First level effects are on teachers and their teaching strategies. Second level effects are on students, as teachers transfer work experiences back to classrooms. Third level effects, then, are on schools or districts as teacher leaders begin to act as change agents within systems. Authentic teamwork, experienced by many teachers in the business world, becomes an important part of the classroom teaching repertoire. Rather than having all students work on the same laboratory exercise, teachers use their new understanding of teamwork to develop activities in which teams of students work on different parts of a problem and then come together as a class to discuss results.
Teams rework their parts, meet again as a class, and eventually come to a conclusion.
As teachers bring inquiry-based research methodologies into the classroom, they discover that how they teach is just as important, if not more important, than what they teach. The increased content knowledge that teachers gain from business experience adds a new, real-world dimension to science courses. Although the software used by many teachers in a business experience is very sophisticated and difficult to apply in the classroom setting, the pervasiveness of computer usage impresses them and strengthens their belief that all students must become computer literate. Having experienced a culture in which isolation is not the rule, teachers place new value on collegiality and teamwork in the academic workplace. As interest grows in site-based management of schools and new role definitions for teachers that encourage collegiality and leadership, this aspect of work experiences may become more important in the retention of science and mathematics teachers.