Central to this study is the role of teachers in curriculum development. The consensus of opinion among curriculum researchers and developers in Australia and elsewhere would appear to be that teachers must be genuine participants in curriculum development if reforms are to be successful. However, there is less agreement on the form such participation should take. In Queensland, the Board of Senior Secondary School Studies (BSSSS) has developed a genre of curriculum development that involves teachers as key partners in the process of syllabus writing, trialing, and piloting as well as peer reviewers of school based work programs and moderators of student performance standards. The context in which teachers perform these roles is however highly structured by the Board. This study considers the extent to which this Board genre of curriculum development involves teachers as genuine participants in the process and whether the genre is an effective means of developing and implementing curriculum reform. This case study of the three year pilot phase of the development of the Senior Syllabus in Health Education generated a rich description of the curriculum development process. Data generated from eighty-four teacher interviews conducted across the three years of the pilot phase revealed the opportunities that teachers had within the range of experiences that constituted their practice to challenge or reorient what was considered as legitimate knowledge. Although teachers were confident in how they acted, the institutional and organisational discourses of the Board, within which assessment was central, served to limit the possibilities available to teachers for change. Teachers' central concern was to be identified as competent. How they came to construct themselves as competent allied with their constant fear of being judged incompetent served to limit their ability to challenge the process of legitimating knowledge. An analysis of the Syllabus and assessment tasks revealed the dominant discourses regulating not only the construction of the texts but also the ways in which teachers constructed their practice. The dominance within all texts of the discourse of assessment in constructing the competence of the subject of instruction, the 'healthy informed citizen' also served simultaneously to construct the competence of teachers. The extent to which teachers are involved in the curriculum development process as genuine participants has been carefully examined. Given all of the contextual factors revealed in this study, it can be argued that the Queensland genre offers one form of teacher participation that involves them appropriately in curriculum development. On the other hand, this does not mean that the process couldn't be improved. Two strategies have been recommended. First, that the partnership between teachers and the Board emphasises the developmental nature of the curriculum process by asking rather than telling teachers how meaning can be constructed. This strategy will offer the opportunities for different interpretations to emerge and be discussed. Second, that within the process, teachers are provided with the skills and opportunities to engage in a critical reading of the key texts. The concerns and conflicts hidden behind the 'virtual' reality of texts could thus be revealed and used as a tool in transforming the perspectives of all participants in the curriculum development process.