The impact of local communities on the school development - A case study examining expectations and inclusion on a systemic level

Abstract

This paper presents one specific case of our school development research project. It shed light on the issue of a local community and the structure of expectations, which may limit the school’s development and students’ development. Because this project takes place in Scandinavia one needs first to understand the schooling policy called “one school for all”, which stresses inclusion. In addition, the phenomenon Langfeldt describes as “the quality of schools is created locally” will be explained, as well as the nature of expectations. The data collected is used to show the case’s limiting behavior, the balancing expectation structure between the school and the local community. Based on the conceptual model, both the preliminary SD-models told as dynamic stories and a running SD-model representing the case reveal that kind of behavior. To show the potential for the school development we compare the survey and focus group results with those of other control schools. Analyzing all schools will presumably show different main drivers for balancing expectations. From earlier research and literature analysis we derived indicators and characteristics for inclusive schools with high shared expectations, and a collegial school culture that are prerequisites for a school to be able to develop its potential.