This book provides a more comprehensive discussion of collaborative school efforts than any other single source currently available. Specifically, multiple disciplinary perspectives are presented, addressing the complexity or "promises and pitfalls" of school collaboration efforts. The book is organized in terms of major considerations in school collaboration initiatives—the organizational structure; the change process; inter-agency and intra-school collaborative efforts; and implications for instruction, leadership, and leadership preparation. Also, the book informs the design of educator preparation programs emphasizing collaborative schools and cross-disciplinary teaching. The chapters address many issues regarding school collaboration, such as which organizational structures will enhance collaborative efforts; which change processes are important in building school collaboration; the costs (in effort, energy, time, or other resources) of collaborating with other external agencies; how teachers' work can be redesigned to enhance collaboration between teachers and the anticipated outcomes for teachers and students; how educators can overcome their separate role socializations to build collaborative work relationships within schools; and the implications of school collaboration for teaching and learning, school leadership, and leadership preparation. The closing chapter offers five synthesizing issues or dilemmas for school collaboration.

This new book presents the findings of a five-year, federally funded study that examined the connection between school restructuring and student achievement. Investigating twenty-four elementary and secondary schools from twenty-two districts across the country, the researchers found that restructuring efforts fail when there is too much focus on structure and technique and not enough attention paid to the intellectual quality of student and teacher work and to the vitality of the school community. Using a wealth of examples, the authors provide a vivid picture of the conditions under which innovations in a school's organization contribute to student achievement - extending learning beyond rote memorization of isolated facts to thinking, disciplined understanding, and complex communication.

Explores the intersection of two central issues in American education today: school reform through restructuring and alienation from school of many children of color. A tough look at the impact of teachers' and administrators' beliefs and practices.

The restructuring of schools systems across the world has been controversial. Have reforms been driven by a desire to cut educational budgets or the need to improve the quality of educational provision? This book explores the restructuring movement, with a particular emphasis on how decentralisation of power has affected the quality of education. It provides a broad and international picture of educational reform.

The editors of this volume aim to help educators make better decisions about their efforts at restructuring by showing what has and has not worked in some of the most widely known experiments. Because the programmes examined have been in place for several years, the cases offer richness of detail and a wealth of ideas. This book's insights and practical detail will benefit educators both in schools and at district level, as well as students and academics in the field.

Education reform has become part of a political imperative in a number of developed countries around the world. The simultaneous movement to reform schooling and the administrative structures which deliver educational services therefore needs to be studied in order to lay bare its fundamental assumptions. This movement has been labelled "restructuring" and "reform", although the words carry different meanings in different countries.; The authors question why this reconstruction occurred at the same time in different places. What common themes are emerging in the restructuring movement? And in the 1990s, where will the movement lead schooling and what essential changes will it effect? They explore these questions by examining developments in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Help your staff learn how to lead students to fix their own mistakes, focus on self-discipline, and build self-esteem. Expands on the ideas in the book Restitution and provides activities to conduct your own staff-development program. Contains invaluable reproducible handouts. New and revised Second Edition now available!

Restructuring in the Classroom goes into the classrooms of three elementary schools to take a detailed look at how teachers responded to changes in structure in their schools. The authors interviewed principals, teachers, parents, support staff, and district personnel to produce in-depth case studies of schools at various stages of restructuring, showing what the school had done to change its structure and how those changes had occurred. Selecting four teachers in each school for closer observation and discussion, the authors reveal how those teachers responded to the changes around them in their day-to-day practice in the classroom. They show, for example, how teaching practice is or is not affected by changes in the way students are grouped for learning, in the way teachers relate to groups of students and to each other, and in the way time is allocated to subject matter.

This paper examines the role of technology in restructuring education by analyzing how it influences seven important relationships in the educative process: (1) teacher-student relationships; (2) student-content relationships; (3) teacher-content relationships; (4) student-context relationships; (5) teacher-context relationships; (6) content-context relationships; and (7) educational system-environment relationships. After a brief historical overview of the uses of technology in education, the paper discusses the nature of systems in education and examines the process of restructuring through systems change in the seven pairs of relationships as they exist today and as they might change in a restructured educational system. How educational technology can empower teachers and students is then discussed with emphasis on how electronic technology is transforming the way information is communicated and processed. A brief discussion of the role of the teacher in evaluating the worth of content--i.e., selecting the best of culture for sharing with students--concludes the report. (ALF)