learning; 3. Perceived psychological support and encouragement; 4. Perceived technical support; 5. Membership in a collegial team focused on using cooperative learning. Analysis of the relevant data revealed that only the variable of team membership explained a significant amount of the variance in the scores of the teachers' responses about their use of cooperative learning, whereas the other 4 variables did not account for a significant portion of the results.

The authors note that organizational theorists often claim that institutional support is important for the adoption of instructional innovation. However, no support for that claim emerged in the data presented here. It is quite possible that teachers may not have known what organizational changes were made to accommodate Learning Together. The teachers in this study came from many different schools, and were not necessarily members of teacher teams that collaborated in implementing Learning Together in their school. This is especially true since the practice of that method in the classroom does not require that teachers cooperate in school-wide decision making groups. Also, this study examined the in-service training of teachers exclusively with the Learning Together approach and the results cannot be generalized to other cooperative learning methods.

Organizational factors do appear to affect the adoption and practice of cooperative learning with the Group Investigation method (Sharan & Hertz- Lazarowitz, 1982; Sharan & Shachar, 1994; Sharan, Shachar & Levine, 1999). However, it is too early in the development of the relevant research to reach definitive conclusions on this matter.

Another area that awaits systematic research is how the school environment is related to the adoption and implementation of cooperative learning. Obviously, that topic is far more difficult to study than is the reaction of specific classrooms of students to a cooperative learning method. Several developers of cooperative learning methods have written articles or books on the cooperative school, recognizing the significance of the institutional environment as the context in which teaching is practiced. A vast amount of research must be done for a clearer understanding of the complex interaction between the school and classroom teaching in general, and with cooperative learning methods in particular.

Finally, the entire field of secondary education (grades 7 through 12), and senior high school in particular, is still uncharted territory for cooperative learning, despite scattered reports of research and of projects. The "warning" issued in the late 70s by the Rand Corporation's studies of educational change, to the effect that, if you want your school change project to succeed stick to elementary school, is still valid today. The highly bureaucratic nature of high school curriculum and organization does not easily accommodate cooperative learning, and has withstood innovations of this kind for several decades (Sharan, Shachar & Levine, 1999). This is an open invitation to educators and researchers to breach the walls of the secondary school fortress. Cooperative learning methods, in combination with one another and with the proper organizational restructuring approaches, have the power to do so.