This book relies on three categories (visions, contexts, and roles) to explore school renewal as promulgated by participants in the National Education Association's Mastery in Learning Project. Following MIL Project Director Robert McClure's introduction covering participants' collegiality-building experiences, the "Visions" section considers the conditions that presage reform and pave the way for restructuring. Arthur Costa's essay envisions school as a home for the mind and stresses the importance of creativity, deliberation, perseverance, humor, and wonder--activities circumscribed by standardized testing. In chapter 2, Dorothy Massie's urges the need for authentic performance-based assessment. The next two chapters, the first on multicultural education and the second on cooperative learning, consider particular strands in envisioned schooling fabrics. Dorothy Massie's chapter on school climate, which taps MIL faculty inventories for ways to improve school settings, closes the "Visions" section. In the "Contexts" section, essays by Lynne Miller, Madeleine Grumet, Carol Livingston, and Shari Castle examine various renewal contexts, settings that enable and constrain renewal, and the need for documentation. The third section, "Roles," highlights certain individuals within renewal settings: change facilitators, teachers, students, and parents, featuring essays by Marilyn Wentworth, Gary Rackliffe, Terry Mazany, and Dorothy Massie. Gary Griffin's reflection on the emergence of learning communities through school restructuring summarizes themes and provides an encouraging afterword. References accompany most chapters. (MLH)