Slogging and Stumbling Toward Social Justice in a Private Elementary School: The Complicated Case of St. Malachy

Scanlan, Martin

doi:10.1177/0013124510366224

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…The point is not that either of these scenarios would ensure that St. Malachy would enact more asset-oriented approaches to linguistically diverse families, but rather the importance of understanding the factors that influenced the depth and edges of the learning. This provides a more nuanced perspective than the previous analysis of St. Malachy that saw the pursuit of social justice to be “nonlinear, serendipitous, and accidental” (Author, 2010, p. 591). Instead, the learning architecture provides a framework for school leaders to discern how to intentionally design for the learning of educators in their school communities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…This article builds from a previous study of St. Malachy that examined how a private school community promoted inclusivity as it experienced accelerating degrees of diversity (Author, 2010). A central finding of that initial study was that “[r]ather than pursuing inclusivity in a direct path, educators in St. Malachy responded to their increasingly diverse student body in manners that were often nonlinear, serendipitous, and accidental” (Author, 2010, p. 591) and that individuals understood social justice in ways that both expanded and limited their practices in serving traditionally marginalized students. Here I extend this research by directly analyzing how St. Malachy educators learned to understand social justice and pursue inclusivity.…”

Section: Research Methods and Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Learning Architecture

Scanlan

2012

Educational Administration Quarterly

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Purpose: The field of socially just educational leadership focuses on reducing inequities within schools. The purpose of this article is to illustrate how one strand of social learning theory, communities of practice, can serve as a powerful tool for analyzing learning within a school ostensibly pursuing social justice. The author employs a core dimension of the theory of communities of practice, “learning architecture,” as a conceptual framework to analyze one such school. Research Design: For the case study presented here, data were collected in the form of interviews with teachers, administrators, support staff, and volunteers and board members (N = 21), field observations, and archival documents in an elementary school over the course of a school year. Findings: Members within a school community belong to multiple, overlapping, and interacting “communities of practice,” groupings of individuals who share common interests, practices, and purposes. The learning architecture illuminates design features that affect learning within and across these communities of practice. These features both facilitate and frustrate the efforts of individual teachers, administrators, support staff, and volunteers and board members to pursue social justice. Conclusions: This research suggests that the theory of communities of practice, and in particular the learning architecture therein, can be a valuable analytical tool within the field of socially just educational leadership, providing a perspective on how individuals within school communities learn to better serve traditionally marginalized students, along with the interconnections, depth, and edges to this learning.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Research Methods and Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Learning Architecture

Scanlan

2012

Educational Administration Quarterly

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“…This study highlights how the efforts of Cristo Rey Boston have led to tangible improvements in strengthening home-school partnerships. The Cristo Rey Boston model for building these partnerships speaks to the core praxis of Catholic social teaching (Scanlan, 2010), and illustrates how one Cristo Rey school has incorporated Pope Francis' call to serve those on the margins and make central the option for the poor in the context of preparing students for college. While often messy, and rarely a straightforward process (Scanlan, 2010), striving for children's educational success depends largely on the ability to form meaningful partnerships with parents around their children's education (Frabutt et al, 2010).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parent Engagement at a Cristo Rey High School: Building Home-School Partnerships in a Multicultural Immigrant Community

Crea¹,

Reynolds²,

Degnan³

2015

JOCE

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Catholic social teaching affirms the primary role of parents in their children's education, as well as the importance of a home-school partnership. The purposes of this article are to review the results of a mixed methods study of parent engagement at Cristo Rey Boston High School, and how the results of this study led to specific efforts to include parents more closely in the life of the school. Results suggest that parents in multicultural communities perceive their engagement to be an important part of their children's education. Yet, this engagement may take different forms that may go unrecognized by school staff. Based on study findings, school administrators began integrating parent engagement efforts through a coordinated system of student advising. From the perspective of Catholic social teaching, recognizing and responding to these multicultural differences are a means of praxis that affirms human dignity and reduces barriers to education for the marginalized.

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“…Finally, a number of articles point to the deliberate use of 'external resources' to promote social justice. These include teacher recruitment (DeMatthews & Izquierdo, 2016), as well as collaboration with the wider community (Blank, 2015), early childhood educators (Mistry & Sood, 2015), and private schools (Scanlan, 2010).…”

Section: Context Resources and Motivationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leadership for professional learning towards educational equity: a systematic literature review

Poekert

Swaffield

Demir

et al. 2020

Professional Development in Education

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This systematic review of recent research explored the uncharted intersection of literature on educational leadership, professional learning, and educational equity. It investigated leadership approaches to shaping the professional development and ongoing learning of educators that supports more equitable outcomes for students. The underlying motivation for the work is our concern for the educational experiences and achievements of marginalised students, and for professional learning to address these inequalities. Guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) Statement, and iterative selection of literature based on relevance and quality judged by weight of evidence assessments, we identified 41 empirical items for detailed analysis. The outcome was five themes: Critical framing of social justice issues; Dialogue and enquiry; Learning and identity development; Context, resources, and motivations; Normalising inclusion and shared leadership. A further six articles informed a conceptual framework linking professional learning and outcomes that developed existing models. Critique of linear conceptualisations of learning, and affinity with the values and philosophy of the process model of education championed by Lawrence Stenhouse, prompted proposing the themes as nascent principles. These require further research, yet they have immediate practical utility for educational leaders and teachers working in pursuit of educational equity.

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Slogging and Stumbling Toward Social Justice in a Private Elementary School: The Complicated Case of St. Malachy

Cited by 7 publications

References 40 publications

A Learning Architecture

A Learning Architecture

Parent Engagement at a Cristo Rey High School: Building Home-School Partnerships in a Multicultural Immigrant Community

Leadership for professional learning towards educational equity: a systematic literature review

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