Community in School

Central to Character Formation, Violence Prevention and More

by Eric Schaps

Developmental Studies Center

This article appeared in TEPSA Journal, Summer 2003.

In a huge, national study (Resnick et al., 1997), researchers individually interviewed 12,000 students in grades 7–12 about their experience in eight different “high-risk” areas—violence; suicidal tendencies; emotional distress; use of alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco; sexual activity; and pregnancy. They also asked students about a wide variety of factors that the researchers thought might bolster resistance to these risks.

The results of this study were striking. Only two factors were strongly linked to most of these risky behaviors—in fact, to all except pregnancy. One was connectedness to family—feeling close to, and cared about by, parents and other family members. The more connected students felt to their families, the less involved they were in risky behaviors.

The other major factor, and here is the relevance to school-based character education and school safety, was feeling connected to school—feeling close to people at school, feeling fairly treated by teachers, feeling part of one’s school.

Maybe educators can’t do much to help students feel connected to their families, but they surely can do a great deal to promote school connectedness, or as we at the Developmental Studies Center (DSC) like to call it, sense of community in school. Our own research, described below, shows that strengthening students’ sense of community in elementary school has lasting as well as broad effects on students’ overall development, including improving conduct in school and reducing violent behavior outside of school.

Coherence Through Community

Educators are being asked to provide a variety of character-related programs—sex education, drug education, social and emotional learning, violence prevention, conflict resolution, and suicide prevention, to name several. Such “categorical” programs compete for time during an already-packed school day, leaving many educators feeling overwhelmed and fragmented.

When a school engenders a sense of community, peer group dynamics tend to work in support of, rather than contrary to, its goals and values, thereby increasing the likelihood of positive effects. Instead of juggling so many separate programs, educators would do well to focus on building students’ sense of community and integrating other aspects of character development into the regular school day, thereby making the ordinary school day itself the school’s basic character and prevention program.

Studies by DSC (Schaps et al., 1997) and by other researchers (e.g., Bryk and Driscoll, 1988) show that building students’ sense of community has many payoffs. It boosts academic motivation. It increases enjoyment of class, liking for school, and trust in and respect for teachers. It even increases the time that students spend reading.

The importance for character formation of building community in school was shown recently in a multidistrict evaluation of the Child Development Project (CDP), DSC’s comprehensive elementary school reform model. Relative to students in initially similar comparison schools, students in schools where CDP was implemented showed more positive interpersonal behavior in classrooms, reported more acts of altruism out of school, and had stronger conflict resolution skills, greater concern for others, and greater commitment to democratic values. Students at the top grade (5th or 6th grade) in the CDP schools also used significantly less alcohol and marijuana, used marginally less tobacco, and engaged in marginally less delinquent behavior. These effects were found even though CDP never raises or directly addresses delinquency or drug use issues (Battistich et al., 2000).

What’s more, an ongoing follow-up study is showing that students from these CDP elementary schools continue to outperform comparison students during their middle school years. Two or three years after they left their elementary schools, former CDP students were less likely to disobey school rules, cheat on a test, show disrespect for teachers, or skip school without an excuse, than were former comparison school students. They reported less involvement in serious delinquent acts such as carrying a weapon, using a weapon in a fight, selling drugs, and committing burglary. They were more involved in positive group activities such as school sports, other extracurricular activities, and community youth groups. And they had higher educational expectations, greater trust in and respect for teachers, greater liking for school, and higher grades and achievement test scores.

Promising Practices

How can a principal and faculty promote student’s sense of community in school? By introducing such practices as:

