The Transformative Potential of Full-Service Community Schools: Exploring Processes of Change in an Urban School

• In Event: 34.095 - MTCC Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: 34.095-1 - Community-Based Inquiry as Critical, Caring, and Transformative

Abstract

Education reforms have yet to transform schools serving low-income urban students, in part, because they have failed to address low academic expectations and conditions of poverty, and to build stakeholders’ capacities as agents of change. Holistic in design, full-service community schools (FSCSs) promise to address these limitations. Drawing on the literature on FSCSs, transformative education, and the role of teachers in education reform, and data collected from a mixed methods case study, this paper explores transformation in an award winning, urban FSC high school. Specifically, the paper examines the extent to which the case school has fundamentally changed the learning environment, experiences, and opportunities provided to its students, and the role of teachers in the transformation process.

Authors

• Mavis G. Sanders, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

• Claudia Lucia Galindo, University of Maryland - College Park