School-Community Collaboration for Learning and Teaching: Findings from Research and Practice
Fall 1999, v15-4
	-Meredith I. Honig, Joseph Kahne, Milbrey W. McLaughlin Several articles in this issue of New Designs for Youth Development suggest that youth organizations can be important partners with schools in expanding youths' opportunities to learn. For example, service learning programs like the one described by Curtis Ogden in this issue can bring together schools and community agencies to enhance youths' learning and strengthen their neighborhoods. Mary Jane Harkins' article, "Supporting Students Through Community Connections" highlights how school/community initiatives promote an authentic learning environment and help sustain rural communities. Last, John Terry presents the Gulf of Maine Institute Without Walls as an example of schools and community-based environmental groups partnering around learning outcomes for youth. What do we know about why collaboration between schools and community agencies such as youth organizations, health and human services agencies, local businesses, and others may be a viable strategy for improving youths' learning? What do we know about how such collaboration may relate to learning outcomes for youth? In this issue of "Research and Practice" we share selected findings from a recent review of research on why and how community agencies and collaborations among them may matter to what we call youths' "opportunities to learn" and teachers' "opportunities to teach." "Opportunities" in this context means the resources, occasions, and supports that youth need to achieve high academic standards, and that classroom teachers need to help youth achieve these goals. For this review we spent over two years examining research on the effects of family, peers, neighborhoods, and work on youths' learning, as well as harder-to-find evaluations of school-linked services initiatives, service learning, and community service programs, school-to-work programs, and community-based youth organizations. We also looked at programs that strategically combine certain elements of each of the above and link them with schools. These hybrid efforts included places like El Puente in Brooklyn, New York, which features a collaboration between a youth organization and a school, service learning opportunities, school-linked services, school-to-work programs, and family involvement (among other features) that cut across our other categories. Our review differs from many other syntheses of research on collaboration in four important ways: 1. Focus on learning outcomes While other studies and research reviews focus on a range of outcomes for youth, we looked specifically at how collaboration may matter for learning outcomes in particular. We based this approach on the assumption that improving learning outcomes for youth may require a different set of activities, supports, and connections between school and community then achieving other outcomes such as access to health services. By "learning outcomes" we mean improved grades, behavior in school, graduation rates, and school climate among other fairly traditional measures of school success. We also looked at how these efforts affect shorter term change in non-academic competencies such as emotional and physical well-being, vocational skills, and citizenship. We based this approach on the premise that youths' competencies are interrelated, and that improvements in youths' non-academic competencies may improve their performance in school . 2. Concern for day-to-day interactions In selecting among the many categories of research that might fall under the broad area "school-community collaboration," we favored research that identified deliberate or planned efforts to marshal community resources to support learning and teaching. This approach differs from some research traditions that focus on the traits of individuals and families (e.g., do the youth reside in single-parent versus two-parent homes), the broad conditions in neighborhoods (e.g., poverty rates), and other factors that are generally beyond what youth organizations and other neighborhood institutions can impact. In other words, we focused on what we know about how youth organizations, schools, and other youth-serving agencies in neighborhoods work day-to-day, in collaborative ways, to improve learning outcomes for youth. 3. Research that extends across categories We looked across categories of collaborations common in policy and research. For example, rather than comparing school-linked service approaches with service learning, we asked, "What are the features within and across reforms like these that may relate to learning outcomes?" We base this on the understanding that there is great variation within any single type of initiative. Some school-linked services initiatives, for example, resemble parent involvement initiatives when they focus on helping parents access their children's school and engaging them in collaborative governance. Others look more like community development efforts and service learning when they engage Private Industry Councils and community development corporations in partnerships with schools for community service projects. 4. Expanded definition of teachers We attempted to articulate how school-community collaboration may matter for classroom teachers. While other reviews of school-community collaboration highlight important roles for teachers in such partnerships, they often assume that classroom teachers are the educators, while other professionals (such as youth workers) provide support services that indirectly affect learning. By contrast, we defined "teachers" as those adults and young people who influence youths' learning. We assumed that for some youth these teachers can be found not only in schools, but also in youth organizations, neighborhoods, social services agencies, churches, peer groups, and other settings. This definition of "teachers" helped us look beyond the formal arrangements between organizations to consider the types of local, day-to-day connections among adults within and across organizations that may matter for learning and teaching. A Research-Based Definition of School-Community Connections for Teaching and Learning Our review identified a core set of major design features of school-community connections when they enhance opportunities for youth to learn and teachers' to teach. That is, these features describe what school-community sites do when they provide the resources, occasions, and supports that youth need to achieve at high levels and that teachers in and out of school need to help students achieve at these high levels. The chart that follows outlines these features. Notice that we identify each feature on a continuum. This is for two reasons: first, it reflects our understanding that forging connections--particularly the level of connection described here--is difficult work. No one school-community site will be able to exemplify what we call "high impact" features all the time--the features that seem most closely correlated with outcomes for learning and teaching. Creating connections is a developmental process and partnerships will grow at different rates along different dimensions. The second reason for locating each feature on a continuum is to suggest that while certain activities may take time to improve learning outcomes in the short term, they can lead to other results in the short term, many of which may contribute to long term learning outcomes. (For example, meeting the discrete needs of certain youth in crisis in the short term may be a necessary precondition to improving their performance in school.) In addition, engaging in these "low impact" activities can build important organizational and collaborative capacity for the long term. (For example, engaging in the so-called low impact activities may address youths immediate needs, build relationships between staff, youth, and neighborhood residents, and develop the expertise and experience of your staff.) These may be important preconditions to engaging in some of the high impact activities listed in the chart that follows.
