Chapter 11: Creating And Fostering Effective School Partnerships: A Content Analysis

The chapters in this book describe an array of school partnerships, each with a unique purpose and participants. This chapter presents the results of a content analysis conducted across all the chapters to identify the elements that fostered and hindered their success and the important lessons learned.

The research questions addressed were:

1. What were the common elements/strategies that fostered school partnership success?

2. What were the common elements/strategies that hindered school partnership success?

3. What were the primary lessons learned about initiating, operating, and assessing school partnerships?

4. What additional research questions/issues about school partnerships need to be addressed?

In order to conduct the content analysis, the researchers examined each of the chapters through the lens of each research question. We then shared our findings to develop a response to each of the questions. In order to be included as a finding, a factor, or element, that is, hindrance, it had to be evident as a factor in partnership success or as a barrier to that success in at least half of the chapters. The results of our analysis across these partnership cases provide a foundation for others to apply these findings to their own engagement in partnership efforts. It also offers new possibilities for researchers to engage in future studies of school partnerships.