This book provides a detailed account of a year-long curriculum development project by an interdisciplinary team to create an inclusive, democratic curriculum at a suburban Georgia middle school. The first chapter is an overview of the study and lists the eight components deemed essential to a "coherent" curriculum. A separate chapter, many including illustrations, is devoted to each component. Project goals, the first component, were determined first. Another component, the democratic classroom, includes a discussion of management plans, group processing, grading policy, and group work guidelines. Traditional and alternative assessment models and the curriculum design processes are discussed next. A fifth component is content integration, and modeling as well as integrating content within thematic units, are covered here. The discussion of pedagogy uses a Human and Civil Rights unit to illustrate specific strategies for brainstorming, making connections, story telling, simulation, and collaborative problem solving. The communication component covers communication with students, with parents, and student and teacher communications with others. The chapter on scheduling and organizational structures covers team teaching, class schedules, and classroom organization. The final component, reflection, asks what works, what does not work, and what was learned. In Chapter 10, the design of a sample unit called Communities of the Future, is set out. (Contains 55 references.) (CH)