The Graduate Portrait: Boundary Objects and Boundary-Crossing in Community-Driven School Improvement

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Sixteen
  In Roundtable Session: Schooling, Boundary-Crossing, and Epistemic Communities (Table 12)

Abstract

This paper explores how graduate portraits may serve as boundary objects in the process of community-driven school transformation and how they facilitate boundary crossing to allow for the development of new forms of participation within the school community. Using observational data and document analysis, this study demonstrates how graduate portraits represent a tool and process relevant to the goals of school transformation. They bring school communities together in expanding the conception of student and school success, serving as a boundary object that bridges the activities of teachers, students, and family and community members. They also help disrupt legacies of interaction that marginalize communities, position teachers as construction workers rather than architects of school improvement, and create new relations of trust.

Author

• Mary-Louise Leger, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author