The Ecology of Rural Cross-Sector School-Community Partnerships: A Literature Review

ABSTRACT

Cross-sector school-community partnerships have recently garnered attention for their potential to improve outcomes across multiple child- and family-serving organizations. Despite the central role of schools in rural communities, partnerships in these settings have largely been overlooked in the literature. This structured review examines the empirical literature on rural school-community partnerships using an ecological framework to (1) understand what is known about these partnerships; (2) assess the strengths and weaknesses of the literature; and (3) identify directions for future research. The review identified a range of partnership types, as well as facilitating factors including social capital, school leadership, and shared vision. Inhibiting factors are social geography and limited capacity. The review identified an increase in empirical research in recent years; however, weaknesses in the literature included a lack of attention to connecting partnering efforts and outcomes and to the role power. Areas for future research include full-service community schools; critical analysis of power in rural partnership efforts; the tensions of school leadership caused by educational policy and local needs; research that reflects the importance of place, identity, and relationships; and research methods that can identify commonalities and contextual factors and connect partnership efforts and outcomes.

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge the assistance of Blair Prevost and Rande Daykin in assembling articles for review.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ For a more in-depth discussion of the multiple competing definitions of rural in educational research see Longhurst, 2022.

² The author acknowledges the limitations of excluding books, such as the recent three volume series on school-university-community partnerships (Leonard & Reardon, 2017; Reardon & Leonard, 2018, 2020), as well as government reports and unpublished dissertations.

³ Research on school-university partnerships was deliberately excluded (e.g., Eargle, 2013). While such partnerships are important, many rural areas do not have access to institutions of higher education.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah J. Zuckerman

Sarah J. Zuckerman is an associate professor of Educational Administration at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Previously, Sarah served as a special education teacher in rural and urban districts. Her research uses organizational theory and political science concepts to investigate collective action for systems change and education reform in rural settings.