Theory and Practice of School Communities

Abstract

This article describes a study of a school community established within a larger high school as part of a district-wide effort to organize high schools into collections of smaller learning communities. The author presents an ecological framework of school communities that specifies their features across multiple dimensions and levels of schooling. The framework provides a scheme for bringing the entire organization into line with the concept of school communities and a guide for describing and assessing their functioning. Student- and teacher-survey measures were assembled and administered to gauge school community processes and goals specified in the framework. The findings indicated that students in the school community perceived their school environment and instruction in a manner more consistent with the framework than students in either the unrestructured school or magnet programs. School community teachers' relations with colleagues and students were also more consistent with the framework than other teachers 'relations.

Chronic absence, eighth-grade achievement, and high school attainment in the Chicago Longitudinal Study

“…Among the interventions and reform initiatives that have been found to promote attendance and school engagement are the mentoring programs Check and Connect (Christenson & Sheridan, 2001; Christenson, Stout, & Pohl, 2012; Christenson & Thurlow, 2004) and Big Brothers Big Sisters (Valentino & Wheeler, 2013), the 5 Essentials model of school organization (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010), the Child-Parent Center Preschool to 3 rd Grade Program (Reynolds et al, 2016), full-day preschool (Reynolds et al, 2014), and Small Schools (Oxley, 2007). Many of these evidence-based interventions emphasize increasing student and family engagement in school.…”

In island containment: a qualitative exploration of social support systems among asylum seekers in a mental health care programme on Lesvos Island, Greece

“…The concept of community, which also came up frequently during our study, has been defined as a “space” in which people form a grouping based on common characteristics [42], values [43], interests [44], sense of solidarity [45] or living within the same geographic boundaries [46].…”

The Difficulty of Identifying Rare Samples to Study: The Case of High Schools Divided Into Schools-Within-Schools

“…Exploring how the SWS design was used to introduce the Coali-tion of Essential Schools reform into larger high schools, Muncie and McQuillan (1996) concluded that creating a single smaller unit within a larger school often fomented unproductive divisions and competition. Oxley (1990Oxley ( , 1997 conducted research on SWSs established within high schools in two cities, concluding that students in "betterimplemented" small units outperformed students in the rest of the school on both academic outcomes and high-quality social relations. Her ecological model of SWSs includes several criteria: small size, extensive collaboration, and concern for students' social and intellectual needs (Oxley, 1994;1997).…”

“…Oxley (1990Oxley ( , 1997 conducted research on SWSs established within high schools in two cities, concluding that students in "betterimplemented" small units outperformed students in the rest of the school on both academic outcomes and high-quality social relations. Her ecological model of SWSs includes several criteria: small size, extensive collaboration, and concern for students' social and intellectual needs (Oxley, 1994;1997). Two large-scale quantitative studies focused on how high school organization and size influence academic outcomes, concluding that "smaller is better" (Lee & Smith, 1995;1997).…”