Week 4: Working with communities, families and stakeholders
| Site: | TeacherFutures |
| Course: | Creating Inclusive Schools |
| Book: | Week 4: Working with communities, families and stakeholders |
| Printed by: | Guest user |
| Date: | Tuesday, 28 July 2026, 1:45 AM |
1. Introduction to Week 4
It takes a village to raise a child
As an inclusive teacher, leader or volunteer, working to create an inclusive school you are not alone in your responsibilities. In your professional role you are part of teams, communities and partnerships, all working for the benefit of all children, but particularly those with special needs. Everyone can do something, and we can do more together.
Faced with the data of large numbers of children not accessing or fully participating in school, schools need to do all they can to work with others and welcome in community organisations and stakeholders.
Week 4 of this course will help you to think about examples of partnerships between schools and others including families and community organisations. These may be small or large, run by volunteers or fully funded. What these people share is a strong drive to make changes to benefit all children especially marginalised children .
It is often said that working together is better because it can achieve more, but how to start?
As you work through this week’s examples of partnerships with families and communities please think about your own context and your stakeholders. Perhaps you don’t see them every day or perhaps you know a school which is isolated and would benefit from a wider network of help. At the end of the week, you will be able to visualise a network in the form of a mind map showing who is connected with your school or organisation, or one that you know, and how this network can work together to create an inclusive school.
In total there are nine activities in this week, and the end of course assessment.
1.1. Activities for week 4
|
Activity number |
Title |
Details |
Time |
|
4.1 |
It takes a village to raise a child |
Design a mind map of influences on a child’s life with the child at the centre |
30 minutes |
|
4.2 |
Working with families |
Read a mini case study and take notes |
20 mins |
|
4.3 |
Consulting students |
Read a blog post in which girls were consulted about an initiative to support them |
20 mins |
|
4.4 |
School based partnerships Ebhotwe Primary School , South Africa |
Watch a video and make notes |
20 minutes |
|
4.5 |
Practical benefits to schools Humanity & Inclusion Sierra Leone Itinerant teachers |
Read two case studies about itinerant teachers and community rehabilitation and think about the benefits then share your views on the forum
|
30 minutes |
|
4.6 |
Can we do better? Survey |
Read key points from survey and answer prompts |
30 mins |
|
4.7 |
Mind map of stakeholders |
Apply this week’s learning to complete a stakeholder map with a photograph |
30 mins |
|
4.8 |
Supporting Change |
Case study from a school in Kenya that implemented change |
20 mins |
|
4.9 |
How inclusive is this course? |
Reflect on your experience of studying this course |
15 mins |
|
4.10 |
End of course assessment |
Write a blog post |
20 mins |
2. Creating community connections
In school, teachers meet many children and cannot possibly know everything about their lives. They might have an invisible difficulty or problems resulting from poverty. Not all disabilities are visible or physical. What we know about a child’s learning needs, their self-esteem, what they like and what they find difficult, will depend on who we ask, what data we have and where we observe the child.
By working in teams we can pool our different expertise, share information and come up with ideas. By working together and communicating regularly with parents, community leaders and charities, we are acknowledging that disabled children often face several connected barriers. It is well-known for example that disabled girls, for example, are more likely to be out of school than disabled boys. We start this week exploring different types of partnership teams.
|
Reflection Point Have you had experience of working with parents, the school management committee of community groups in your professional role? What did you gain from that interaction and why? |
2.1. Mapping community and stakeholder connections
|
Reflection Point What do you think about the proverb “It takes a village to raise a child?” Do you agree or disagree? Think how it could it be a positive story of elders sharing wisdom to socialise a child or harmful to a child’s development when old ideas and stigmas stop the child attending school. |
This week explores the idea of a village in a wide sense as community outside and inside the school. Think about how a community organisation might approach a school about girls not coming to school because of safety concerns. Or a group of schools might share a specialist teacher for deaf children and set up training for teachers.
Think about partnerships, communities and outside organisations in your context as you read Week 4. You will end the week by creating a stakeholder map relevant to your context. In this first activity you will think about different influences on a child’s development.
Activity 4.1 It takes a village….Allow approximately 30 minutes for this activity.
You will return to this mind map at the end of the week so please keep thinking about the idea of community connections and who your own stakeholders are. |
So far this discussion has helped show the need to be aware of positive and negative influences on a child’s life. Community organisations are often working on changing attitudes by sensitisation and information and building bridges. Schools and teachers may need family members or others to support children’s social and emotional development as well as helping them make academic progress. You will start by considering how schools work with families and students to become more inclusive.
