‘Open schooling’ has become in recent years a burgeoning theme in the discourse on how to rethink education for the 21^st century and transform schools into better, more relevant, and adaptable organizations (EC, 2015; OECD, 2020). The rearticulation of ‘open schooling’ has been spearheaded by recent reports by the OECD (2006, 2020), such as the OECD scenarios for the future of schooling and the European Commission’s (EC, 2015), Science Education for Responsible Citizenship, which underscore the merits of transforming schools into ‘hubs of learning’ by opening school walls, fostering collaborations with the community, and engaging in innovative research. Opening schools to the community and engaging in Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is claimed to offer students (and society at large) the necessary knowledge, skills and values they need in order to successfully perform in 21^st century societies, and to act as responsibly engaged citizens who are motivated to address a wide range of burning social issues (Sotiriou et al, 2017). This transformative shift in the aims of school organization and curriculum requires a root-and-branch, system-wide, reform (Sotiriou et al, 2021). Open schooling is, therefore, regarded as a sea change reform, a reschooling vision, that is aimed at rearticulating the central mission, goals and curriculum of schools, transforming schools into ‘core social centers’ and learning organizations (OECD, 2020).

The idea that schools need to connect to the community certainly did not originate with the concept of open schooling and can be traced back, at least, to John Dewey. Various recent approaches have highlighted the ethical significance and effectiveness of learning with and for the community for promoting democratic principles and more just schools (e.g., Ishimaru, 2019). The Community Schools literature is an important case in point (e.g. Dryfoos, 2000, Heers et al, 2016), as is the more general school-community partnerships literature (Furman, 2002; Valli et al, 2016). Furman (2002), for instance, highlighted the need to bridge the artificial gap between the school-as-community strand and the school-community-connection strand toward the formulation of a more robust ecological perspective. While developments have been made recently to articulate what ‘open schooling’ means and entails, especially in EC-funded projects, current articulations of open schooling, nevertheless, remain theoretically underdeveloped. Given that systematic discussions on ‘open schooling’ are largely absent from peer-reviewed academic journals and publications, a gap can be identified between recent reform efforts expressed in international policies and reports and rigorous theoretical discourse.

This paper attempts to bridge this gap by engaging in the theoretical development of ‘open schooling’ and the conceptual analysis of the different forms of openness that open schooling entails. If reform efforts are to realize the beneficial impacts expected of them, such efforts must be met with appropriate theoretical rigor. Given the community-based approach to open schooling that is currently advocated by the EC and OECD, the paper proposes to connect the articulation and theorizing of what open schooling means to Furman’s ecological model of school-as-community (Furman, 2002) and to Schwartz’s circular model of universal values (1992). The multidimensional model of school openness that is presented here further expands and conceptually organizes the understanding of what openness means and entails and as a consequence also offers beneficial insights for the implementation and research of open schooling. 

The model presented in this paper, including the various dimensions it incorporates, has been developed mainly through literary analysis, interpretation, and integration of three main theoretical sources: The current open-schooling literature (EC, 2015; Sotiriou et al, 2017, 2021), Furman’s (2002) School-as-community ecological model and Shalom Schwartz’s (1992) circular model of universal values. The school-as-community discourse conceptually expands the meaning of openness and provides additional dimensions for theoretical consideration. Schwartz’s model of universal values offers methodological insights regarding organization and visualization of the model – specifically, an organization that accounts for the intricate relations among the dimensions and their higher-order categorization. Each openness dimension is considered as a distinctive element that connects to various literatures that enrich the model.

An open schooling approach applies the following dictum: school as, with and for the community. This dictum is manifested in a multidimensional model, composed of eight dimensions of openness. These include fostering partnerships and collaborations with community stakeholders (‘community collaborations’), ‘parental involvement’, and ‘social engagement’ (understood here primarily from the standpoint of addressing social issues and needs for promoting the wellbeing of the community). From Furman’s ecological model (2002) we include ‘shared governance’ as a central element conceived from the perspective of leadership theory for school community (Furman, 2002). ‘Open curriculum’ underscores the importance of diversifying knowledge and allowing flexibility in the contents of learning, thus allowing adaptation of learning that reflects a collaborative engagement with the needs and concerns of the community. ‘Inner school communities’ is expanded beyond ‘professional learning communities’ to include various other forms, such as student councils and other associations within the school. Finally, ‘learning communities’ concerns the pedagogies applied to teach-learn school subjects specifically with respect to community-based approaches to pedagogy: ‘community of practice’ (Wenger, 1998) and ‘Fostering a Community of Learners’ pedagogy (Brown & Campione, 1996). Whereas current focus is on inquiry-based instruction, it is important to frame open schooling pedagogy as community-based. It is possible not only to specify eight distinct dimensions of openness, but also to organize these dimensions under three basic types: organization, pedagogy, and community-relations. Organisation includes ‘shared governance’, ‘curriculum’ and ‘inner-school communities’; pedagogy includes ‘learning communities’ (conceived here as the basic pedagogy of open schooling) and ‘student participation’; and community-relations includes ‘parent involvement’, ‘social engagement’, and ‘community collaboration’. Each dimension constitutes a continuum ranging from inward to outward. Moving outward in each dimension assumes a movement toward greater openness, and the more dimensions are characterized by outward movement the greater the school is moving in terms of its openness.

Brown, A. L. & Campione, J. C. (1996) Psychological theory and the design of innovative learning environments: on procedures, principles, and systems. In L. Schauble and R. Glaser (eds), Innovations in Learning: New Environments for Education (pp. 289–325). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. EC (2015). Science Education for Responsible Citizenship. Luxembourg: Publ. Office of the European Union Dryfoos, J. G. (2000). Evaluation of Community Schools: Findings to Date. Furman, G. (Ed.). (2002). School as community: From promise to practice. SUNY Press. Heers, M., Van Klaveren, C., Groot, W., & Maassen van den Brink, H. (2016). Community Schools: What We Know and What We Need to Know. Review of Educational Research, 86(4), 1016-1051. Ishimaru, A. M. (2019). Just schools: Building equitable collaborations with families and communities. Teachers College Press. OECD (2006). Schooling for Tomorrow, Think Scenarios. Paris: Rethink Education. OECD OECD (2020). Back to the Future of Education: Four OECD Scenarios for Schooling, Educational Research and Innovation. Paris: OECD Publishing. doi:10.1787/178ef527-en Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in experimental social psychology, 25, pp. 1-65 Sotiriou, M., Sotiriou, S., & Bogner, F. X. (2021). Developing a self-reflection tool to assess schools’ openness. Frontiers in Education, 6. Accessed: https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.714227. Sotiriou, S., Cherouvis, S., Zygouritsas, N., Giannakopoulou, A., Milopoulos, G., Mauer, M., et al. (2017). Open Schooling Roadmap: A Guide for School Leaders and Innovative Teachers. Pallini: Publisher. Valli, L., Stefanski, A., & Jacobson, R. (2018). School-community partnership models: implications for leadership. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 21(1), 31-49. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge University Press.