Abstract
This chapter seeks to develop a ‘horizon of possibility’ around how schools should include young people in the process of creating ‘dialogue’ with their communities. There are four parts. First, challenging the dominant business model of engagement arguing instead for a personcentred approach around democratic decision-making and dialogicrelationships. Second, exploring how schools and communities need to be partners in a conversation, and an example is provided from a multicultural Australian elementary school. Third, there is discussion of dialogic forms of learning where schools and communities create spaces in which teachers and young people are able to link their ‘moments of reflection to their moments of action’ through classroom observations and interviews with teachers and students in a school setting. Fourth, in positioning youth as ‘powerful people’ we reveal how power andprivilege work against some youth and how it is possible to reconfigure school/community relations to advance the interests of those who are the least advantaged. The chapter concludes with a summary of key principles and ideas underpinning a socially critical approach to school/community relations.
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Smyth, J., Down, B., McInerney, P. (2014). Socially Critical School/Community Relations. In: The Socially Just School. Explorations of Educational Purpose, vol 29. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9060-4_4
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