Public school teachers often work in "classroom cells" that are "symbols and predictive of their relative isolation from one another and from sources of ideas beyond their own background of experience." This type of environment, where teachers rarely join in collaborative endeavors and spend little of their professional time with other adult professionals to improve their knowledge and skills, is a leading factor in teacher job dissatisfaction. Teacher education has contributed to the problems of the teacher workplace by not empowering teachers to change either the structure or the atmosphere of the school as workplace. Teachers have lacked the self-esteem, prestige, and intellectual skills to exert sufficient power in the bureaucratic structure. For the workplace to change, teachers must be empowered, with teacher education reform central to that empowerment. Programs are needed that can provide the intellectual power to analyze policy and to effectively participate in policy debates, including those having to do with daily work in the schools. (CB)