A Context and Framework for Understanding Change

This book contains a description and analysis of concerted efforts by teachers and principals to make their schools better places for students to learn. As the case studies and cross-case analysis show, not all of the schools succeeded equally well, and that is the reason for telling their stories. The road to school effectiveness and improvement was strewn with organizational barriers that interfered with teacher collaboration. New instructional and curriculum changes mandated by the district or the state frequently required mastery by teachers before mastery could be expected by students. Traditional school structures have created ingrained cultures of isolation and self-reliance by teachers that limit teacher understanding of their school as an organization and make change more difficult. The core purpose of this study is to follow these schools over a four-year period and to gain insights into why some succeeded and others faltered in their work to sustain a course of school improvement. A second purpose is to show that in their efforts to increase school effectiveness, the call of the 1980s, these schools were engaged in a fundamental restructuring of their belief systems and of their workplace, a growing concern in the 1990s.