Just Schools: Building Equitable Collaborations with Families and Communities
Just Schools examines the challenges and possibilities for building more equitable forms of collaboration among nondominant families, communities, and schools.
This popular text explores how equitable collaboration entails ongoing processes that begin with families and communities, transform power, build reciprocity and agency, and foster collective capacity through collective inquiry. These processes offer promising possibilities for improving student learning, transforming educational systems, and developing robust partnerships that build on the resources, expertise, and cultural practices of nondominant families. Based on empirical research and inquiry-driven practice, this book describes core concepts and provides multiple examples of effective practices.
Book Features:
- Broadens the dominant conception of leadership to include traditionally marginalized parents and communities as potential educational leaders.
- Explores partnerships from both a systemwide and in-school basis, with detailed portraits of what is possible.
- Translates theoretical principles at multiple scales: systemic, school, and individual practice.
- Shares studies focused on a broad range of contexts, strategies, and practices for enacting equitable collaboration with families.
Reviews
“Research and praxis that seek to resist and transform the growing inequity and racism in the United States are essential to transform schools into sites of justice. Ishimaru’s book provides an imaginative and inspiring approach for school communities to persist in this work.” —Teachers College Record “Just Schools makes a bold and vital contribution to education reform by challenging educators to include parents as vital leaders in school transformation and community development. Empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated, the book is also full of practical steps that educators and administrators can and must take to build strong collaborations with families that will produce desperately needed equity-oriented changes in schools, school systems, and their surrounding communities.” —Mark R. Warren, professor of public policy and public affairs, University of Massachusetts Boston “Ann Ishimaru's book is the most compelling work to date on school and community engagement. The data is gripping, and not only presents multiple models of how educators can follow community-based ways of engagement, but also proves deeply useful for parents that seek to better understand and navigate schools that have struggled to serve their communities well. Deep and complex theories and histories around race, power, and privilege in school and community are articulated in powerful and accessible ways, making this a must-read for educators and scholars alike. It will be required reading for all my future classes.” —Muhammad Khalifa, Beck Chair of Ideas in Education, University of Minnesota “This important publication provides a way forward for educators, families, students, and community members to co-create “just schools” by honoring, validating, and celebrating one another’s knowledge, skills, power, and resources. This book underscores that systemic and sustainable transformation toward equity will only be achieved through the process of creating equitable collaborations that embrace, include, and honor all members of our communities.” —Karen Mapp, Harvard Graduate School of Education