The Heart of a Caring School

by Eric Schaps
Developmental Studies Center

This article appeared in Educational Leadership, Vol. 60, No. 6, p. 31–33, March 2003 published by ASCD

To download & print published article, please go to Educational Leadership’s web site.

Imagine that you are young again and that you are a transfer student entering your new school for the first time.

Picture the scene. What would be on your mind? Might you be wondering something like

Would you, like too many students, be wondering

or even,

“Will I be ripped off or beaten up?”

If these are the kinds of questions you would be asking, it’s because you have the same basic psychological needs that are shared by most human beings. We all have a basic need for close, supportive relationships, sometimes called “connectedness” to others (Resnick et al., 1997) or “belongingness” (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). We have a need for autonomy—for some influence or say over what happens to us, for some “voice and choice” as it is often termed. We need a sense of competence, a sense that we are capable and able to learn. And we have a very strong basic need for safety—emotional safety as well as physical safety.

Researchers Edward Deci and Richard Ryan have systematically documented the role that these basic needs play in shaping human motivation, and their implications for learning and development (Deci & Ryan, 1985). They have shown that we will work very hard indeed to meet our needs for—and to preserve our sense of—autonomy, belonging, and competence, as well as safety.

Moreover, we tend to become affectively attached—to bond—to the people and institutions that help us satisfy our needs (Watson, Battistich, & Solomon, 1997). This is why it is so important for schools to be caring, inclusive, participatory communities for their students. By effectively meeting students’ basic needs, a high-community school helps them to become increasingly committed to its norms, values, and goals. By enlisting students in maintaining that community, the school also gives them manifold opportunities to learn skills and dispositions that will benefit them throughout their lives.

A growing body of research confirms the benefits of building community in school. Students in high-community schools are more likely to be academically motivated (Solomon et al., 2000), to act ethically and altruistically (Schaps, Battistich, & Solomon, 1997), and to develop social and emotional competencies (Solomon et al., 2000). Students in high-community schools also report a lower incidence of problem behaviors, including, during the elementary years, alcohol and marijuana use and gang involvement (Battistich & Hom, 1997). During adolescence, they report lower incidence of violence; suicidal tendencies; emotional distress; use of alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco; and early sexual activity (Resnick et al., 1997). These benefits often are lasting. For example, the positive effects of certain community-building programs for elementary schools have been shown to persist through middle and senior high school (Hawkins, Catalano, Kosterman, Abbot, & Hill, 1999; Battistich, 2001).

The degree to which students experience community in school can be readily assessed via questionnaires that ask students how much they agree or disagree with such statements as:

My class is like a family.
Students in my class help each other learn.
I feel I can talk to the teachers in this school about things that are bothering me.
Students in my class can get a rule changed if they think it is unfair.

An annual survey of this sort can be made a regular part of assessing a school’s effectiveness. Results can be used to determine how well specific community-building efforts are working.

Unfortunately, schools with a strong sense of community are fairly rare. In fact, most schools wind up with mediocre mean scores when their students are surveyed in the above manner. Of further concern is that low-income students and students of color tend to score lower than affluent or Caucasian students. Many schools appear to be ill equipped to provide community for the students who may need it most (Battistich et al., 1995).

Community-building Approaches

On the brighter side, research suggests that schools can strengthen students’ sense of community using feasible, commonsense approaches (Osterman, 2000). These approaches fall into four general categories.

Perhaps most important is actively cultivating respectful, supportive relationships among and between students, teachers, and parents. Supportive relationships are the heart of community. They enable students from diverse backgrounds to bring their personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences into the classroom, and thereby to discover their common humanity. Supportive relationships help parents, especially those who otherwise would feel vulnerable or ill-at-ease, to take active roles in the school and in their children’s education.

Emphasizing common purposes and ideals is also important for creating community. High-community schools stress, along with the importance of academic achievement, the development of other qualities that are essential to good character and citizenship, such as fairness, concern for others, and personal responsibility. Doing so promotes shared understanding of the school’s goals, and shapes the norms that govern daily interaction.

Providing regular opportunities to help and collaborate with others is a third way to build community. With frequent opportunities for service and cooperation, and frequent opportunities to reflect on their interactions with others, students learn the skills of working with others, and develop wider, richer networks of relationships. Moreover, students experience the many satisfactions of contributing to the welfare of others.

