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Partnerships between school and community

21 July, 2015 - 16:59

The importance of space and place has been increasingly recognized in the literature on inter-organizational partnerships as an aspect of their structure and functioning. In this connection, the concept of social capital has been applied to identify social norms and customs incorporated in the social environment with the characteristic confidence of each environment, which is frequently tacit and specific to each community 1.

Face-to-face communication is an important way of creating trust between individuals due to the investments of effort, money and time manifest when people come together 2. It has also been shown that face-to-face contacts facilitate learning, provide motivation and are an effective mode of communication due to an increased capacity for interruption and feedback 3, 4.

When developing partnerships, mobility of individuals is an effective mechanism and can even be deemed essential for initial partnership formation to take place since it is a prerequisite for face-to-face meetings and interaction 5.

In this context, partnerships between School and Community are formed based on social interaction, on mutual trust and on the relationships that promote diligence in the community, which may be susceptible to abuse in the scope of power relationships. More isolated, backward, rural communities present quite different characteristics from metropolitan areas, which may be seen as challenges and simultaneously opportunities for establishing partnerships. Those characteristics are of an economic, social, educational and scholastic nature and allow the affirmation that despite the possible shortage of human capital and economic resources in rural communities, they have great social capital as a result of existing relationships and this should be taken advantage of 6.

Higher relationship intensity between schools and firms, defined, for example, in personnel exchanges, was linked to higher levels of tangible outcomes from the relationships. The industrial experience of academics involved in school–industry partnerships is an important success factor and that mobility through visits is a fruitful way of learning about each other’s needs and wants 7.

In  8 the importance of cooperation between schools and the business sector in creating innovative pedagogical practices able to develop fundamental capacities in young people to make them future citizens, considering partnerships between schools and the local community as essential in building the foundations of an innovative and sustainable society. In reference  9 are also mentioned learning processes, often in the form of partnerships, alliances, networks and more flexible relationships between the school and other local institutions, corroborating the possibility of moving the boundaries between systems of education, training and work pointed out by 10, in pursuing a common goal – enabling young people.

Despite these advantages, the difficulty of finding partners in a rural, economically depressed and limited region as one of the barriers to partnerships. In addition, other obstacles to the formation of partnerships with the community were identified in the study by 11, namely the non-existence of suitable leadership in schools able to develop, assess and coordinate those partnerships, the attitude of some school teachers and heads in considering the community is indifferent to, or lacking the resources that could contribute to pupils’ scholastic success or the fear in schools and their professionals of being exposed to public scrutiny.

In  12 also point out tensions and challenges in establishing and maintaining partnerships between schools and other community bodies, namely, the reluctance of some organizations to cooperate with schools other than their own, and vice-versa, the obligation to provide young people with learning that has meaning for them and is valued by the job market, the need to maintain permanent communication between the school and its partners, and the difficulty in measuring the success of partnerships regarding determination of the effects of participation in them and the advantages in continuing with them.

Another challenge in forming and maintaining partnerships is the need to involve parents as partners, particularly in stimulating education programmes and obtaining their support, due to the fact that they are becoming an increasingly powerful pressure group, able to influence the school curriculum insofar as this concerns the quality of the children’s education 13, 14.

Against this background, in  15 points out as an indispensable factor for the formation of a successful partnership, the school having a type of leadership that abandons traditional and behavioural models and follows relational models, promoting trust, empathy, comprehension of others’ ideas and perceptions, the ability to establish commitments, dialogue and harmony. In reference 16, the need for strategic thinking in schools able to provide a cultural change in education, so that school experiences promote the development of competences appropriate to the demands of today’s society, such as the ability to solve problems, continuous learning and creative thought. The formation of partnerships implies that the parties share a common and mutual interest in a joint activity 17.