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Citation:

Honig, M. I., Kahne, J., & McLaughlin, M. W. (2001). School-community connections: Strengthening opportunity to learn and opportunity to teach. In V. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (4th edition). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Annotation:
The focus of this article is to explore how schools and communities can connect to improve studentsÕ performance in school, given that the current reform movement in education appears conceptually and strategically incomplete. The authors believe that most educational reforms underway stay inside the box of traditional institutional roles and relationships within schools, assuming that improved performance results from extended and intensified academic instruction in school classrooms. They argue that many of the factors that shape studentsÕ opportunities to learn, and teachersÕ opportunities to teach, are beyond the purview of the schools. Education reformers currently employ the wrong analytic frame for a meaningful examination of studentsÕ opportunities to learn and teachers' opportunities to teach. Connections among youths and with various teachers in and out of school can build on the strengths of these opportunities to learn and enhance school performance. The authors review the impact of out-of-school factors on school performance and the shared directions and limitations of the out-of-school effects literature. Four areas of out-of-school practice are identified that hold promise for school-community connections. They are school-linked initiatives in health and human services near schools; community service or service learning programs; school to work; and community-based organizations that take a developmental perspective on their work with youth and strategically build their social capital. The authors' argument that when school-community connections are forged in certain ways teaching and learning are enhanced is well-researched and offers strategies for practitioners to improve conditions in and out of school that impede learning and teaching.