Understanding teachers' curriculum leadership: a field-mediator mechanism.

Curriculum leadership is central to curriculum reform in basic education and to the cultivation of students' core competencies. This study adopts a basic qualitative approach to examine how teachers in a centralized Asian context develop curriculum leadership. Data were collected from 21 secondary school teachers in three schools in Yantai, China. The findings indicate a field-mediator mechanism through which field factors and psychological mediators interact to shape teachers' aspirations for curriculum leadership and support the enactment of those aspirations in practice. The study further suggests that the development of teachers' curriculum leadership depends on supportive organizational conditions, particularly small-scale parallel structures and comprehensive evaluation policies.