Thammasat University students who are interested in education, sociology, political science, cultural and social anthropology, the allied health sciences, business, and related subjects may find a newly available book useful.
Schools as Community Hubs: Building ‘More than a School’ for Community Benefit is an Open Access book, available for free download at this link:
https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/63032
The TU Library collection includes other books about different aspects of community education.
The publisher’s description of the book notes:
This open access book brings together research on the planning, design, governance and management of schools as community hubs—places that support the development of better-connected, more highly integrated, and more resilient communities with education at the centre. It explores opportunities and difficulties associated with bringing schools and communities closer together, with a focus on the facilities needed to accommodate shared experiences that generate social capital and deliver reciprocal benefits. This book discusses the expanded roles of schools, and investigates how schools may offer more to their communities—historically, currently and into the future—with respect to the role of the built environment in situating community activities and services. Organised around four sections, it showcases important areas of development in the field via an interdisciplinary approach, which weaves together empirical research with theoretical insights and practical examples. This book not only highlights the challenges associated with the development of schools as community hubs but offers evidence-based insights into how to overcome such hurdles to develop community-facing schools into the future.
The introduction states:
Since schools proliferated with the rise of mass education in the late 1800s, they have played important roles within their local settings. By their nature, schools are places of significance, influencing the lives of young people, families, and community members through their physical presence and their social networks. While schools are common and well-accepted features of urban, regional, and rural landscapes today, the relations between schools and their surrounding communities have been a topic of debate, research, and development for over a century.
The suggestion that schools should act as community hubs is not new. In 1899 John Dewey promoted the school as a locus of community in the first edition of his book The School and Society, suggesting that schools should be considered a “genuine form of active community life, instead of a place set apart in which to learn lessons”. With the advent of the single schoolhouse and later more sophisticated schooling models and facilities, schools have drawn people together, fostering social engagement and community cohesion. Yet, schools that actively promote the education, health, and wellbeing of not just students, but also teachers, parents, carers, and members of the wider community have been rare, and such models have not often been scaled. The historical record indicates that developing and sustaining ‘more than a school’ operations can be complicated and challenging. […]
Planning schools as community hubs engages two distinct planning regimes: educational planning, and social and urban planning. Educational planning focusses on the welfare and academic progress of students within schooling systems. Social and urban planning involves policy and planning decisions relating to the provision of social, environmental, and infrastructural services, as well as urban form and amenity, at neighbourhood, suburban or community level. The histories, institutional settings, and the ethos of these two regimes need to be acknowledged and reconciled for the successful design, operation, and sustainment of schools as integrated educational and community facilities. Notwithstanding the many successful examples of schools as community hubs discussed in this book, structural segregation of these two planning regimes has commonly frustrated ambitions to scale and expand such initiatives.
Further, ineffective governance structures and complicated, multi-agency resourcing arrangements tend to act as barriers to integrated planning. The assignment of responsibility for school and community facilities at different levels of government, as is the case in Australia, raises questions about authority and coordination in planning and decision-making. The siloed organisation and operation of administrative units within government jurisdictions may be equally problematic, resulting in a lack of coordinated identification and resolution of objectives. Several chapters in this book cite examples where state-based education departments have not been actively present in local planning processes. Indeed, in some jurisdictions, public education authorities have been specifically exempted from local planning schemes. Furthermore, educational planning is commonly undertaken for communities, not with them, negating the types of participatory decisionmaking processes that can lead to productive school-community relations and the procurement of aligned infrastructure. As chapters of this section explore, tensions between infrastructure that seeks to promote community access and social connectedness on the one hand, and infrastructure that prioritises the safety and security of young people on the other, are at the heart of the matter. However, complex multi-purpose and multi-sectoral institutions such as extended-use or ‘hub’ schools resist simple or singular responses. Both safety and social connection are important […]. Productive dialogue between these rationales is needed if schools are to be equally welcoming and secure. […]
Educators, social services providers, and community planners focused on delivering education and programs may not immediately see the relevance of physical infrastructure to their work other than as a place to be and do. However, when viewed relationally, the built environment is a significant participant in people’s lives and good architectural design informed by collaborative processes can enhance the social relationships at the heart of the school-community interface. Moreover, the architectural briefing process may catalyse a journey of discovery, imagining alternative futures long before a design or building exists, or programs are offered within it.
Whether led by architects, educational facility planners, or both, this early process asks big and bold questions of school leaders, community stakeholders and policy makers about how things could be better. […] Schools are widely recognised as playing a central role in the lives of young people, families, and carers, perhaps even more so since the COVID-19 pandemic led to temporary school closures in many parts of the world.
As cities and regional areas around the world intensify and societal dynamics change, pressure on schools to become ‘more than a school’ appears to be increasing. Here, community hub initiatives and activities become entangled with issues associated with educational planning, social, community and urban planning, architectural design, governance, facility management, and of course funding. Exploration of the wide-ranging factors influencing school-community relations in this book highlights the importance of building school facilities to accommodate activities that foster connections and engagement and generate shared benefits for both schools and community-based stakeholders.
Should schools play a more significant role in supporting communities to thrive, exhibit resilience and become more sustainable, both socially and environmentally, by establishing closer connections with early years education, health and wellbeing services, sports and recreation organisations, plus other community-oriented partners? We believe so, as evidenced by the content of the chapters in this book.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)