Network
NW 14 Communities, Families, and Schooling in Educational Research
Title
Knowing and Acting: School-community Relationships and Educational Research in a Time of Polycrisis
Abstract
Respecting the conference theme, “Knowing and Acting: The changing conditions and potentials of education research”, ECER/EERA Network 14 invites contributions exploring how educational research can strengthen and reimagine the school-community relationships in a time of polycrisis. For example: How does global crisis (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic, climate catastrophe, and the war in Europe) manifest in school-community contexts? What role do parents, community leaders and youth play in shaping local educational responses to crisis? What forms of school-community collaboration foster mutual care in terms of instability? How can schools serve as hubs for community engagement in a time of polycrisis?
The Call
This call unites the key concepts of ECER/EERA Network 14’s research mission: communities, families, schooling and place. It invites contributions on school-community relationships in all locations, exploring how these relationships are examined from our current challenges due to global crisis (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic, climate catastrophe, and the war in Europe).
Network 14 welcomes contributions on (1) how cooperation or partnerships between schools and/or other organisations can be designed to mitigate locally the global uncertainty and instability and (2) how polycrisis affects school-community relationships.
More specifically, contributions may investigate how global crisis manifests within school-community contexts or how local actors (parents, community leaders, youth, teachers, educators) respond to the uncertainty and instability. Others may explore the role of families, community organisations, and youth in co-producing educational initiatives mitigating the effects of this crisis. Contributions could present models of school-community collaboration that foster resilience and/or examine the potential of schools to act as hubs for community engagement amid global crisis. Proposals should provide a clear insight of the complexity of the local context and the ways in which the global crisis is assessed in that context.
This call continues the long-standing Network 14’s examination of the theme of socio-educational development in wider contexts beyond the rural to the regional, remote, urban, local, and even virtual places.
Contributions might build on existing work exploring societal resilience in a time of polycrisis as elaborated by Cataldo et al. (2025), including school resilience (Madalińska-Michalak & Flores, 2025), or co-produced educational responses in these circumstances, e.g. Schwartz et al. (2024) or Verschueren (2025).
It is expected that the contributions submitted as part of this call will be wide-ranging, representing a range of interrogations and reflecting the changing conditions and potentials of educational research, which might address:
- How does global crisis (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic, climate catastrophe, and the war in Europe) manifest in school-community contexts?
- How can community engagement in education be redefined in a time of polycrisis?
- How might collaborative relationships between families and schools respond to uncertainty or instability?
- What role do parents, community leaders and youth play in shaping local educational responses to crisis?
- What forms of school-community collaboration foster mutual care in a time of instability?
- How can schools serve as hubs for community engagement in a time of polycrisis?
Contact Person(s)
Laurence Lasselle, University of St Andrews, UK, ECER/EERA Network 14 link convenor
laurence.lasselle(at)st-andrews.ac.uk,
References
Cataldo, F., Redecker, C., Montanari, E. , Galariotis, I., Greidanus H., et al., Rethinking societal resilience in a time of polycrisis, European Commission, Ispra, 2025, JRC142772. https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC142772
Madalińska-Michalak, J., Flores, M.A. (2025). Teacher and school resilience: Lessons learned and future directions. In: Madalińska-Michalak, J., Assuncao Flores, M. (eds) Teacher and school resilience in an era of uncertainty. Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-93961-7_13
Schwartz, K. T. G., Shippen, N. A., Lejeune, J. A., Zolli, N., Massey, C. S., Chronis-Tuscano, A., & Meinzer, M. C. (2024). A qualitative exploration of research-school partnerships during COVID: How to better serve our community partners during times of crisis. Evidence-Based Practice in Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/23794925.2024.2330393
Verschueren, C. (2025). Local pathways to sustainability education policies: A Comparative case study of three large school districts in the USA. Journal of Education Policy, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2025.2537172