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

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.