Minor fall and major lift: raising educational capacity through community partnerships

Abstract

This transdisciplinary study explores holistic models of education and community development. It looks at transformations that occur when parents undertake tertiary education in two High Schools in a community with a high multi-cultural youth population. Engaging in interviews and focus groups, participants give narrative accounts providing rich qualitative data. Effective pedagogy is analysed in this Community Skills Certificate course on Identity and Communication. The research seeks practical solutions to barriers to social and educational progress in the students’ lives. It ascertains improvement in interpersonal relationships, including parenting skills. In addition, it looks at changes in family attitudes toward education that facilitates increased career opportunities. This work suggests that building local capacity through educational partnerships and effective pedagogy empowers individuals and the community. Families and employees are able to function more effectively as they apply newly learned intrapersonal and interpersonal skills. The study juxtaposes constructs of fall and lift – socially, educationally and psychologically. Belief in agency and transformational pedagogy is central to this study’s argument that through the cracks of disadvantage holistic alternatives emerge.