| This is a thesis that examines the experience of a group of teachers at the Edward Devotion School in Brookline, MA during the four years of a school restructuring project. The Teaching Project was initiated by two teachers, Vivian Troen and me, at our public elementary school in 1987. It restructured a portion of the school, altered the work of a team of third and fourth grade teachers, and introduced a pre-service teacher training collaborative with Wheelock College. I took a leave of absence prior to the project's first year to attend Harvard and document the development of the project.;The current literature on school reform emphasizes the importance of improving the conditions of teachers' work and altering the structure of teaching (Carnegie, Little, Devaney). There has been little documentation of the experience of teachers whose work has been restructured, however, and there have been no studies of teachers who have initiated the restructuring process themselves. Though the number of teacher-initiated school restructuring projects is still small, the appearance of such projects indicates the emergence of a new approach to school reform which is worthy of study.;The research questions were: (1) How were the teachers in the Teaching Project at Devotion School affected by their four-year experience in this teacher-initiated school restructuring project? (2) How did the project affect the larger school community? (3) How can the experience of these teachers inform other school restructuring efforts?;The findings suggest both the complexity and the promise of school restructuring by teachers. They suggest that teacher-initiated school restructuring can be professionally satisfying for teachers and enriching for the children they teach, but that teacher-initiated restructuring is made more complicated by teachers' low-power position in the school hierarchy, and by the fact that in order to effect substantive structural changes in schools, teachers must learn a new set of skills which enable them to maneuver in the complex political world of schools and school districts. |
