This workbook is designed for leaders and members of work teams in educational and social-service systems. It presents in a systematic fashion a set of tested facilitation tools that will allow teams to work more efficiently and harmoniously, enabling them to achieve their goals, to deal directly with both personal and work-related issues that…

The benefits of a collaborative work setting--including such practices as mutual help, exchange of ideas, joint planning, and participative decision-making--have been consistently confirmed by studies of effective schools and successful businesses. However, teacher isolation remains the norm. Drawing on recent research and educators' firsthand…

The reports included in this annotated bibliography of 11 publications on school improvement teams suggest that ownership and commitment to improvement are natural consequences of shared planning and decisionmaking, that overcentralization has severely limited the scope of teachers' professional discretion, and that quality circles--stressing…

Any type of organization can be a learning organization (LO) if it possesses certain characteristics: provide continuous learning opportunities, use learning to reach its goals, link individual performance with organizational performance, foster inquiry and dialogue, embrace creative tension as a source of energy and renewal, and be continuously…

A growing number of schools and districts are considering using teams to handle all types of decision making and advisory activities. The term "teams" can be applied to a wide spectrum of groups with various purposes or powers. This bulletin was designed to assist those who want to create efficient, successful teams. It provides…

In a high performance work organization (HPWO), employee basic skills are just one of many components. HPWOs feature the following: they have flatter organizational structures, have work done by teams of highly skilled workers, and have a focus on quality, customer service, and continuous improvement. The collaborative approach to workplace…

Quality work teams that are based on W. Edwards Deming's business-management theories have proliferated at the school and district levels to handle problem solving and decision making. Teams are said to build stronger relationships among those involved in education and, ultimately, to benefit students because more people with broader perspectives…

When created and operated appropriately, school-site councils can be a very useful component of school renewal. Councils are difficult to create, since members must shift roles, compromise strongly held beliefs, and invest considerable time, energy, and know-how. Advantages of group decision making are bringing diverse experience and expertise to…

A growing number of educators are focusing their efforts on improving the work environment of teaching. In place of the typical school's norms and practices that isolate teachers from one another, collaborative schools have norms that encourage teachers and principals to cooperate for school improvement. Such schools are characterized by frequent…

This review summarizes the rapidly growing body of findings on the social and organizational environment of teaching and examines one innovation--the collaborative school--that offers promise of an organizational context more conducive to effective teaching. Chapter 1 characterizes the actual conditions under which teachers work, focusing on…

This annotated bibliography was prepared to serve as background material for the writing of the synthesis paper "From Isolation to Collaboration: Improving the Work Environment of Teaching." Items were selected to represent the range of issues that pertain to the social and organizational context of teaching. The selected materials…