School-University Partnerships, Community Accountability, and the Power to Reify or Resist

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Community Stakeholders and University-Community Partnerships

Abstract

This study uses a humanizing, participatory action research (PAR) methodology across three long-term, collaborative school-university partnerships to consider how community accountability was centered within an educational system that often decenters its own stakeholders. The researchers developed self-sustaining professional learning structures to research, design, and implement highly effective literacy instructional practices that were adapted for the unique context of the local community and school. In this paper, we explore two findings: (1) practices that leveraged privilege to promote teacher and community agency and (2) practices that reified inequities in cross-cultural work. Implications from this work consider how these experiences trouble and nuance increased links between school-university partnerships for accountability measures that do not adequately or equitable center accountability to local communities.

Authors

• Leah Panther, Mercer University

• Vicki Luther, Mercer University

• S. Michelle Vaughn, Mercer University