School culture, self-efficacy, outcome expectation, and teacher agency toward reform with curricular autonomy in South Korea: a social cognitive approach

ABSTRACT

This survey study investigated structural relationships among school culture, self-efficacy, and outcome expectation, and teacher agency development toward the national curriculum reform in South Korea, employing Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). Specifically, focusing on school culture as an environmental factor and teacher self-efficacy and outcome expectation as two different personal determinants, as per Bandura’s model, this study aims to examine how these factors influence Korean teachers’ agency development towards the national curriculum reform that has enhanced autonomy on them. In all, 605 elementary school teachers’ data were analyzed using structural equation modeling analysis with phantom model approach. Findings indicated that the school culture fostered by supportive teacher-principal and teacher- teacher relationships directly influenced individual teachers’ agency over either school- or classroom-level curriculum. In addition, teachers’ self-efficacy and outcome expectation both directly influenced their agency towards reform for enhanced autonomy and mediated associations between school culture fostered by supportive teacher-student relationships and teacher agency to exercise curricular autonomy within their classrooms. The paper gives implications applying these findings, considers the utility of SCT in the Korean context, and covers limitations and future research ideas.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher agency
• national curriculum reform
• teacher change
• elementary education
• South Korea
• Social Cognitive Theory (SCT)

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Mina Min

Mina Min ([email protected]) is an Assistant Professor in Elementary Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Appalachian State University. Her scholarship focuses on teacher agency and change in the context of educational reforms, teachers’ curriculum development and practices for students from underrepresented and marginalized populations, and global–local constructions of democracy and citizenship identity. She approaches these topics from comparative, international, critical, and sociocultural perspectives.