From a preliminary study of two secondary schools, the author of this report hypothesizes that four essential types of networks determine the character of the educational process. The most important of these is the individual teacher's personal field, the egocentric network of relationships growing out of the teacher's own personal interests. The second field, equally egocentric, consists of the relations between a teacher and his or her students. The third, also egocentric, consists of those relations the teacher builds with other staff members to protect his or her teaching style or enrich his or her personal life. The fourth network comprises all the aspects of the entire staff's various field networks that interrelate within the context of the school. The author suggests that the school's true curriculum develops in the egocentric fields where the individual teacher has greatest autonomy, and that effective control of the fourth network is severely limited by the sheer complexity of the interrelationships among the various fields. This concept accounts for the notion of "loose coupling" and suggests further that school effectiveness depends on how students fit into the fields individual teachers develop. (Author/PGD)