
taught pupils that their own thinking was not as important as the teacher’s
authority.

Theme Three: Teacher beliefs included the idea that pupils have to
actively construct their own knowledge; an assumption necessary for the
successful implementation of self and peer-assessment

For Drew, AifL involves teachers in transforming their practice. Drew’s

beliefs that pupils needed to construct their own mathematical understand-
ings were congruent with underlying assumptions of AifL philosophy in
the sense that pupils’ assessment of their own understandings is necessary
for change and reconstruction to the knowledge base. He viewed using
AifL techniques and strategies as a way to enhance the amount of feedback
he got from pupils in order to make teaching decisions. Drew’s classroom
observations indicated that he utilized student–student dialogue as a main
teaching strategy, and that he encouraged pupils to do activities in their
own individual ways. He believed that pupils construct their own knowl-
edge and these constructivist beliefs fit very well with AifL principles. He
stated:
Drew: Teaching for understanding, you would think that all teaching was for
understanding, but the fact is that it is not. It is from rote memory, but
if you can take the time to make sure that every kid actually understands
what they are doing and can relate it to you … and hopefully it is a
different form from the way you told them but in a way that makes sense
to them. Too much I have this picture of how we are cramming facts
into the heads of pupils and they just rattle about in the back of a big
loose pile where of course they don’t stick because there is nothing to
stick to. But if we could take the time to build a solid structure … it
seems to me it will be robust and transferrable. (interview, 06/12/07).
Drew’s action research project was focused on year 1 (age 12) pupils’
engagement with learning journals. In one of his observed classroom lessons,
journal prompts were written on the whiteboard as follows:
(1) What did I learn today? Make a picture of some equivalent fractions
by sticking them in your log. Write why they are the same size.
(2) Did I learn anything from people in my group?
(3) Could I explain equivalent fractions to someone new? (field notes,
07/12/07).
Drew’s use of a learning journal indicated how he blended cognitive and
meta-cognitive strategies into his daily lessons. The above journal prompts
TEACHER BELIEFS AND THE MEDIATION OF CURRICULUM INNOVATION 373

indicate his intentions to have pupils assess their own daily learning, what
they learned from peers, and to test gaps in their knowledge through explain-
ing the mathematical concepts in everyday language.
Fiona stated that she has changed a lot of her lessons to incorporate AifL
in order to give pupils a chance to ‘think about how they actually work’.
Fiona believed she should pay careful attention to diverse learning styles
when grouping pupils, as they learned much from group interaction, ‘trying
to put pupils with different learning styles together so they can all work
together in different ways and all contribute to one big picture, but each
brings a piece into it’ (interview 04/03/08). The classroom observations of
Fiona indicated that she promoted active engagement with the syllabus
content, for example through pupils forming their own political parties to
construct understanding of electoral systems.
Like Drew, Fiona viewed pupils constructing their own learning and
assessing their own learning as two sides of the same coin. She described a
teaching strategy in which she turned pupils’ own questions back over to
them, ‘He asked the question and he should be able to answer it … if you just
play it back to them what they said, it gives them a chance to actually think
about it’ (interview 04/03/08). This excerpt illustrates Fiona’s beliefs in
having pupils construct their own knowledge, while simultaneously taking
responsibility for their own learning. Similar to Helen, she allowed pupils
time for an expanded response during class discussion. She believed that a
combination of active group learning and self/peer-assessment strategies had
resulted in higher achievement for her pupils and added sophistication to her
teaching.
Fiona: I learned to, not so much to trust them [pupils] more, but to give them
more space to have their own thought processes instead of me having
my own ideas and trying to press on to them, so that I get the results
that I want … keep the whole point of the course and why they are in
it. (interview 04/03/08)

Theme Four: The collaborative inquiry professional development

programme provided opportunities for teacher–teacher dialogue and
sharing good practice

