From positivism to critical theory: school-community relations toward community equity literacy

Abstract

In recent years, research on urban school–community relations has emerged with renewed vigor and a myriad of suggestions for how to best approach the topic. While most of these suggestions are anchored in positivist and interpretive epistemologies, a growing number of scholars are applying more critical approaches to school–community relations that center issues of equity and unequal power relations. However, these approaches are often perceived as being too impractical for educational leaders to implement. This article thus situates approaches to school–community relations across three epistemologies: positivism, interpretivism, and critical theory to make these ideas more accessible for educational leaders. With a focus on developing educational leaders to work equitably across school and community contexts, this article provides an operating framework for each approach that delineates assumptions, goals, views of families, strategies, and types of leadership. Finally, this article provides an epistemological grounding to propose that educational leaders develop what I call community equity literacy, and concludes with implications for future research.

Keywords:

• School–community relations
• school leadership
• school–community partnerships
• community equity literacy

Notes

1. In this article, I use the terms educational leaders and school leaders interchangeably to mainly refer to school principals, although these terms could also include individuals in community-based spaces.

2. These authors also include postmodernism, but I did not include it in this particular analysis.

3. For example, Sanders has published very meaningful and useful work that is reflective of both the traditional and interpretivist frameworks.

4. I have the utmost respect for Epstein, Sanders, Haynes, Comer, and any other scholar cited in the traditional section. Their work is certainly important and this paper is in no way intended to discredit their research, but to situate it among various approaches.

5. Horsford’s (2011, 2014) notion of racial literacy focuses on four steps: racial literacy, racial realism, racial reconstruction, and racial reconciliation.

6. I have a manuscript under review that details CEL and its alignment with the most recent ISLLC Standards.

7. I purposefully spell powell with a lowercase ‘p’ because that is how the author spells his name.