A School's Neighborhood: Defining the Local Community and the School as a Community Actor

• In Event: Roundtable Session 57
  In Roundtable Session: On My Block: Neighborhood Roles in Learning and Identity

Abstract

Despite increased policy promotion of community involvement strategies, there isn’t a clear understanding of how school staff members perceive and understand their communities. This qualitative study explores how school staff members in nine schools across three different urban neighborhoods define and frame the local community and their school’s role within it. My analysis suggests that staff members’ perceptions’ of the neighborhood are associated with the way in which they view the school’s role in the community. Whereas past research on school actors’ perceptions of the community has generally been based on single case studies and conflated families with other community members, this study examines staff members’ understandings of community actors beyond families and across multiple schools in different neighborhoods.

Author

• Andrea Prado Tuma, Northwestern University