2.2. Working with stakeholders - parents, carers and families
Just as every child is unique so is every family and their circumstances. Teachers may not know if “family” means a step-parent, grandparent or other relative or migrant worker as care giver but they may see the impact positive or negative on the child in their classroom.
We asked a focus group of global educators to contribute their experiences to this course. They said teachers have to be prepared that some parents might be positive and proactive in working together for their child’s needs, but others might have low expectations, negative attitudes or be in denial about what can be done. Whether positive or negative, educators believed it is important to attempt to reach all families and to give an individualised approach.
You might want to think about reasons why some families are hard to reach. For example, is it because they are too busy working or too ill due or too poor or too afraid to approach teachers?
A leader of a school may have to work hard and take time to build trust with some families. When the aim is to develop a real dialogue with a two-way flow of information and work together then there may need to be training for teachers to overcome stereotypes about a language minority or poor parents. It is important to make use of facts and data and to work beyond “a deficit mode” or negative view of a poor or stigmatised community. As part of this access to data can help to target specific groups including children who are missing from school.
Next please work through two activities about improving work with families and communities.
Activity 4.2 Working with familiesAllow approximately 20 minutes for this activity. Read this short case study of leadership of a primary school in Jamaica and then write in your notebook. The new headteacher is keen to welcome parents into the school to support children’s learning. He believes the school belongs to everyone in the community and that everyone should have a place and a voice. Since arriving in post, he has made several changes to increase family participation.
|
2.3. Working with stakeholders- outside agencies
In this section you are going to read an example of an outside organisation, an NGO, working with schools and communities. As you read, reflect on how working together can bring benefits. Think about how this joint work might succeed in improving lives and attitudes in very practical ways such as developing new teacher training or having more classroom resources.
|
Example: Itinerant teachers in Sierra Leone In Sierra Leone Abdul is a specialist inclusion teacher who travels to support children and teachers to create inclusive schools. Abdul enjoys this role: he doesn’t just work in one school he works in many. On a typical day his work is supporting teachers, another day working with learners and their parents. Most of the work is about adapting for mild learning disabilities such as attention and behaviour difficulties and children do not need a medical diagnosis to join the programme In one school he sits with a group of teachers to make classroom resources painting brightly coloured plastic bottles. In another school he observes an unqualified teacher in a classroom and makes suggestions so a child can be included. This is hands-on professional development inside the school and builds up resources, ideas and an inclusive culture. Abdul supports Aimee, 8, who has difficulty grasping a pen because of weakness on her left side and has fallen behind her peers with reading and writing. Twice a month he visits Aime in school and at home to see how she is progressing. Every month he meets the parents at community meetings and is pleased to see her confidence and enjoyment of school growing and the parents understanding how she is overcoming difficulties. The school and parents meet with Abdul to agree and adjust an individual education based on her own strengths and weaknesses. Some adjustments have been made to the school including bigger windows for light and accessible toilets. For another learner, he talks through who can help the child with homework. After some time, they find an uncle, teacher in another district who is happy to support. Right now, are five itinerant teachers like Abdul as a part of a pilot led by Humanity and Inclusion in Sierra Leone, funded by the UK aid Girls Education Challenge. CWD are more likely to repeat a year or not attend school. The itinerant teacher model began in Cambodia and has also been developed in Togo where some itinerant teachers offer specialist braille support and work with communities, parents and schools so that more children with disabilities can stay in school. |
Activity 4.5 Practical benefits to schools of outside organisationsAllow approximately 30 mins for this activity.
Please share your thoughts on these cases on Week 4 forum and comment on any other examples of schools working with outside organisations. |
2.4. Relationships, networks and social capital- can we do better in stakeholder relations?
You have seen examples of inclusive schools putting the child at the centre and building quality relationships between teachers, between learners and between the school and community. You have begun a mind map of interconnected influences on a child’s life and you will add to this at the end of the week. Relationships with stakeholders take time. Feeling that you belong to a village, a community or to a school can give a sense of strength and identity. Feeling that you don’t belong or are not welcome can make someone vulnerable and powerless.
One way of referring to links and connections in social relationships between groups is “social capital” an idea which comes from sociology. Strong social capital might be seen as for the common good but weak social capital means limited or trust or different expectations hindering partnership.
If there is strong ‘social capital’, there will be a wide range of mutually respectful and supportive relations with individuals and groups who can be called upon to support the child and/or family.
Children in danger of exclusion and their families have weak social capital because of poor attitudes from wider society and prejudice.