• Class meetings. Teacher-facilitated class meetings involve all students in setting norms and expectations, planning activities, and identifying and solving problems. Beginning-of-the-year class meetings focus on building unity by helping students to learn more about each others’ backgrounds and preferences, such as by inviting them to bring in a favorite toy or memento, and discuss it with a partner who then presents it to the entire class. Unity-building activities are often followed by class meetings to establish goals for the year (e.g., “To make our room a safe place for everyone”) or shared values (e.g., “To treat each other with respect”), which then can be followed up periodically to assess progress.
• Buddies program. Schools that initiate a buddies program start by pairing whole classes of older and younger students, separated by two years or more in age. Then each pair of classes comes together weekly or monthly for academic and recreational activities. Every older student gets a younger “buddy” for the year, creating powerful cross-age relationships, teaching important social skills, and building a caring ethos in the school. Paired buddies may first get acquainted by interviewing each other and charting ways they are alike and different. During the year they may read or play math games together, visit museums, or create a “joint journal” of their activities. At year’s end, they may show their appreciation for one another by exchanging gifts they have made or thank-you notes.
• “Homeside” activities. DSC has developed 18 conversational activities for each grade level K–6 that students do at home with their parents or caregivers. These conversations, mostly interviews conducted by students with their parents, connect school learning with home experiences and perspectives. For example, at fourth grade, when state history is commonly studied, one activity calls for students to interview their parents about how their family or ancestors first came to their state. Whether family members have lived in the state for 100 years or 100 days, the story of how they came to settle there is part of state history, and serves to personalize learning for students by linking their “home” and “school” experience. (These activities are provided in both English and Spanish versions.)
• Schoolwide community-building activities. Inclusive schoolwide activities forge links between students, parents, and teachers, and build new school traditions. These activities can be as undemanding as Family Film Nights, during which all families are invited to school simply to view a feature-length movie or video, and perhaps to discuss a question related to it within the family grouping. At the other end of the spectrum, activities can be as challenging as Family Heritage Museum, for which students and their caregivers prepare displays of information and artifacts that tell something about their own family heritage. The displays are then featured throughout the school. An evening event is organized so that parents and children can view the displays together.

The school’s principal is key to successfully introducing such practices and seeing that they are implemented with quality and consistency. Principals send a very strong message of “this is important here” when they allocate even modest amounts of time and resources to implementing, say, a buddies program. They also send this message of importance when they personally participate with their staffs in relevant staff development workshops and planning sessions. And principals can use many of the same practices—class meeting skills, for example—to build a sense of professional community within their faculties. A principal who is seen to practice what he or she preaches about community building is much more likely to be successful at it.

Why Community Building Works

Why does fostering a sense of community in school yield such broad and lasting benefits for students? When educators meet students’ basic needs for close, caring relationships and a sense of competence and contribution, they help those students to become committed to the school’s values and goals. Students strive to fit in and to succeed in such schools, just as they try to emulate parents to whom they feel close. When a school engenders a sense of community, peer group dynamics tend to work in support of, rather than contrary to, its goals and values, thereby increasing the likelihood of positive effects.

Because of the Child Development Project’s demonstrated effects, the U.S. Center for Substance Abuse Prevention recently selected it as a model drug prevention program, and the U.S. Department of Education listed it as an effective violence prevention program as well as an “Obey-Porter” (Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration) model. CDP has also been recognized as an exemplary character education program by several federal, state, and private agencies, and was one of only two programs featured last year at Laura Bush’s White House Conference on Character and Community.

Texas schools and districts interested in learning more about CDP can visit DSC online at www.devstu.org or contact our Texas-based staff people: Beverly Duck at beverly_duck@devstu.org.

Copyright © 2003

Dr. Eric Schaps is founder and president of the Developmental Studies Center in Oakland, CA. He is the author of three books and over 60 articles on character education, preventing problem behaviors and school change. Established in 1980, the Developmental Studies Center specializes in designing educational programs and evaluating their effects on children’s academic, ethical, social and emotional development. This article is adapted from ones published previously in Principal and Educational Leadership.

A description of the Child Development Project and its community-building components can be found on this site.

References

Battistich, V., Schaps, E., Watson, M., Solomon, D. & Lewis, C. (2000). Effects of the Child Development Project on students’ drug use and other problem behaviors. Journal of Primary Prevention, 21, 75–99.

Bryk, A. & Driscoll, M. (1988). The high school as community: Contextual influences and consequences for students and teachers. Madison: University of Wisconsin, National Center on Effective Secondary Schools.

Resnick, M. D., Bearman, P. S., Blum, R. W., Bauman, K. E., Harris, K. M., Jones, J., Tabor, J., Beuhring, T., Sieving, R. E., Shew, M., Ireland, M., Bearinger, L. H., & Udry, J. R. (1997). Protecting adolescents from harm: Findings from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health. Journal of the American Medical Association, 278, 823–832.

Schaps, E., Battistich, V. & Solomon, D. (1997). School as a caring community: A key to character education. In A. Molnar (Ed.), The Construction of Children's Character, Part II, 96th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.