Development planning has recently become a commonly adopted strategy for school improvement in the United Kingdom. Development planning is a description and more formal explication of the process and actions required to plan and manage change with the intention of improving the school. The chapters in this book report on the "state of the art" of development planning. Three related themes of the book that have national and international relevance include the developmental nature of development planning, the importance of internal school organization for sustaining innovation, and the need for an integrative and longterm approach to policy implementation. Following the foreword and introduction by David H. Hargreaves and David Hopkins, the chapters include: (1) "School Development Planning: An International Perspective" (Neil Dempster, Chresten Kruchov, and Grace Distant); (2) "Creating Effective Schools through Site-Level Staff Development, Planning, and Improvement of Organizational Culture" (Daniel U. Levine); (3) "The Contribution of Quality Assurance Reviews to Development in School Systems" (Peter Cuttance); (4) "The Centrality of the Autonomy-Accountability Dilemma in School and Professional Development" (Viviane Robinson); (5) "Written Planning and School Development: Biding Time or Making Time" (Colin Biott, Patrick Easen, and Madeleine Atkins); (6) "Three Arenas of Tension: Teachers' Experience of Participation in School Development Planning" (Hilary Constable); (7) "Observing Primary School Change: Through Conflict to Whole-School Collaboration?" (Elizabeth Newman and Andrew Pollard); (8) "School Development Planning: A Place for Partnership?" (Janet Hodgson, Pat Broadhead, and John Dunford); (9) "School Effectiveness and School Improvement: A Meeting of Two Minds" (Louise Stoll); (10) "Creating Their Own Futures: The Use and Effectiveness of School Development Plans in Australian Schools" (John Braithwaite); (11) "Towards a Contingency Approach to Development Planning in Schools" (Mike Wallace); and (12) "School Development Planning in Primary Schools: Does It Make a Difference?" (Peter Mortimore, Barbara MacGilchrist, Jane Savage, and Charles Beresford). Each chapter contains references. A name and subject index are included. (LMI)