Susan Moore Johnson, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and leading scholar on school staffing, highlights research from the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers showing the importance of inclusive leadership and team-based structures in improving teacher recruitment and retention. School context is key in determining…

High quality early care and education (ECE) supports the healthy development and learning of young children. Implementing and sustaining quality depends on staff contributions and actions. Research from fields such as K-12 education, health, and management finds that quality improvement is more likely to occur and be sustained in the context of…

There is little empirical research related to the readiness and capacity of academics for team-based collaboration. This case study used the existing literature about collaboration as a term of reference to examine the perceptions of a group of academics engaged in course design and how prepared they were individually and as teams for…

Kim Farris-Berg, Edward J. Dirkswager and Amy Junge originally identified ten potential areas in which teachers could secure collective autonomy when conducting research for "Trusting Teachers with School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots." That list was developed from research about school decentralization and autonomy…

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…

Theory Z is a form of management which stresses consensual, participative decision making through quality circles. Replacement of the hierarchical school district organization by self-direction and trust within the educational community can lead to commitment, loyalty, and motivation. Cooperation in equal partnership ends the adversarial…

Recently, the traditional school structure has been harshly scrutinized for several key defects, including bureaucratic rules and regulations, professional isolation of teaching staff, evaluation systems irrelevant to instructional improvement, low teacher participation in decision making, and noncooperation between teachers and administrators.…

Teachers are often placed in teams and expected to work together without support or instruction. This paper presents findings of a study that identified and described the extent to which individual teachers collaborate and the conditions under which collaboration occurs. The study, which focused on three middle schools with a strong commitment 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…