Supporting “Slow Renewal”: Developments in Extended Education in High-Poverty Neighbourhoods in England

Abstract

Abstract

This paper explores how a small but growing number of schools in England are gradually extending their roles to act as, what I term, agents of “slow renewal”: supporting long-term change in children’s complex family and community environments, through a series of strategically-aligned, small-scale, locally-bespoke actions, intentionally planned to bring about incremental change. An empirical illustration of one such school is presented and its core features explored via four core concepts: socio-ecological perspectives on children’s outcomes, soft-systems change, assets-based development, and liminal space. Through this, the paper contributes a set of integrated conceptual principles on which schools working to support slow renewal can act and which challenge the values of market-driven education systems more generally.

Keywords: community schools, extended education, assets-based approaches, systems change

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Bibliography: Kerr, Kirstin: Supporting “Slow Renewal”: Developments in Extended Education in High-Poverty Neighbourhoods in England, IJREE – International Journal for Research on Extended Education, Vol. 9, Issue 1-2021, pp. 87-101. https://doi.org/10.3224/ijree.v9i1.08

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Open Access License: This contribution is available in Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0 (Attribution 4.0 International) as of 18.04.2023. More information about the license and the terms of use can be found here.