Practice is not created and developed by individual teachers but is subject to what Kemmis and Grootenboer called "extra-individual conditions" and cultural histories. The "expectations" around teaching do much to create stereotypes and conformity around how to teach and how to act in schools. This paper explores a teacher's longitudinal self-study of pedagogical and curricular change through reflective practice and "insider" action research. The findings show that pedagogical and curricular change is more than a personal desire to do something differently. Instead, it is a process of acknowledging expectation--student, teacher, institutional, and subject--and finding ways of working within, around and between these. Furthermore, insider action research is shown as a tool for positioning the practitioner in the "betweenness" of theory and practice. However, the paper concludes that while insider action research is a vital ingredient in sustained curriculum renewal, it needs to be hand-in-hand with collaboration with significant others inside and/or outside the school, and it needs to engage in a critique of the extra-individual conditions as part of the reflective process. (Contains 1 figure.)