The role of the teacher, as well as that of the student, is changing - due to emerging school democracy, a spreading debate, and also due to the rapid development of information technology. The process is still slow but it is gaining momentum. Unfortunately it is not simply a question of in-service training but actually retraining. Traditional classroom lecturing is still the fashion in a vast majority of schools around the globe. Teachers still lock the classroom door behind them, and probably resort to Lipsky's survival strategies.
Few teachers are prepared to let the students participate in planning and evaluation.
The greatest challenge for educational institutions on the eve of the twenty-first century is to retrain their staff. Far more money is spent on technology than on actually teaching the staff to use it. The teacher will then have to assume the role of the autonomous student. She keeps a diary of her thoughts and experience of the development of her own learning strategies. In an on-line forum she discusses all this with her colleagues and a professional researcher in the field.