Transforming Schools in Low-Resourced Communities into Enabling Environments by Adjusting the Curriculum

Abstract

Low-resourced communities across the world face chronic and cumulative adversity that often lacks clear solutions. This adversity manifests itself in various institutions including schools. Professional resources to address this adversity, for example, bullying, poor academic performance, teenage pregnancy, inclusivity, in low-resourced communities, and elsewhere, are insufficient or undermine community partnerships by being highly individualised and disenabling. In this article, the author argues that so far interventions to close the achievement gap in dysfunctional schools have not been at the curriculum level. To address this gap, he proposes the use of the relationship-resourced resilience (RRR) model developed by Liesel Ebersöhn as generative theory. The theory posits that disadvantaged communities can make a difference if the curriculum is sufficiently flexible to accommodate community partnerships. In this article, he argues for a flexible curriculum that accommodates members of the community and teachers as co-creators of knowledge rather than mere transmitters and customers of knowledge.