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“Who are these Projects Really for?”: Interrogating Community-School Partnerships and Place-Based Education Under a Market Regime

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Abstract

In this paper, the author draws on a qualitative case study of a place-based food justice project (FJP) at an urban public charter high school to examine the role of community-school partnerships (CSPs) in the FJP and marginalized students’ experiences of these partnerships. Observations and interviews with students, teachers, and community representatives suggest that the marketized context in which these partnerships unfolded undermined the potential benefits of CSPs by incentivizing schools to prioritize private benefits for both schools and community organizations over students’ preferences and priorities. The extent to which CSPs might serve students’ interests may hinge on how other stakeholders conceptualize “community.”

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Notes

  1. All names and identifying information have been changed to protect participants.

  2. University of Great Bay, the fourth community organization to partner with GPCS, provided logistical support and a site for the culminating youth conference.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Alisha Butler, Douglas Reed, and Sabrina Wesley-Nero for their incredibly helpful feedback on earlier iterations of this paper.

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Correspondence to Kristin Sinclair.

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Sinclair, K. “Who are these Projects Really for?”: Interrogating Community-School Partnerships and Place-Based Education Under a Market Regime. Urban Rev 55, 535–558 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-023-00660-x

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