School Administrative Style and the Curriculum

Investigates the relationship between schools′ administrative styles and the curriculum and teaching practices that occur within them. As part of a wider study conducted into the effects of the decentralization of curriculum decision making in Australia, sampled schools were grouped according to teachers′ perceptions of the extent of autonomy that they were able to exercise. Curricular structures and instructional practices within two discipline areas –science and social science – were then compared across the groupings of schools. The results revealed that the extent of autonomy that teachers perceived they possessed within schools affected both curriculum emphases and instructional practices within the programme in practice although, when asked about curriculum emphases and instructional practices in an ideal programme, there was little difference in the views of the teachers in the different groups of schools.