(Re)Imagining the Ways in Which Universities Approach Their Relationships With Local Schools

• In Event: Cultivating Arts Integration in Urban Schools Focusing on Students' and Communities' Identity Construction

Abstract

This paper examines how one Texas university’s collaboration with a multiracial K-6 elementary school is bringing about transformative change to the school and community using a model of Community Engaged Research (Anderson et al, 2012). When an elementary school on the south side of San Antonio decided to embark on building an arts integrated campus, the two main challenges they faced were financial and arts-integrated professional development training for their teachers. These were areas the university could provide resources and support. A partnership between the school and the neighboring university emerged.
The use of art to enhance student learning (Lee et al., 2015; May & Brenner, 2016) and, by extension, to increase student performance and student outcomes centered the early discussions within the partnership. The concept of students using the arts to express their cultural identity emerged as well. This focus, rooted in a commitment to Culturally Relevant/Sustaining Pedagogy (Howard, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2014; Paris, 2012), began to shape the shared vision to work collaboratively to respond to the needs of the school community (Burton, & Greher 2007). The university and the school set out to collaboratively research the impact of arts integration on the school and how to use that research to inform future pedagogical practice.
This approach opposes the ways in which universities typically organize their collaborations and partnerships with local schools, in a top-down and often authoritative, deficit-based ideology rife with savior complexes (Henning et al., 2015). This paper examines a more meaningful approach of solidarity relationships rooted in community needs and solutions.

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Authors

• Karen L.B. Burgard, Texas A&M University - San Antonio
  Presenting Author

• Melissa M. Jozwiak, Texas A&M University - San Antonio
  Presenting Author