As community gardens expand across the U.S., Extension professionals can support them not only in horticultural education but also in planning and organization. Knowledge of community garden management is helpful in this regard. Existing research focuses on outcomes and criteria for successful gardens, but is less clear about how community gardens…

In this article I consider the place of a school in Cyprus that admits students from both sides of the Green Line and the role sport is meant to play in bringing students from diverse backgrounds together. One of the island's elite schools, The Lefkos Academy (TLA), is one of the few places where Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots gather together…

This article reviews the literature on how Chinese turnaround schools are improved in practice. It starts by defining turnaround schools in the Chinese context, and then discusses the essential reasons why such schools exist. Approaches to improving turnaround schools, successful experiences of transforming turnaround schools, and the challenges…

This study examined four secondary schools in Northern Ireland serving a significant percentage of low income families: two schools from the "Maintained" (de-facto Catholic) sector, one school from the "Controlled" (de-facto Protestant) sector, and one school from the "Integrated" (mixed faith) sector. The objective…

Today's increasingly complex and diverse world demands 21st century communication skills to solve community and social justice problems. Interorganizational collaboration is at the heart of much community activism, such as that focused on solving environmental disputes, eradicating racially discriminating real estate practices, and bringing early…

This article explores the work of the Grassroots Curriculum Taskforce (CGCT), a Chicago-based collaborative that engages in collective production of curricula that more adeptly capture the cultural, economic, and political realities of Chicago Public Schools' students. We first examine the collaborative processes CGCT undertook with parents,…

This article highlights four concepts related to embodied knowledge for community awareness: (1) possibilities; (2) risk; (3) collective engagement; and (4) performance. It examines the author's narrative study investigation manifested in a performance text as a case study on how women embodied repressed knowledge and released it through…

In these stressful times, many Parent Teacher Association (PTA) leaders are finding membership recruitment and retention to be particularly challenging. The Black Star Community PTA in Chicago has found some unique methods of getting their community to support students and families, and join PTA. The basis for their efforts is in recognizing the…

What can family members learn about each other from writing together? What sense of community can develop between family members and across families as they write together? What areas of culture and community can be realized as families write together? These are the questions that fostered this current inquiry into a family writing project. Four…

In this article, the value of integrating family systems theory into a school counseling curriculum is explored. Some programs have historically placed school counselors in a difficult position by not adequately preparing them for the demands of incorporating family systems and community collaboration into clinical practice. The rationale for…

In the UK and across Europe, rising concern about religion has impacted on religious education (RE), with a new emphasis being placed on dialogue for developing community cohesion. In this article it is suggested that the new emphasis on dialogue for community cohesion in RE also presents an opportunity to improve dialogic pedagogy for spiritual…

This article describes how two faculty members at Cabrini College--one from biology and the other from psychology--incorporated interdisciplinary community-based research in an honors course on environmental watershed issues. The course, Environmental Psychology, was team-taught in partnership with a local watershed organization, the Valley Creek…

A prevailing notion among higher education leaders is that public relations and marketing efforts must be intensified to boost legislative support for colleges and universities. However, this view fails to consider whether the academy might increase its standing among legislators and the general public by becoming more productively engaged in…

Background: This paper is the product of a two year investigation into the contribution of post-16 education to community cohesion. The investigation took place between 2010 and 2012 and was funded by the University Centre at Blackburn College in England. Fieldwork was undertaken in three East Lancashire colleges and focused on students aged…

This paper examines the learning gained from facilitating four action-learning sets whose members were drawn from management teams of local authority, health, education and police, working in partnership. Facilitation posed a series of difficult choices which impacted on personal and organizational dynamics within and between the partnership…