This review summarizes the rapidly growing body of findings on the social and organizational environment of teaching and examines one innovation--the collaborative school--that offers promise of an organizational context more conducive to effective teaching. Chapter 1 characterizes the actual conditions under which teachers work, focusing on interactions among teachers and between them and administrators. Chapter 2 examines the formal and informal bonds connecting the classroom, the individual school, the school district, and the state and federal governments. It is concluded that the individual school is the vital unit of school reform and that the workplace conditions of the school play a major role in school effectiveness. Accordingly, chapter 3 sets forth the characteristics of collaborative schools--a set of attitudes and the interactions generated by those attitudes that researchers have found to correlate with improved teaching and learning. Chapter 4 describes formal programs that educators have developed to help administrators introduce norms of collaboration in schools where teachers are accustomed to working in isolation from one another, and practical suggestions are offered about ways in which principals' day-to-day activities can encourage such norms. These suggestions include forming teacher committees to work on specific school problems and providing teachers with time to observe one another. An 82-item, 8-page bibliography is included. (TE)