Among some researchers and school practitioners interested in reform, restructuring is described as a movement to promote higher-order learning outcomes for all students. These reformers call for making a set of comprehensive and integrated changes across every dimension of schooling - curriculum, instruction, assessment, the social organization of schools, and school-community relations.
Restructuring stands in contrast to what is known as "school improvement" or the "effective schools movement." These initiatives most often result in piecemeal changes in selected areas, while fundamental restructuring requires a rethinking of the entire school system.
By orchestrating schooling policies and structures with learning outcomes, restructuring advocates are helping schools redefine roles, responsibilities, and relationships so that changes center on the improvement of learning. Students actively engage in meaningful learning, focusing on developing themselves as thinkers capable of acquiring and using knowledge. Teachers take on new roles as collaborators, mentors, and coaches to create environments that promote meaningful learning. Administrators take the lead in forming school structures and processes that support these learning environments. And the community and parents become partners in promoting meaningful learning.
Restructured, learning-centered schools reflect new patterns of active, engaged, and participatory interaction among administrators, teachers, students, parents, and community members. For example, teachers work with other teachers to deliver an interdisciplinary curriculum and to share and model teaching strategies that promote collaboration and inquiry in the classroom. Students assist other students in thinking through problems and issues. Community members come into the school to share their expertise; students go outside the school to plan and implement community-based projects. And administrators, teachers, parents, and community members collaborate on how to apply new teaching and learning research and forward-thinking practice. These new interactions reflect both the spirit and substance of restructured schools.
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