The Innovative School: Organization and Instruction
Sharan, S., Shachar, H., & Levine, T. (1999).
Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Pp. 195. ISBN: 0-89789-630.

Readers of this newsletter are probably most familiar with Shlomo Sharan for his work in cooperative learning, including helping to found the IASCE and writing and editing works on cooperative learning, such as Expanding Cooperative Learning via Group Investigation (Teachers College Press, 1992) and Handbook of Cooperative Learning Methods (Greenwood, 1994). However, we all realize that for cooperative learning to take root and thrive, fundamental changes are needed in the way that schools operate. This new book from Sharan and his colleagues Hanna Shachar and Tamara Levine provides us with insights and practical ideas for how to promote such changes. As Seymour Sarason points out in the book’s foreword, it “is not only a ‘how-to-do-it’ book but a ‘how-to-think-it’ book” as well.

The authors are veterans of decades of school restructuring efforts and research into them, and they draw upon their own work as well as that of others. Much of the book’s focus and many of the examples cited come from secondary schools. Nonetheless, the lessons on how to conceive of and conduct school restructuring apply (with some modifications) to all types of educational institutions.

The book’s eight chapters can be divided into three sections. Chapters 1-3 deal with school organization starting with models for understanding how schools are organized (bureaucratic, systems, and communitarian models), then critiquing the current state of school organization and practice, and next offering a vision for what restructured schools can be. Chapters 4-6 explain methods that can be used for achieving that vision of restructured schools, such as forming teacher teams, integrating subsystems, and conducting experiential workshops as part of in-service education. Chapters 7-8 deal with issues of curriculum, such as advocating a non-linear curriculum, and scheduling in restructured schools, such as the use of longer periods.
Throughout the book, the authors highlight the value of cooperation, among students working in small groups, as well as among and between teachers, administrators, parents, and other stakeholders. In their analysis of the current state of schools, they point out that even when students are sitting in small groups, traditional teaching methods often prevail despite research indicating that students, even (contrary to what many believe) those from lower socioeconomic groups can successfully take up the challenge of complex problem solving in cooperative learning groups.

Sharan, Shachar, and Levine lament the fact that teachers are too often treated by administrators just as teachers have traditionally treated students, as a collection of loosely-coupled individuals each independently responsible for their own work. Instead, they urge that teachers collaborate with colleagues to tackle problems and make choices about their futures, in much the same way that students should be doing. The authors urge that administrators come to appreciate:

the parallelism between the manner in which teachers experience their work
in classrooms and the manner in which they function as members of the
teaching staff and that these two levels of the teacher’s life in the school are
profoundly interrelated (p. 65).

Another aspect of schooling in need of restructuring is that schools too often restrict learning to what takes place within the school walls, cutting off the many opportunities that exist for cooperation with those outside the school confines. Sharan, Shachar, and Levine suggest that one means of going beyond these confines lies in service learning projects in which students go out into the community for investigation and participation, not for a quick sight-seeing excursion.

In some ways, reading the book made me feel a bit overwhelmed by the task it presents. Last year, I left my position at an institution that does in-service teacher education. A key reason for my decision was dissatisfaction with the disconnected manner in which teacher education was done. Teachers would come to the institution for a course on cooperative learning or some other topic and then return to their schools, seldom to be seen or heard from again, except for the occasional season’s greetings e-mail message or card. When I would see former course members at a conference or other event, and I would ask about whether they were employing some of the innovative methods dealt with in the courses, often they were honest enough to tell me that they just hadn’t been able to find the time to use the methods very much.

I left the institution in hopes of doing better, but is it possible to overcome all the obstacles depicted in the book, such as deeply entrenched top-down models of organization and learning? Sharan, Shachar, and Levine do offer some reasons for cautious optimism. In their descriptions of small successful restructuring efforts in which they and others were involved, the authors show us, as they promised, “goals of and roads to school change, as well as methods for accomplishing genuine improvement in school structure and operation” (p. 54).

Last week I met a primary school principal and vice-principal who seemed to be a like-minded souls, sharing the vision set forth by Sharan, Shachar, and Levine. They asked me to draft a plan for introducing cooperative learning in their school. The Innovative School was a useful resource for me in writing a first draft of that plan, and I’m sure it will continue to serve as a useful guide for me and others involved with the school, as we introduce cooperative learning in the context of overall school restructuring.