One common limitation in most reform efforts is an understanding of the relation among teachers' work, decision making, and the construction of school knowledge. This study attempts to fill this gap by examining how critical theories of teachers' work both inform and are informed by an analysis of two case study middle schools. Findings from this study suggest that many of the decisions that teachers make are based on their attempt to contain the threat of intensification. Such a self-regulatory process shaped decisions in the areas of planning, grading, and classroom management and fostered a defensive form of school knowledge that is fact oriented, routinized, and mundane. Particularly troubling is the finding that this defensive form of knowledge was most pronounced in classes with large numbers of students of color
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