There is a substantial literature in Europe, North America and elsewhere which is concerned with one or more aspects of the relationships between schools and communities in areas experiencing social and economic disadvantage. Such literature focuses on topics such as school involvement in area regeneration, full service schools, or community governance of schools. In doing so, it draws on explicit or implicit conceptualisations of the characteristics of disadvantaged communities, the possible and desirable roles of schools, and the nature of relationships between schools and communities. This paper therefore reports the findings of a wide-ranging review of this literature which seeks to answer the question: ‘How have school-community relations in disadvantaged areas been conceptualised by researchers internationally?’

The review seeks to bring order to a complex field by mapping the research literature in terms of the different conceptualisations on which it is based. In doing so, it adopts a knowledge production perspective on how researchers understand the (social) world (Gibbons et al., 1994; Hessels & van Lente, 2008). This perspective sees the process of research as socially, culturally and historically located, so that the knowledge it produces is shaped by who produces it, when and where. A review of research within this perspective, therefore, is less interested in assessing the state of a supposedly cumulative and ‘objective’ evidence base (as is the case, for instance, in systematic reviews) than in making sense of the diversity of research knowledge and understanding how that diversity derives from the conditions of its production. By mapping the field in this way, it becomes possible to uncover how the conceptualisations of school-community relations in the literature limit or enhance the ways in which the role of schools in relation to disadvantaged communities can be understood, and therefore the possibilities for action that are opened up in policy and practice.

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