Experienced autonomy in the curriculum and <i>Didaktik</i> traditions

This study investigates Finnish and Californian (US) elementary and secondary school teachers. The main objective of the study is to explore the experienced autonomy in different educational policy regimes. The ideologies and traditions that these two countries represent can be called Didaktik tradition and curriculum tradition. The research question is: How do the teachers’ perceptions of curriculum traditions in the two country contexts differ concerning experienced autonomy, and what might the theoretical and methodological implications of such comparison be? A total of 17 Finnish and 15 US teachers were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. The results show that both groups of teachers experienced a lot of autonomy despite of the fact that the US teachers operate in a more restricted accountability policy than the Finnish teachers. This raises some methodological and theoretical implications and limitations of self-reporting comparative studies on teacher autonomy.