Opportunities for questioning, promoting extended dialogue, and critical

thinking which surfaced as beliefs regarding teaching pupils were mirrored
in the ideas the participant teachers had about their own professional devel-
opment. As in other studies of collaborative professional development
(Butler et al. 2004, Leat et al. 2006), all five teachers in our study mentioned
the importance of being able to discuss professional practice with like-
minded professionals. Most of the ASGs met on a bimonthly basis, giving
teachers a chance to dialogue about their action research projects and share
examples of teaching strategies they had used to promote peer and self
assessment. A prominent feature of these meetings was that time was
reserved to communicate in informal ways. Teachers emphasized the impor-
tance of hearing what each other were doing in the classroom, especially in
the Highland context where there might be only one or two subject teachers
374 C. S. WALLACE AND M. PRIESTLEY

in one school. When asked about the function of the ASGs, the participants
responded as follows:
Sophie: At ASG [subject specific collaborative inquiry group] a lot of ideas
are generated because we talk about things and, inevitably, in talk-
ing, people are spontaneous, they are not writing anything, and
people are thinking, they are brainstorming, and I think ideas snow-
ball, they come out of it. (interview, 10/01/08)
Drew: I went to the ASG group because I felt that I would meet other
people that felt the same [receptive to changing practice]. (interview
06/12/07)
Vanessa: [about the function of the ASG] I’m thinking of practice, sharing and
developing good practice, which hopefully we will disseminate after-
wards … I think it has done really well, because it has set up subsid-
iary things like evening sessions for people to come along and see
each others’ practice. (interview, 18/03/08)

Theme Five: Highland Council took an open-ended, teacher-led

approach to professional development, which mirrored teachers’ beliefs
about learning, and acted as a promoter of lasting change

Beyond facilitating an initial staff development day and the organization of

teachers into ASGs, Highland Council administrative officials allowed teach-
ers the freedom to develop their own professional development activities.
Vanessa viewed AifL as being teacher-led and practice-driven. When asked
where AifL ideas come from she replied, ‘Well, they must be teacher-led
don’t they?’ While the remit to the groups was to explore AifL or CfE reform-
based principles, Highland Council did not limit the types of classroom strat-
egies that could be invented or dictate methods for evaluating their impact.
It was not required, for example, that teachers formally experiment with
teaching strategies, conduct action research, or explore peer and self assess-
ment. However, these processes were suggested to teachers and resources for
working with them were provided. For example, facilitating the teachers to
design action research projects was one supportive role of the university
researchers. Many teachers in the programme did embrace experimentation,
action research, and peer and self assessment based on previous experiences
with these concepts and the support of others within the groups.
Three of the five case study teachers highlighted that one of the reasons
they were compelled to participate in the ASGs was the idea that they would
be doing something active that would have clear results. They contrasted this
to other professional development programmes in which there were vague
suggestions to change practice and too much discussion with little action.
Sophie expressed this idea when she asserted that formal training on AifL strat-
egies was too vague and general to be of use and that, ‘until you start to apply
that [formative assessment strategies] in the classroom, you cannot begin to
understand the complexity of the issue’. And as stated by Sophie and Helen:
Sophie: And I think with normal teaching it is very hard, often, to be moti-
vated sometimes to try out new things, to put all the effort in, the
planning in, so sometimes having a goal, being involved in something
just forces you sometimes to make that initial step, but also, perhaps
TEACHER BELIEFS AND THE MEDIATION OF CURRICULUM INNOVATION 375

