ABSTRACT
The research work at the 14 schools highlights how there is a positive correlation between the capabilities of school self-organization and the innovation of learning environments. In other words, the more self-organized schools are, the more innovative learning environments are. Field tests confirm that innovation works if it is generated from below and extended to other schools.
The outcome of the empirical work described in the text primarily empowers teachers, their scientific associations, their communities of practice, and secondly, schools with their principals, networks of schools and their governing and coordinating bodies.
Resistance to self-organization comes from both the top and bottom of the school organizational pyramid. Resistances from the top can be overcome by allowing real autonomy to schools and by understanding that self-organization does not imply loss of power but duplication of power. Resistances from the bottom can be overcome by intra-entrepreneurship of teachers (in the class) and of principals (in the school) and self-leadership, by a common inspiration, a dream that involves all the collaborators in the zest for discovery, and by a continuous flow of energy from the outside to the inside of the system.