	Table 1: School-Community Collaboration for Learning and Teaching: Findings from Research and Practice
	Some of the language used in the definition in this chart will be familiar with many youth workers who take a youth development approach, which emphasizes focusing on whole youth and building on the strengths of specific youth. Notice that We define some of these familiar terms in particular ways. For example, among our other findings, connections between schools and communities seem to have a high impact on learning when they provide a range of activities and supports for youth in academic and nonacademic areas. This means that a partnership between a youth organization and a school does not simply provide academic tutoring after school and otherwise extend the academic day. Rather, a sports team becomes a setting for developing math skills when compiling team statistics, practicing problem solving skills when figuring out how to raise money for new uniforms, and exercising leadership skills when youth coach each other. A school-linked Family Resource Center hires youth to manage the office, provide child care, and assist in the medical clinic and, in the process, builds youths' skills in writing, organization, and science. A partnership between a youth organization and a school does not simply provide academic tutoring after school ... rather, a sports team becomes a setting for developing math skills, practicing problem solving skills, and exercising leadership skills. We also found that high impact partnerships were youth-centered--that is, a primary concern was identifing learning opportunities in and out of school, and using them to strengthen youths' learning throughout their day. This approach moves beyond developing collaborative services teams, linking services with schools, and other definitions of "connections" that concern how services are organized and delivered. In some cases, while these integrated and accessible services provided essential supports to youth and their families, we found that they primarily produce benefits in areas other than school performance, such as health, mental health, and family functioning. (This may be particularly true in the short term--within the first six months.) On the other hand, a youth-centered partnership measures its success by the quality of the learning experiences for youth in and out of school as well as the strength of their connection. As discussed above, we found that when school-community connections have high impacts on youths' learning, they view a range of adults in youths' lives as their teachers. High impact partnerships provide opportunities for these teachers to learn from one another about individual youth and about what approaches might work with youth. For example, in a collaborative after school arts program, classroom teachers and visiting artists work together to teach African drumming or book making. Through the program, classroom teachers can observe other professionals working with youth, thus seeing their students in non-classroom settings where they may have new opportunities to display their talents. Similarly, the visiting artists can learn from classroom teachers. For instance, they may consider building their individual lessons into a sequenced curriculum or learn new ways to teach reading. These selected findings, and our findings overall, have a number of implications for youth organizations and youth workers. First, youth organizations provide important settings for learning. They do this not only by providing direct academic supports such as tutoring or classes. Rather, by providing high quality youth development opportunities, they build in youth a range of academic and nonacademic competencies that youth need to succeed in school. Second, youth workers themselves are essential teachers for many youth, and have skills, attitudes, and approaches that may provide important lessons for classroom teachers. Similarly, classroom teachers can provide important information and supports to youth workers in determining a youth's range of skills, and building on existing skills. Third, many youth organizations--and schools in particular--miss opportunities to collaborate with each other in ways that may be essential to youths' learning. In one 10-year study of youth organizations that we include in our research, not one of the over 100 high quality youth organizations had a formal connection to a school. Collaboration is challenging work. However, recent opportunities--new funding streams for collaboration, new research on potential benefits of collaboration at the neighborhood-level, and growing experiences of many youth organizations and schools with collaboration--may mean new supports for youth organizations and schools to forge new relationships around teaching and learning. Youth workers are essential teachers for many youth, and have skills, attitudes, and approaches that may provide important lessons for classroom teachers. For the full research review on which we based this article, please see: Honig, M.I., Kahne, J, & M.W. McLaughlin (forthcoming). School-Community Connections: Expanding Opportunities to Learn and Opportunities to Teach. In V. Richardson (Ed.) Fourth Handbook of Research on Teaching.
	Sidebar 1: Research into Practice: Suggested Activity
	About the Authors Meredith Honig has had various professional experiences in policy and program development in the areas of school-linked services, child welfare, education, and youth development. She is currently a researcher and doctoral student at Stanford University where her research focuses on challenges of connecting communities and schools and taking such efforts to scale. Joseph Kahne teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He currently studies and works on a variety of educational reform, service-learning, and youth development initiatives. His book, Reframing Educational Policy: Democracy, Community, and the Individual, was recently published by Teachers College Press. Milbrey W. McLaughlin is the author of several educational books, including Urban Santuaries: Neighborhood Organizations in the Lives and Futures of Inner-City Youth. Milbrey currently teaches at Stanford University.
	NEW DESIGNS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT © 1999