ABSTRACT
This chapter demands that we rethink our conceptions of partnerships in fostering eduational change. Our intention is to further the research agenda on the mechanisms proposed by proponents of the communitarian model of schooling for building community capacity. We set out an orienting framework on the implications of ecologyof-games. Our orientation to school-community links takes direction from Kerchner’s (1995) proposal for understanding the capacity of schools to generate economic and social renewal in their communities. We show that the challenges raised by a conception of schools as basic industry pose analytical and methodological problems in bounding cases of school-community links which turn us to seek guidance from the insights offered by Long (1958) into the ecology-of-games, and to Hawley’s more recent explication of the human ecology paradigm (1968, 1986). Based on an analytical framework of ecological organization developed from this paradigm, we return to the challenge offered by Kerchner (1995). Finally, we call for an examination of different value frameworks aligned with metaphors of neighborliness, intergenerational responsibility, ecological interdependence, and privatization.
