Contemporary studies related to teacher autonomy mostly deal with research into how autonomy is perceived by teachers and which variables it is associated with. On the other hand, there are very few studies dealing with how teachers' instructional autonomy over the curriculum is reflected in the education process. The aim of this study is to reveal in depth the practices carried out in the context of instructional autonomy by science teachers who have different levels of autonomy. The study is based on data gathered from eight teachers employed at different schools in the province of Izmir in Turkey. Interviews, observations and documents were used for collecting the data. The results reveal that while teachers with high instructional autonomy successfully apply contemporary teaching methods, alternative evaluation techniques, high-order thinking skills and effective classroom management, teachers with low instructional autonomy fall short in all of these areas.

The purpose of this study is to develop a Teachers' Autonomy on Curriculum Scale. For this aim, an item pool consisted of 50-item was prepared for the study. These scale items were reduced to 29 items after expert review and pilot implementation. This preliminary form was applied to 178 science teachers working in secondary schools in Izmir, Turkey. Validity and reliability studies have been done and Cronbach's Alpha internal consistency coefficient was calculated as .82. The scale is four-dimensional and reveals 67.4% of the total variance. The scale has four sub-scales (Professional Autonomy, Process Autonomy, Assessment Autonomy, and Planning Autonomy). Confirmatory factor analysis results support that the scale consisted of four subscales (RMSEA= .05, CFI= .98, AGFI= .89, RMR= .05, GFI= .93, SRMR= .06).