forces you to be a little more reflective … it has given me the oppor-

tunity to do some classroom based projects backed up by research.
And, quite often, that’s the thing that gets left out is ‘backed up by
research’. (interview 31/01/08)
Helen: But I think something like this [ASG collaborative inquiry], it is the
engagement in it, its action research. You’re actually getting to grips
with it … You are actually doing something, you’re trying something
out in the classroom, you are seeing how it works, and you are talking
about it, reflecting about it afterwards. That is important, but it is
what you are doing, hopefully, that will enhance the pupils’ experi-
ence. (interview, 19/02/08)
Thus, although the programme did not mandate action research with
formal reflection on results in order to participate, this was one feature that
appealed to the case study teachers. We hypothesize that the beliefs partici-
pating teachers expressed regarding the importance of pupils’ active
construction of understanding, critical questioning, self-assessment, and
reflection were parallelled by their beliefs about how they might best learn
about teaching innovations. Thus, we assert that the open-ended features of
the professional development programme promoted the teachers’ construc-
tion of their own learning processes.
Finally, administration in the Highland Council supported the notion of
valuing the voices of all teachers and fostering distributed leadership of the
ASGs. In contrast to privileging the voice of particular teacher leaders
(although some teachers did take leadership roles), the ASG groups were
inclusive. Drew noted that a novice teacher who was ‘intelligent, enthusiastic,
and a great communicator’ had taken up the leadership of the maths group.
Vanessa used the term ‘distributed leadership’ when discussing the strengths
of the ASGs. Fiona was encouraged by the idea that she could share ideas
with other teachers, despite the fact she was only in her third year of teaching:
Fiona: I thought it was great that it wasn’t just young teachers who were there,
there were people there from all levels—people who had been teaching
for 30 years and people who had been teaching for 5 years. The process
of it was fantastic, because I managed to get a lot in, not just me learning
from somebody who’s had a longer experience, but them learning some-
thing from me as well. And being able to get my voice heard and make
what I’m saying valid and people finding my message valid and going
on and practicing it in their classrooms as well. (interview, 19/06/08)

Discussion

As an example of qualitative interpretive research, our results are unique to

a particular context and cannot be widely generalized. In addition, we
acknowledge that our decision to study only those teachers who were positive
about AifL reform limits our results to a very small sub-set of classroom
practices. In this section, we examine how teacher beliefs interplayed with
contextual factors, such as support from the ASGs and Highland Council’s
open-ended style of management, to influence the positive shape that reform
took in these particular classrooms, referencing Archer’s (1995) social theory.
376 C. S. WALLACE AND M. PRIESTLEY

It is important to note that in the discussion that follows, we make no claim

that the teachers’ beliefs changed as a result of their participation in the ASG
professional development programme activities during the period of the
study. Four of the five case study teachers had worked within AifL profes-
sional development activities for at least 1 year prior to the year of our research
study. Therefore, some of the beliefs that we observed may have been due to
exposure to the AifL programme itself. We do not see these events as cause–
effect phenomena, but rather as iterative and cyclical.
We do, however, claim that the teachers modified some of their teach-
ing practices to more deliberately enact AifL in their classrooms. Examples
of this include Drew’s incorporation of learning logs, Sophie’s instruction
on correcting reading mistakes, Helen’s asking students to write, critique,
and answer their own and peers’ questions, and Fiona’s strategy of turning
questions back over to students instead of answering them herself. We see
these changes to classroom practice as supporting and magnifying policy
implementation with implications that extend beyond the participants’
classrooms. As suggested by Archer’s theory, the cultural values of AifL
and teachers’ human agency interacted in such a way that the teachers’
contributions continued to shape the cultural knowledge of AifL, just as
AifL continued to shape the teachers’ beliefs.
First, we apply Archer’s heuristic to Drew’s case study to illustrate the
role of beliefs in a specific example. The AifL policy may be seen in Archer’s
terms as a new cultural form which has migrated from the outside into the
social setting that is Drew’s school maths department. This cultural form is
largely complementary with Drew’s embodied culture, in other words, his
personal and professional beliefs and values. However, cultural congruence
is only one dimension of this process of translation. Other dimensions may
be seen in terms of the social structures that surround Drew in his daily
interactions and practices. One aspect of social structure is relational struc-
ture (Elder-Vass 2008), which for Drew comprises the day-to-day relation-
ships with colleagues in his department and the wider school setting, as well
as external relations. Some of these structures were morphostatic in
nature—that is they inhibited change. In Drew’s case, relationships with two
senior colleagues who tended to support more traditionalist mathematics
teaching embodied morphostatic influences. Other relationships, for exam-
ple, those emerging from the teacher ASG collaborative groups, were
morphogenetic in that they promoted change. Drew’s strong personal
beliefs, combined with the support provided by the ASG collaborative
community, were sufficient to boost his confidence to experiment, produc-
ing changes to his own practice, morphogenesis, or the beginning of change
within the social practices of his department, and potential cultural and
structural elaboration of mathematics teaching in Highland Council.
Moving beyond this illustrative example, we suggest some hypotheses
for how cultural and structural factors in the system may have influenced the
case study teachers’ actions surrounding AifL policy. The data suggests that
congruency between teachers’ beliefs and the philosophy of the AifL initia-
tive was a key factor in teachers’ enactment of the innovation in their class-
rooms. AifL promotes learning through metacognition and the active
engagement of pupils with ideas. All five case study teachers evinced beliefs
TEACHER BELIEFS AND THE MEDIATION OF CURRICULUM INNOVATION 377

