"Just Schools" by Dr. Ann M. Ishimaru examines how schools can achieve educational equity through collaborative leadership and actively involving historically marginalized families and communities in the decision-making process. Dr. Ishimaru's book emphasizes the importance of rethinking traditional power dynamics and transforming…

This study highlights the Community Schools (CS) implementation experience of five rural Vermont schools. Principals and CS coordinators participating in a state-funded program aimed at CS establishment were interviewed to understand better their experience with implementing a school/district-wide policy and reform effort. Findings suggest several…

A persistent issue in Australia, and globally, is how to improve participation rates in higher education for students from regional and rural areas. In this paper, we tackle this challenge by exploring the idea of a Community Embedded University (CEU). We draw on empirical data from three participatory co-design workshops with university students…

This article describes the first year of a partnership between a university and a community organization working to improve and expand a community-based multigenerational mentoring program for African American adolescent girls ages 12-17. The mentoring program, set in an urban Midwestern city, is a collaboration between university…

To increase capacity for public participation and improve problem-solving practices, some public school districts have launched stakeholder-training programs. This mixed methods study examined the impact of five school district parent training programs (four in Colorado and one in Illinois) designed to increase trust and engagement. Data were…

This article describes the development and ongoing operations of the GreenEriePA.org project, a portal to all things environmental in Erie County, PA. Through regular input from community partners, GreenEriePA turned into a much larger, long-term project than the faculty coordinators at Gannon University, Erie, PA, originally anticipated. We…

Community schools have gained attention as mechanisms to bring about equitable access to high-quality educational resources, extended learning time and opportunities, integrated student supports, and collaborative engaging relationships with parents and communities. In order to effectively create conditions that provide equitable access to such…

The Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit, operating foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. The foundation seeks to identify and address the challenges to making democracy work as it should through interrelated program areas that focus on citizens, communities, and institutions. Each issue of this annual newsletter…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of knowledge transfer partnership (KTP)as a means for universities to generate and exchange knowledge to foster sustainable cities and societies. Design/methodology/approach: This paper reports on a series of separate yet interrelated KTPs between a university and the local authority in the…

When academics, who occupy a traditional position of power and privilege, engage with community members whose thinking, attitudes, and responses have been shaped by ongoing sociohistorical oppression and disadvantage, democratic participation is not easy to attain. Yet, unless community members feel able to participate freely, the valuable local…

This paper reports on evidence from five school principals regarding leadership practices that work in multiple deprived contexts. The South African educational landscape is complex, often described as a cocktail of first and third world institutions. Looking at the schooling system on a continuum, on the one end there are first class schools…

Community-Based Research (CBR) has been recognized as a significant reform agent within graduate education. This article explores the decisions involved in implementing a CBR model into graduate education programs. It uses the doctoral program in educational leadership at the University of Hartford as an example of how CBR can be employed to…

Each issue of this annual newsletter focuses on a particular area of Kettering's research. The 2015 issue focuses on a yearlong review of Kettering's research over time. This issue contains the following articles that address this review: (1) How Kettering Discovered Democracy (David Mathews); (2) Key Events in KF History (Collette McDonough); (3)…

Patient centered medicine is a paradigm of health care that seeks to treat the whole person, rather than only the illness. The physician must understand the patient as a whole by considering the patient's individual needs, social structure, socioeconomic status, and educational background. Medical education includes ways to train students in this…

In this ethnographic case study, Ann M. Ishimaru examines how a collaboration emerged and evolved between a low-income Latino parent organizing group and the leadership of a rapidly changing school district. Using civic capacity and community organizing theories, Ishimaru seeks to understand the role of parents, goals, strategies, and change…