Currently, there are calls for approaches that honour student agency and support the development of 21st century skills to reflect the ever-changing society in which we live (Bron et al., 2022; Green, 2021; Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development [OECD], 2019). Student agency is evident in education policies globally and is explicitly featured within the OECD Learning Compass 2030. The placement of student agency at the basis of this framework demonstrates its global and future-focused importance. The OECD describes agency as students “acting rather than being acted upon” as they “play an active role in deciding what and how they will learn” through “co-construction” of learning with their teachers (2019, p. 1). Despite this strong endorsement, education researchers assert that there are barriers to the enactment of student agency in schools and a paucity of empirical accounts on how co-construction of learning can be realised.  

This presentation draws on the findings of a study conducted in Melbourne Australia, where student agency was investigated in the form of negotiating the curriculum. Boomer (1992) articulated negotiating the curriculum as a pedagogical process where teachers purposefully plan to co-construct the learning journey with students. The curriculum is then a “jointly enacted composition” (p. 32). In doing so, the traditional power that operates in a classroom is redistributed and the curriculum is undertaken as a process, termed as “curriculuming” (p.32). When curriculuming occurs, students are positioned as active co-creators of curriculum rather than passive recipients, aligning closely with current policy rhetoric and the OECD’s conceptualisation of student agency. While Boomer’s ideas provide a process for curriculum co-construction to occur, they have not been widely adopted in mainstream schooling. Despite this, education researchers continue to write about the importance of his theoretical principles on teaching and learning (eg. Brennan, 2022; Bron et al., 2022; Green, 2022; Mockler, 2018). Within the current educational policy landscape, curriculum negotiation provides a way to support teachers in co-constructing learning with students. However, these aspirational ideas currently sit within a broader global policy environment shaped by the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) (Sahlberg, 2023).   

GERM is signified by neoliberal logics of standardisation, datafication and quasi-marketisation that have intensified accountability and narrowed conceptions of curriculum and pedagogy (Sahlberg, 2023). GERM’s effects in Australia have been widely documented (Lingard et al., 2017; Mockler & Groundwater-Smith, 2018; Mockler & Stacey, 2021) and the rise of instrumentalist discourses and reductionist approaches to teaching and learning because of these global trends can present significant challenges to curriculum negotiation. Within the context of this study, student agency is referenced in key curriculum and policy documents at state and national levels, signalling alignment with global priorities and potential opportunities for curriculum negotiation. However, these are mediated by assessment regimes, accountability frameworks, and public perception which can either enable or constrain opportunities for curriculuming with students. 

Against this backdrop, this study investigated how a primary school enacted and sustained a negotiated curriculum for over 25 years, and what supported or challenged this important work. The presentation will summarise findings regarding the tensions teachers and leaders navigate in reconciling negotiated approaches with policy and accountability requirements, particularly in today’s policy landscape. Possible implications for supporting student agency in policy and practice will be illuminated. Given the international attention to student agency and the current global impact of GERM, this situation may resonate with education researchers in other contexts.  

This study investigated the research question: How does a whole school enact and sustain the process of negotiating the curriculum by ‘curriculuming’ with students? A social constructivist epistemology and relativist ontology was adopted to explore subjective meanings of participants (Guba & Lincoln, 2018). Qualitative methods were used to garner a deep understanding of multiple perspectives from participants (Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Cohen et al., 2018). The study design comprised two phases. In Phase 1, semi structured expert interviews were conducted via Zoom to provide an orientation to the field and triangulate later findings. Experts were selected using criteria which included their teaching experience, commitment to curriculuming, and influence on teacher practice. Phase 2 was an instrumental case study undertaken at a primary school that was chosen purposively based on its 25year history of negotiated, inquirybased integrated curriculum. The data collection methods consisted of collating school documents, observations, and interviews with leadership staff, teachers, and students to explore their real-world lived experiences and perspectives on how negotiating the curriculum is enacted and sustained over time. Data analysis was conducted using an iterative, inductive thematic approach (Braun & Clarke, 2022). Four major themes were identified as having an impact on the enactment and sustainability of negotiating the curriculum. These will be connected to sample data and explored in this presentation: *the impact of standardised testing and practices linked to GERM; *the effect of curriculum negotiation on teacher workload and time; *the influence of persistent myths and the media; *the power of the traditional grammar of schooling.

The findings from this study indicate that opportunities for negotiating the curriculum are dependent upon the beliefs, dispositions and actions of teachers and school leaders. Teacher agency emerged as a key enabler of curriculum negotiation, contributing to a supportive school culture that can sustain these practices over time. The evidence also suggests that traditional educational practices and power dynamics, which position teachers over students and systems over teachers, are pervasive and continue to challenge both teacher and student agency. Notably, the study indicates that the current policy climate, dominated by performative accountability and standardisation associated with GERM, has generated negative public discourse around progressive approaches and can erode teacher professional judgement and autonomy. The findings highlight that school leadership plays a pivotal role in mediating these pressures, buffering staff from external demands and creating conditions in which curriculuming with students is possible. The study concludes that if policy makers value the inclusion of student agency, contradictions between espoused aims and other policy mechanisms that constrain agency at all levels need to be addressed. This study provides an important exploration into understanding how negotiating the curriculum offers a concrete way to position students as co-constructors of their learning while demonstrating that this requires the professional judgement and agency of teachers are actively recognised, protected and supported.

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