In recent years, as part of a global shift reflecting policy-borrowing, many countries have reimagined their national curricula, fostering 21st-century skills, student-centred learning, and innovative pedagogical approaches to improve student performance and enhance teacher agency. This study aligns with the ECER conference theme 'Education in an Age of Uncertainty: memory and hope for the future' by focusing on these widespread curriculum reforms' impact on teacher agency, particularly exploring how such changes shape teachers' roles in a landscape marked by past practices, present adaptations, and hopes for future educational resilience (Priestley & Biesta, 2013; Sinnema and Aitken, 2013; Lingard, 2021).

The most recent major iteration of curriculum reform within the state of Georgia has been structured and implemented with a specific emphasis on these particular areas, which is an unprecedented occurrence in the history of education in this country (Silagadze, 2019; Li et al., 2019; Djakeli, 2019; Erickson, 2017). Since Georgia is treading in uncharted waters with these changes, it remains uncertain as to the effects these structural shifts are having on the teaching profession and the extent to which they are fulfilling one of their stated objectives of enhancing teacher’s role in curriculum-making. This study aims to provide an in-depth evaluation of the ways in which the ongoing re-structurisation of the Georgian National Curriculum for Primary and Secondary schools enable or constrain teachers as curricular agents.

The central research question the thesis intends to answer is the following: Do the recent changes in the Georgian National Curriculum enable or constrain teacher agency? 

The study also aims to answer the following subsidiary research questions:

-       How does curriculum-making take place across different institutional sites in Georgia (from macro to nano)?

-       How is teacher agency articulated in Georgia’s National Curriculum and associated texts? 

-       How do teachers perceive and exercise their agency in the classroom within the frames of the new National Curriculum?

-       Overall, do the recent changes in the Georgian National Curriculum enable or constrain teacher agency?

The study will draw upon the conceptual lens developed by Priestley and Philippou (2018, p. 154) that regards curriculum-making as a complex series of processes taking place across multiple sites that intersect and interact with one another in ‘unpredictable and context-specific ways’, often leading to differential practices and realities ‘wherein power flows in non-linear ways, thus blurring boundaries between these multiple sites.’

This will enable a systemic understanding of curriculum-making as dynamic interactions ranging from individual pupils and teachers (nano) to the international layer (supra). Further, this conceptual framework will enable an in-depth examination of how different actors interact across multiple sites with a particular focus on teachers as curriculum makers and therefore as agentic practitioners within the context of the new National Curriculum. The study will rely on the ecological model of teacher agency consisting of three core dimensions: Iterational, projective and practical-evaluative (Biesta et al. 2015). The three-dimensional model will facilitate an understanding of how teacher agency is enabled and/or constrained by cultural, structural and material sources available in multiple sites of curriculum-making in Georgia. Further, the ecological approach to teacher agency will enable to explore how teachers interpret and execute the new curriculum in ways that may contradict policy goals, and if such actions result in a discrepancy between intended and actual outcomes, as well as unforeseen consequences.

Phase I: involves an extensive analysis of secondary data, including official curriculum documents, political discourses, white papers, and policy statements. This phase employs retroduction to explore underlying structures and generative mechanisms implied in these documents. This will set the stage for a deeper exploration of curriculum reform and teacher agency in the next phase. Phase II: shifts to ethnographic research, with the purposive selection of an all-through school based on critical case sampling. This approach aims to garner strategically important insights regarding the general effects of the new curriculum. Data collection will include a mix of methods such as observations, interviews, and analysis of educational artefacts, including lesson plans and student work. Concurrent preliminary data analysis will be conducted alongside data collection, followed by a comprehensive qualitative analysis using Nvivo. This will involve coding data into overarching themes like 'structure', 'culture', and 'material' and ‘life histories’, informed by EATA. These will be further broken down into more detailed subcategories. This approach will illuminate the interplay of various emergent factors in shaping teacher responses and achievement of agency within the context of educational reforms. At the time of the conference, I will present the foundational components of this research: the conceptual framework, methodological design, and the anticipated significance of the study within the contemporary climate of educational research. While empirical data collection and analysis will not yet have commenced, the presentation will focus on how this proposed research aims to contribute to a hopeful vision for education's future, drawing on our collective memory and the current state of educational resilience.

For the first time in the context of Georgia, this study will lay the foundations for the process of understanding curriculum-making as a series of interlocking social practices that involve multiple actors across multiple sites from the supra to the nano. The ethnographic investigation will generate holistic social accounts and rich qualitative evidence with regard to how different actors make sense of and navigate the reformed curriculum and whether the degree of agency afforded to teachers by the official discourse is at the same time constrained by the availability of resources, structural and contextual factors. Further, the study will rely on these findings to provide evidence-informed recommendations towards streamlining the process of curriculum-making and supporting teacher agency to drive educational growth and development. The study will also draw on the rich experience of other countries and the unique contextual factors in Georgia to recommend possible ways forward to avoid the pitfalls elucidated by international experience. This study will draw on and add to the growing research into teacher agency and curriculum-making. One of the notable contributions in this field include the recent work by Priestley et al. (2021) that provides a distillation of research about new forms of curriculum policy across a number of European countries. This study intends to add Georgia to the list of the countries where curriculum-making has been explored and the foundations for further research in the area have been established. Qualitative evidence generated by the research will offer policymakers an understanding of the implications of the policies generated at supra, macro and meso layers for those who enact them at micro and nano layers (schools and classrooms). It is hoped that the study will also enable Georgian teachers to develop into more reflexive practitioners and become more conscious of their professional working practices.

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