that were compatible with the basic concepts of AifL. They believed, in
general, that the purposes of teaching their subjects went beyond content
learning to support general life skills such as responsibility, questioning,
informed decision-making, communication, and logical thinking. The
‘learning how to learn’ philosophy of AifL fit well with the teachers’ overall
teaching aims. The teachers believed that pupils are capable of taking on the
challenging work of peer and self-assessment, which is a necessary assump-
tion for carrying out AifL in the classroom and that learning involves chil-
dren in constructing their own understandings. The AifL initiative may be
seen as a cultural system with a particular set of values, ideas, and knowl-
edge. A good fit between these cultural values and the teachers’ beliefs as
elements of their human agency may have contributed to the rich communi-
cations between the teachers in the zone of social interaction.
The results of the study included one anomalous case; Vanessa, the
science teacher, appeared to have competing beliefs sets regarding pupils
and their capabilities for autonomous thinking. It appeared that she was in a
rush to convey to pupils what she considered to be the correct ideas about
science and sustainability. Her beliefs that pupils needed to be told the
correct information disrupted many of her other efforts to promote critical
thinking and informed decision-making. Vanessa’s case is a good illustration
of how teacher beliefs can thwart curriculum change, even when teachers are
generally positive about the reform.
Second, instead of taking a top-down approach for implementing
reform, the Highland Council relied on teachers to create the methods of the
reform, using the ASGs as a structural mechanism. The networks provided
by the Highland project—including external support from colleagues in
other schools and from the district management—provided a source of legit-
imacy for teacher innovation. This strategy created the possibility for teach-
ers to assert their own beliefs in the interpretation of the policy into
classroom practice. In Archer’s terms, the teachers’ human agencies and
their social interactions within the collaborative inquiry groups exerted pres-
sure on both the cultural systems of the AifL, in terms of constructing AifL
knowledge and practices, and on the structural systems of schooling as the
teachers engaged a powerful role in reform interpretation and enactment.
Highland Council’s empowerment of teachers made it possible for them to
participate in the design of the reform rather than simply in its reproduction.
Our study, therefore, indicates the possibilities for change to classroom
practices when two circumstances are in place: (a) teacher beliefs are
congruent with the reform philosophy, and (b) teachers are empowered to
create the methods of reform as they interpret the policy for use in their own
classrooms.
Third, the teachers saw Highland Council’s approach as supporting
distributed leadership of ASGs, rather than appointing the Council’s choice
of administrators or teacher leaders, making it possible for relatively inexpe-
rienced teachers to take leadership roles and contribute substantively. These
shifts in the power structures of the system seem to have opened up reform
potential in a few ways. The teachers likely experienced positive emotions
associated with feeling powerful, rather than powerless in the face of reform
(Schimdt and Datnow 2005). As teachers’ cognition became vital to the
378 C. S. WALLACE AND M. PRIESTLEY

