An Ecological Model of Inter-institutional Sustainability of an After-school Program: The La Red Mágica Community-University Partnership in Delaware

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to introduce a recursive model of ecological discursive sustainability, as it applies to and emerges from the history of an after-school program partnership between the School of Education at the University of Delaware, USA and the Latin American Community Center in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. This model is characterized by the development of shared ownership and collaboration between the institutional partners, the co-evolution and crossfertilization of the partners’ practices and the negotiation of institutional boundaries and structures. This model was developed by analyzing dialogic discourses across six diverse ecological domains of the partnership.