In Patience and Hope: A 20-Year Narrative Study of a Family, School, and Community Partnership

Abstract

This case study describes a 20-year journey of educational transformation from 1985 to 2005 in a bellwether, or highly developed, instance of one school, family, and community partnership—the Kileely Community Project— situated in a large social housing project in Limerick City in the Midwestern region of the Republic of Ireland. The study is a narrative account of how a declining elementary school struggled against the odds to become a vibrant community learning center. Guided by a mix of feminist emancipatory research and socioecological and social capital theories, the study yielded findings on the hidden potential of patience combined with hope as a catalyst for changing the ways that learners learn and teachers teach, for building commitment to sustainable learning, for working for change in community teams through collective intelligence, for building a capacity for change and risk, and for fostering trust and respect in relationships. Implications are discussed for the development, growth, and sustainability of family, school, and community partnerships.