Shifting into Top Gear: Restructuring Classrooms over the Long Haul

This paper reports on data from a longitudinal case study of one school’s involvement in a national project to restructure Australian schools—the National Schools Network. The purpose of the study has been to extract from the experience of this school over a four year period some of the lessons about what can be expected when national reforms are applied at the school level. Previous analyses (Wallace and Wildy, 1992, 1994a, 1994b; Wildy and Wallace, 1994) have examined the governance and support relationships between central authorities and the school and the consequent changes to work organization and management practices. This paper focuses on the connections between a restructured working environment and classroom practice. In particular, it examines some of the changes to teaching practices which have emerged over the period of the study and explores the factors which contributed to those changes.