International comparisons show that equitable and effective schools are generally organized in order to support pupils and teachers' work: they introduce single track up to the age of 15 or 16 years, flexible groups, short-term and intensive interventions for children with special needs, essentially formative assessment, multi-year learning cycles and school programs. The same studies suggest that according to the increasing heterogeneity of students’ populations - for example as a result of migration - many national or regional school systems try to maintain or introduce methods of regulation which are supposed to recreate homogeneous subgroups: school-year repetition, early tracking and streaming, selection by options and/or level groups. These instruments tend to amplify differences, whereas alternative organization would be a better way to cope with heterogeneity. But this alternative is of course also more complex, more difficult to be accepted by people and decision makers, to be set up by teachers. A study conducted in Geneva on school work organization shows, for example, that local school was first criticized because of a greater failure rate than those of rural cantons. The public debate led during the following years to restoration of numeric scales and averages, year repetition policy and three hierarchical tracks for 12 year-old pupils – in spite of the fact that research evidence has since long shown up their significant impact on inequalities. Experience shows that the double constraint (1- achieve better results and 2- maintain working modalities which are known to be ineffective) is not only perceived as discouraging and disqualifying by teachers. It also makes us question school's ability to renew its work organization and to convince decision makers that this way of quality development will not only offer some consistency, but also guarantee valid outcomes at a medium-term horizon.

This collaborative research on school work organization was attended by twenty-five researchers and practitioners from Switzerland, France, Luxembourg and Canada. Data were collected through participant observation, interviews and synthetic memos. Cross-analysis of the existing data conducted to the following categorisations: - the various dimensions of school work organization that teachers think necessary to change in order to improve efficiency and equity of their action; - the obstacles they are facing during this change process; - the tensions existing between professional autonomy and control of teachers’ work by academic hierarchy, political authorities, and even - in a context of direct democracy – the possibility offered to the population to decide, by the mean of referendum, to abolish ongoing school reforms.

According to Fullan’s findings (changement depends on what teachers do and think about it, 1991), our research intends to describe in particular: 1. How teachers consider the relationship between school work organization and perceptible effects on pupils. 2. How they may or may not change their work, based on the background work predetermining their action.