Based on a survey of Korean middle school teachers, this dissertation study examines the current state of Korean middle school teachers' curriculum decision-making and factors related to these decisions. The literature review suggests that teachers generally make four types of curriculum decisions (content to teach, instructional strategies, time allocation for units, and sequence units). Factors related to their perception of control over these decisions include their attention to curriculum materials, their beliefs about curriculum materials, their knowledge, and collaboration with peer teachers.The results indicated that teachers perceived high control over instructional strategies while they perceived only little control over content to teach. Teachers who taught test-related subjects (mathematics, language arts, English, social studies, and science) were likely to show less perceived control over content to teach than their peers who taught nontest-related subjects. Teachers' attention to curriculum materials rarely showed remarkable relationship to their perception of curriculum control, but teachers' positive beliefs about curriculum materials, teacher knowledge and collaboration with peer teachers were all associated with teachers' perception of curriculum control. Particularly, content and pedagogical knowledge were associated with more perceived control over instructional strategies, but teacher knowledge about how to use curriculum materials did not show significant relationship to teachers' perception of curriculum control. Collaborating with peer teachers also was associated with increased teachers' perception of curriculum control, but interestingly collaboration for curriculum decision-making did not show significant relationship to their perception. This study provides basic and general information about teachers' curriculum decision-making, and allows policy makers and education researchers to understand what should be done in order to encourage teachers to take more responsibilities for curriculum decision-making.
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