Campus Location
Dallas Campus (Online)
Date of Award
7-2022
ORCID
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1165-1282
Document Type
Dissertation
Department
Organizational Leadership
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Christie Bledsoe
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
Mary Christopher
Third Committee Member or Committee Reader
Mark Weatherly
Abstract
Schools receive support in the form of partnerships with organizations such as businesses, churches, and non-profits for many reasons, and such partnerships are beneficial to students and the school community. The purpose of this participatory qualitative study was to determine behaviors of elementary school principals that result in the sustainability of school-community partnerships beyond the initial year of implementation. Elementary school principals in an urban public school district in North Texas were interviewed along with leaders from their corresponding community partners to determine the role of the principal in school-community partnership work. Through an in-depth analysis of interview transcripts, the following four themes emerged: school culture, principal availability, consistent communication, and flexibility. The results of this study indicate that principals who set a welcoming school culture, are visible and available to the community, communicate consistently using a variety of methods, and are flexible in response to changing needs of organizations and other stakeholders can positively impact the long-term sustainability of school-community partnerships.
Keywords: school-community partnership, leadership, qualitative participatory research, sustainability, principal
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Benavides, Kimberly Renee, "Leading for Sustainability in School-Community Partnerships" (2022). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 498.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/498