Relationships Matter: Putting It All Together

Connecting the sometimes-disconnnected worlds of education research. practice, and policy can been a challenge, and the role of brokers, relationships and social networks is proving to be critical. Below is a great illustration of how these relationships function and why they are crucial, in a post that originally appeared on Shanker Blog, by Esther Quintero-Corral. -AYPF Staff

EQuintero formatted

Esther Quintero-Corral, Senior Research Fellow, Shanker Institute

About six months ago, Shanker published a post entitled The Importance Of Relationships In Educational Reform, by Kara S. Finnigan and Alan J. Daly. This post was the first of an ongoing series on the social side of education. In addition to Finnigan and Daly, scholars such as Carrie R. Leana and Frits K. Pil, Kenneth Frank, and William Penuel have joined this effort by writing about their research and sharing their perspective.

If there is one take away about the social side approach, it is the idea that relationships matter in education. Teaching and learning are not solo but rather social endeavors and, as such, they are best achieved by working together. The social side perspective: (1) shifts the focus from the individual to the broader context in which individuals operate; (2) highlights the importance of interdependencies at all levels of the system – e.g., among teachers within a school, leaders across a district, schools and the community; and (3) recognizes that crucial resources (e.g., information, advice, support) are exchanged through interpersonal relationships.

In another post I shared a list of resources (e.g., videos, news articles, papers etc.) that I compiled, and which I will periodically update, on the research underpinning the social side lens. Today I want to share two additional materials: First, a short video that I created, which summarizes, in a visual way, the ideas outlined above; second, an interactive image to help you explore our collection of content on this topic.

Click on the boxes in the image below to learn more about these various sets of relationships by reading related posts within the social side series.

 

Labor-Management District Leaders Research-Practice Teachers Students School-Community System

Labor-Management District Leaders Research-Practice Teachers Students School-Community System

 

____________________________

The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF), a nonprofit, nonpartisan professional development organization based in Washington, DC, provides learning opportunities for policy leaders, practitioners, and researchers working on youth and education issues at the national, state, and local levels. AYPF events and publications are made possible by contributions from philanthropic foundations. For a complete list, click here.