Co-construction: A facilitator for school reform in school, community and university partnerships

Journal of Negro Education, The, Winter 2001 by Carroll, Grace, LaPoint, Velma, Tyler, Kenneth

General Principals of Co-Construction

Schooling inevitably occurs in social and cultural contexts and this premise must be heeded in all facets of the reform enterprise. The co-construction process includes several principles:

1. University researchers should understand and respect the social and cultural dynamics at school sites that will affect program development, implementation, and evaluation. This ensures that there are authentic site-practitioner voices in how the model's components can be tailored to the distinctive history, features, and concerns of a given school.

2. Co-construction connotes taking into consideration the social/cultural experiences and dynamics of the surrounding community. This means that information regarding the prevailing community values, interests, and activities are used to inform the school interventions-activities, processes and materials-that occur at the school sites.

3. Co-construction requires researchers and practitioners to work as peers in the process of comprehensive school reform. Each partner brings specific areas of expertise while simultaneously having an understanding that neither knows the exact formula for success. Each is co-dependent on the other as their knowledge must be framed and contextualized by understanding students and their cultures, teachers and staff and their cultures, the schooling internal and external environments, the cultures of students' families that educators serve, and neighborhoods and communities in which the children and their families live.

4. Co-construction researchers and practitioners must adopt a very special mind-set. School reformers should discard negative stereotypes about children and their families. They should also discard past hierarchical thinking and approaches, and pre-conceived, limited approaches of what will work in a given setting. Successful co-construction mandates that all involved parties bring their knowledge, skills and energy together to create a process whereby the talents of all of the educational stakeholders, including families and community members, are acknowledged, valued, and provided opportunities to develop.

5. Co-construction is by far more time consuming than traditional partnerships and requires the patience of all stakeholders. It is broader in scope in reference to school reform and cannot be done merely in a few training sessions with only selected participants in a vacuum-like setting. It must be acknowledged that some stakeholders will require different strategies to become vested and involved. Some stakeholders may distrust the change process and outcomes at school sites or may not have the confidence to fully participate. Co-construction takes patience. Results may not be immediate. Desired results are not temporal or bound by the school environment. Results from co-constructive methods are intended to be life long and transformational for all involved in the process.

In order to have successful co-construction, it is critical to have all of the stakeholders be informed and buy into the process. This is not merely telling them what will be done. All stakeholders should agree to the overarching goal of enhancing student academic achievement and social competence. However, how to reach this goal is not universally agreed upon. Comprehensive school reform implementers must be flexible and present viable options to stakeholders. This is not to say that the actual model for school reform is totally co-constructed. The reform model should have in place research-based methodologies, training, curriculum components, pedagogy, and assessments. At the same time, implementers must also be able to adapt their reform model to "fit" the needs of the school and community.