Abstract
Isolated teachers in stand-alone American schools are expected to engage diverse students in the quest to facilitate their academic learning and achievement. This strategy assumes that all students will come to school ready and able to learn, and educators in stand-alone schools can meet the needs of all students. Student disengagement gets short shrift in this framework, and so does teacher disengagement. A growing body of research emphasizes needs for nuanced engagement frameworks, better data systems, customized interventions facilitated by intervention registries, and bridge building between schools and community health, mental health, and social service agencies. Here, engagement and disengagement challenges are reframed as opportunities for collective action, including interprofessional teams, community agency–school partnerships, cross-sector collective impact formations, cradle-to-career system building, and community development initiatives. Together these collective action forms signal new institutional designs which are fit for purpose when child/family poverty, social exclusion, and social isolation conspire against student engagement and school success.
Highlights
External forces pose formidable challenges for educators working in stand-alone schools.The challenges start with those associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, requirements for on-line learning in homes and community organizations [1]
“collaborative” are something else because their leaders compete for members and resources, and disengaged young people continue to fall through the cracks
All qualify as collective action formations with enormous potential for enhancing student engagement, academic learning and achievement, and graduation
Summary
External forces pose formidable challenges for educators working in stand-alone schools. These questions necessitate an expansive research, development, and planning agenda for the fields of social-ecological psychology [9], community psychology [10], and school–family community partnerships [11] It starts with schools, but is not restricted by their boundaries, missions, resources, and “intervention reach.”. The desirable norm of widespread, lasting student engagement is not merely a narrow school improvement goal achievable at scale by educators working alone in stand-alone schools It is a collective action problem, and it necessitates boundary-bridging mechanisms such as interprofessional teams, school–community partnerships, cross-sector, collective impact initiatives, and cradle-to-career education systems
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