The education model in which a single teacher instructs a single classroom of students has been remarkably persistent, but teacher shortages, low morale, and poor teacher retention are signs that it's not working well for teachers. Ray Reutzel and Parker Fawson describe how Utah's Center for the School of the Future is seeking to redesign the…

Teaching is complex; teachers and school leaders crave more meaningful collaborative experiences to make sense of that complexity. However, the structural, cultural, and historical factors involved with schooling impede the extent to which teachers can collaborate. Teachers spend five to six periods of the day teaching classes, largely working in…

Though teacher collaboration is important for school improvement, it is not yet the norm in schools. Part of the problem might be ingrained psychological reactions to dealing with leaders or the organizational restraints in large hierarchies. But the problem might also rest with our school leaders themselves because they may have difficulty…

Despite the norms of privacy that pervade teacher culture and the assumptions of behind-closed-doors independence, teachers actually "need" their colleagues, whether they like it--and them--or not. Teachers are inherently dependent on one another since no one of them alone constitutes their students' education. Students move from teacher to…

In 1973, the founding administrator of a Long Island high school proposed adoption of a student advisory system, team teaching in the humanities, and no academic department chairs. Convinced that having chairs diminished teachers' stature, this principal successfully encouraged teachers to work together to develop curriculum, prepare budgets, hire…

In his February 2004 Kappan article, Mike Schmoker called into question the effectiveness of many of the major reform efforts of the past two decades. In particular he made the case that strategic planning efforts and whole-school reform efforts have been mostly ineffective because planning cycles are too long and implementation is too complex and…

The goal of school/university partnerships is the simultaneous renewal of colleges of education and of K-12 schools. In theory, this improvement comes about as university and K-12 faculty members work together to mentor preservice teachers in the best possible environment. Ideally, as they participate in these collaborations, the faculty groups do…