This paper draws on a larger research project which started in 2013 and is work in progress. The main aim was to provide insight into and understanding of current practices in upper secondary schools in Iceland in times of radical curriculum reform. Intensive data were collected from about one third of all upper secondary schools in Iceland, providing a national picture. This adds to the uniqueness of the study both nationally and internationally.  New competence-based curriculum guidelines were published in 2011 and upper secondary schools given four years to adapt to the new curriculum. The upper-secondary schools are thus in a transition from adhering to a rather conventional top-down curriculum to a new curriculum which involves major changes in work procedure as well as ideology. Six fundamental pillars have been developed which form the essence of the educational policy: literacy, sustainability, health, and welfare, democracy and human rights, equality and creativity (Aðalnámskrá/National Curriculum Guide for Upper Secondary Schools, 2011). The document states that: The implementation of a new way of thinking in school activities is based on close cooperation of educational authorities with those who are the mainstay of the work carried out in schools (Ibid). Schools are given the freedom and power to design their own individual curriculum based on those guidelines. Apart from three defined core subjects  individual schools can more or less decide which other subjects to offer and how many credits in each. The curriculum emphasises that schools can define their areas of speciality although they all aim at graduating their students with an university entrance exam (arbitur/studentereksamen). This may be quite unique according to Priestley et al. (2012, p.192) who argue: there is arguably a low capacity for agency in terms of curriculum development within modern educational systems.  The focus of this paper is on how teachers of academic subjects interpret this close cooperation; how they perceive the power which has been handed to them by the ministry; and whether they perceive they have the agency to exercise this mandate. The definition of agency is borrowed from Priestley et al. (2012) who define teacher agency as a quality within educators, and see it as a matter of personal capacity to act. The theoretical framework on which this present part is based is social constructivism. According to  social constructivist perspective  people assign individual meanings to their experience with these subjective meanings being formed through interaction with others and through historical and cultural norms that operate in individuals’ lives (Creswell, 2007, p. 21). Social constructivist view gives the background for eliciting and understanding teachers’ reaction towards the new curriculum and their agency or lack of such to make use of the reform for the benefit of their practices and eventually their students. It has been argued that schools as organizational settings are rarely conducive to learning (Louis et al.,1999). Schools have been formed through their historical and cultural norms and teachers beliefs are often rooted in their own experience as students and through their yearlong practice (Ingvarsdóttir, 2011; 2014).The research questions which were developed for this part of the study were:

1. How do define their power and agency to implement the new curriculum?

2. What obstacles, if any, do they perceive in implementing the new curriculum?

3. What opportunities, if any, do they see in the new curriculum for teachers and students?

   Finally, in international comparative terms, this part of the study will contribute to knowledge about the implementation of a new curriculum in schools where individual teachers are given opportunities to make independent choices and to engage in autonomous actions.

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