Community Connections: Creating Opportunities for Education Engagement

• In Event: Roundtable Session 108
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum Embodied in Community: Activism, Service, Relationship

Abstract

Education reform and family, school, community partnerships are multi-faceted, operating within a crowded terrain where social, political, and economic issues collide. Within our current political context of neoliberalism there is an individualistic consumer approach to education, leaving out communities and individuals that lack resources (i.e. information, money, social capital, relationships (connections), etc.) to purchase quality education. Given the complexity of education politics and politics of school, family and community partnerships there is no one theory to grasp relationship building and maintenance; therefore I will use two theories: mobilization opportunity theory and collaboration theory. The purpose of this work is to shed light on the way community organizations engage parents and youth with educators and politicians within the education reform process.

Author

• Marva M. Hall, University of Illinois at Chicago