collective meaning of AifL reform, the nature of teacher sense-making in

terms of how individual beliefs, social contexts, and policy representations
(Spillane et al. 2002) interact may have taken on a new character. Teachers
were not attempting to adapt policy to fit their beliefs, they were able to
construct and share policy representations based on their beliefs. Thus, the
ASGs took on a positive role as a social context in which policy was valued,
rather than a forum for translating policy into modes that represented the
status quo. The teachers chose action research as a vehicle for policy co-
construction, putting them at the centre of the sense-making process in
terms of policy representations.
Fourth, our study also points to the potential of teachers to exert
pressure on the system in a way that has broader implications beyond their
own classrooms. For example, the sharing of classroom practices developed
by teachers in the study with other members of the ASG groups may affect
the cultural adoption of these forms of pedagogy within the council and
across the UK (e.g. as teachers present their work in regional or national
meetings). Wider dissemination of both the ‘bottom up’ style of implemen-
tation of the council and the teachers’ responses may influence how reform
is put into practice in other educational authorities. As suggested by Archer,
changes taking place in the zone of social interaction have the potential to
act back upon both structures and cultures of the system. Archer’s model
indicates that teachers’ classroom actions have the potential to influence
policy in a way that reaches beyond their individual classrooms or the teach-
ing of their specific subject areas.
Our study was limited to the beliefs of teachers who enthusiastically
embraced the tenets of the reform. As such, it might represent one end of a
continuum in which teachers actively promoted reform policy, while exam-
ples of previous studies have illustrated the other end of the continuum in
which teachers overturned reform policy (Tobin and McRobbie 1996 ,
Osborn et al. 1997, Yerrick et al. 1997, Munby et al. 2000 , Cotton 2006,
Woolfolk Hoy et al. 2006). The results of this study raise several questions
regarding the beliefs and teaching practices of teachers along other points on
the continuum, as well as movement from one end of the continuum to the
other. Some of these include: (a) Can the beliefs of teachers hostile to the
reform be transformed or evolved? (b) What professional approaches might
promote the transformation of teacher beliefs? (c) What are the implications
in terms of equity for children in classrooms with teachers of differing
beliefs? (d) How do teacher beliefs affect student achievement and motiva-
tion? (e) How do local contextual elements, such as student behaviour or
participation, influence the enactment of reform? Further research on these
and other questions is important for understanding the promises and limits
of teacher professional development.

Note

1. Chartered Teacher status is a Scottish initiative to enhance the teaching practice of expe-
rienced teachers. It is linked to a post-graduate qualification which may be extended to
the Master’s level.
TEACHER BELIEFS AND THE MEDIATION OF CURRICULUM INNOVATION 379

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TEACHER BELIEFS AND THE MEDIATION OF CURRICULUM INNOVATION 381

Appendix: Semi-structured interview questions

Interview One

(1) Please introduce yourself and tell me your role in the school.
(2) What kinds of background experiences did you have before coming
into teaching?
(3) What made you decide to come into teaching?
(4) What do you feel are the main aims of teaching (your subject) in
secondary school?
(5) What key skills or concepts do you want the pupils in your class to
gain?
(6) What do you think are your main strengths as a teacher?
(7) What was your motivation for becoming involved in the ASG? The
action research project?
(8) What are your intentions with the action research project?
(9) How will you know if you are successful achieving your intentions with
the pupils?
(10) How well do you think the ASG is functioning this year?
(11) How does leadership work in your ASG group?
(12) What are the origins of ideas for teaching that surface in the ASG
groups?
(13) What types of support does the Council provide?
(14) How does your involvement in AifL and CfE affect your identity as a
teacher?

Interview Two

(1) Tell me about what you were hoping to achieve with the lesson I just
observed.
(2) Do you think some of the things you are doing with this class (action
research class) are carrying over to other classes?
(3) What have you learned about pupils from the project?
(4) What have you learned about yourself as a teacher in the course of the
project?
(5) What else is going on in your school with relationship to AifL and CfE?
(6) How do you communicate with members of your ASG group?
(7) How do you see yourself taking forward the work you have done this year
with the project?