Thinking about the quality of partnerships is important. Just as it is not enough to bring a child with disabilities into a school and assume that is enough, so working with stakeholders needs to be developed and evaluated.
|
Reflection Point How can a school help increase the reserves of social capital for all their pupils? |
Activity 4.6 Can we do better ? Kenya survey on improving school-family-community relationshipsAllow approximately 30 minutes for this activity.
In one area of Kenya, a large survey of how primary schools practiced school- family community relationships found different examples of activities with some strengths and some areas of improvement (Nyatuka, B.O. (2017). They wanted to find out how to make the family and community relationships stronger. The activities they surveyed were:-
In area surveyed, two key areas recommended for improvement. They were: 1) Appreciating professionals for their contribution and 2) providing information. You might be surprised because these activities are relatively easy to do but rely on good communication. This links to the work you did in Week 3 on monitoring a school for inclusivity. Are there any questions linked to improving school-family-community-relationships that you would also want to ask if you were planning a similar survey? |
3. Understanding inclusive education stakeholders
Now you have reached the end of Week 4 you should have a good understanding of what it means to work with others outside your school. You should know that this will depend on your context, your leadership role and your social capital. You should know that different stakeholders can contribute different knowledge to support a child and to build an inclusive school and that data can strengthen your argument for the need for extra support.
The next activity is to develop a mind relevant to your context, which will serve as a practical tool as you continue to work with colleagues to create an inclusive school.
Activity 4.7 Mind map of stakeholdersAllow approximately 30 mins for this activity Use what you have learned about building links, teams and partnerships and return to your mind map from the start of the week. Now redesign this as stakeholder map for a school in your context. Add clear links. Add relevant data. Add three sentences suggesting changes you might make in working with stakeholders and how this could support inclusivity. |
3.1. Managing change
Creating an inclusive school which works effectively with the wider community and has classrooms that reflect learner-centred attitudes and values, requires change. Change will be slow, but small changes in practice, will challenge attitudes to learners and will eventually lead to a more inclusive school. Here, you will engage with an example which demonstrates how change can take place.
In Kenya, Government policy is that teaching should be more inclusive and more learner-centred, with a greater emphasis on teaching skills and values, alongside knowledge. As result, a new Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) has been developed.
The example below demonstrates how, overtime, small changes in practice can lead to significant improvements for learners. It took place before the CBC was implemented but was being talked about.
Activity 4.8: Supporting changeYou are advised to spend 20 mins on this activity Read the example below and write notes in response to these questions in your notebook.
|
|
Egerton Primary School Teachers at Egerton primary school in Kenya were introduced to the TESSA OER (www.tessafrica.net) in 2008, by academics from Egerton University. The TESSA OER help teachers to develop active approaches to learning and teaching, through the provision of classroom examples, which model learner-centred attitudes. Academics visited the school to support teachers in using the resources. Inspired by some of the classroom activities described in the resources, the teachers re-arranged their classrooms so that children sat at tables, in groups, rather than in rows. This meant they could discuss things in groups and pairs, more easily.
They also developed a resource centre where teachers were encouraged to store and share teaching resources they made from local materials.
As a result of more pair work and group work, teachers noticed that some of the children in Grade 4 could not read well-enough to access the subject-based curriculum. They therefore started a whole-school focus on literacy and harnessed the local community to help them build a school library. Parents act as volunteers, coming to be in the library and listening to children read; the local Church under took some fundraising activities so the school could print off stories from the AfricanStory Book website (www.africanstorybook.org) in the local languages and a local charity donated books in English obtained from abroad. A small change – sitting students so they could take part more easily in pair and group work – has led to a whole school project, specifically targeting literacy. This was because by providing opportunities for learners to talk about their work, they realised things about them that had previously gone unnoticed. Using TESSA OER did not solve the problem of low levels of achievement and a lack of teaching resources, but it put the school on to a different trajectory. It enabled them to identify a reason why achievement levels were low and inspired them to do something about it. It also highlighted specific tasks that the local community could become involved in, bringing them into school and building productive relationships. |
3.2. Optional reading
Dr Patriciah Wambugu, a Senior Lecturer at Egerton University was involved in evaluating professional development activities at Egerton. You might like to read the paper that she wrote about the experience.
Wambugu, P., Stutchbury, K., & Dickie, J. (2019). Challenges and Opportunities in the Implementation of School-Based Teacher Professional Development: A Case from Kenya. Journal of Learning for Development, 6(1), 76–82.