Co-constructing community, school, and university partnerships for urban school transformation

The purpose of this study was to examine the first year of a five-year emerging community, school, and university partnership engaged in the process of co-construction for the purpose of transforming a K-12 school. This partnership was selected for its uniqueness in bringing together a pair of community-based organizations with a long-standing history of advocacy and social justice within the community, a low-performing urban high school, and a top-tier private research university with a record of service within the urban community. The research questions in this study focused on a process that enables partnerships among communities, schools, and universities to be co-constructed, the persistent barriers to establishing these partnerships, some effective strategies to overcome the barriers, and the attributes of a partnership that result from a co-constructed partnership among communities, schools, and universities for the purpose of urban school transformation. Results from the qualitative case study indicated that the partnership is engaged in the process of co-construction through dialogue and mutual learning. Barriers to this process of co-construction included history, hierarchy, and the absence of systems and structures for communication. Some effective strategies that have been employed to overcome these barriers have included space for dialogue and systems of representation. In the span of less than a year, the partnership has also begun to demonstrate key attributes such as collaborative relationships, trust, mutual respect, and stakeholder confidence.