Successful educational improvement efforts stem from processes and forces that are indigenous to a given setting. Efforts at problem-solving stimulate and are reinforced by a closely related phenomenon: the individual and professional growth of the persons involved. Developmental efforts in education must proceed from a substantially different perspective than has been the case in the past: it must be admitted that the classroom is an essential frontier of action; that teachers are key decision-makers for what actually happens in the classrooms; that innovation will be employed successfully only when related realistically to teachers' awareness of their objectives and needs; that the same essential conditions hold for other professionals; that a change strategy attempting to help individual professionals improve their effectiveness in dealing with perceived problems will have a greater potential for facilitating the testing and adoption of innovations; and that the utility of particular disciplines commonly associated with the change process, such as research or evaluation, depends on their function in the development of the process suggested above. The extensive outline for a support system for problem-solving presented here is based on tests of four models in several school systems in Ohio. (Author/IRT)