Finally, community is strengthened by providing developmentally appropriate opportunities for autonomy and influence. Having a voice in establishing the agenda and climate for the classroom is intrinsically satisfying. It also helps to prepare students for the complexities of citizenship in a democracy.

Several leading program developers have focused on helping schools to build community in one or more of these ways. A few of the more prominent are James Comer and his School Development Program, Eunice Shriver and her Community of Caring program, the Northeast Foundation for Children and its Responsive Classroom program, and my Center’s program, called the Child Development Project or “CDP” for short.

CDP, for example, incorporates all four approaches through its focus on establishing the regular use of:

Class meetings — used to set norms and expectations, plan activities, and identify and solve problems. Class meetings are integral to building peer relationships and shared goals within the classroom. Beginning-of-the-year class meetings, for example, usually consist of a few “unity builders” in which students learn more about each others’ backgrounds and preferences, such as by bringing to school a favorite toy or memento, and discussing it with a partner who then presents it to the entire class. These activities are followed by meetings to establish goals for the year (e.g., “To make our room a safe place for everyone”), shared values (e.g., “To treat each other with respect”), or shared norms (“To make decisions by consensus whenever we can”).

A “buddies” program — that pairs whole classes of older and younger students to come together regularly 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. Buddy pairs first get acquainted by interviewing each other, by charting ways they are alike and different, or by sharing their classroom portfolios. Then during the year they may read or play math games together, visit museums or work for a cause, or create a “joint journal” of their activities. At year’s end, they show their appreciation for one another by exchanging gifts they have made or thank-you notes.

“Homeside” activities — conversational activities that students do at home with their parents or caregivers. These conversations, mostly interviews conducted by students with their parents, link school learning with home experiences and perspectives. An illustrative activity at fourth grade, when state history is commonly studied, asks 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 and link their “home” and “school” experience.

schoolwide community-building activities — innovative activities that link students, parents, and teachers, and build new school traditions. These activities promote helpfulness, inclusiveness, and responsibility throughout the school. They can be as undemanding as Family Film Nights, during which the entire family is invited to school simply to view a feature-length movie and perhaps discuss a question related to it within the family grouping. At the other end of the spectrum, the 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 for a week or two, and an evening event is organized so that parents and children can view them together.

Through these approaches, CDP seeks to help educators make significant changes in the norms, practices, routines, and policies that prevail in a typical school. In essence, CDP is a tool for changing the “hidden curriculum” and culture of a school in ways that promote all stakeholders’ experience of community.

Making Community a Priority

Our federal and state leaders are calling for schools to adopt “evidence-based programs.“ The evidence for building caring school communities is now quite clear and compelling, and our leaders need to wake up to its centrality. One promising development is some recent recognition accorded to community building by those in charge of the federal Safe and Drug Free Schools program. Let’s hope that others in the policy arena catch on soon, and that community building becomes—at a minimum—a strong complement to the prevailing focus on achievement.

Eric Schaps is president and founder of the Developmental Studies Center. A description of the Child Development Project and its community-building components can be found on this site.

References

Battistich, V. (2001, April). Effects of an elementary school intervention on students’ “connectedness” to school and social adjustment during middle school. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Seattle, WA.

Battistich, V., & Hom, A. (1997). The relationship between students’ sense of their community and their involvement in problem behaviors. American Journal of Public Health, 87, 1997–2001.

Battistich, V., Solomon, D., Kim, D., Watson, M., & Schaps, E. (1995). Schools as communities, poverty levels of student populations, and students’ attitudes, motives, and performance: A multilevel analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 32, 627–658.

Baumeister, R. & Leary, M. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum.

Hawkins, J. D., Catalano, R. F., Kosterman, R., Abbot, R. & Hill, K. G. (1999). Preventing adolescent health-risk behaviors by strengthening protection during childhood. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 153, 226–234.

Osterman, K. F. (2000). Students’ need for belonging in the school community. Review of Educational Research, 70, 323–367.

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.

Solomon, D., Battistich, V., Watson, M., Schaps, E., & Lewis, C. (2000). A six-district study of educational change: Direct and mediated effects of the Child Development Project. Social Psychology of Education, 4: 3–51.

Watson, M., Battistich, V., & Solomon, D. (1997). Enhancing students’ social and ethical development in schools: An intervention program and its effects. International Journal of Educational Research, 27, 571–586.