PUB TYPE Reports Research/Technical (143)

This paper reports findings of a study that is grounded in the assumption that the ways in which teachers interact outside their classrooms may be critical to the future of school restructuring and the effects of restructuring on students. The paper develops a framework for analyzing professional community within schools, examines school characteristics that support the development cf professional community, and evaluates the consequences of professional community for the responsibility teachers take for student learning. Data were collected during 1991-94 from 8 elementary, 8 middle, and 8 high schools across the United States that demonstrated progress in organizational restructuring. Methods included onsite visits and a teacher survey that elicited 910 responses. The response-ate ranged from 69 to 100 percent across the schools. Two-stage path analysis and hierarchical linear modelin