Pages: 6

This chapter introduces the readers to why community participation in school management matters. It starts with the background of geographical communities’ support for education and describes how school management literature has argued for the process of yielding educational outcomes at the school level. It also discusses how conflicts have occurred among school communities resulting from their community participation in school management. This chapter introduces statements of problems regarding community participation in school management. It navigates the readers to the research objectives, research questions, and significance of research from theoretical and practical perspectives and provides a deeper research context about Ghana.

Pages: 25

This chapter reviews the literature on school effectiveness studies, school improvement studies, and school-based management studies. First, it starts with the fundamental arguments between SES, educational outcomes, and school management. Second, by reviewing the school management literature, this chapter discussed the following topics: factors and actors in school management; participation, accountability, leadership, and social capital as underlying theories in school management. To reveal the process of school management to yield educational outcomes and how to manage conflicts among school communities, the chapter pays attention to the concept of RT, which is composed of the synchronies of mutual expectations and obligations among community members, guardians, headteachers, and teachers.

Pages: 16

This chapter introduces readers to the education system, the historical background of schooling, and the status of educational outcomes in terms of access, quality, and pupil discipline for the purpose to understand the educational context in Ghana. School communities pay special attention to the results of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), which determines pupils’ progression to senior high schools. School enrollment reflects the extent to which geographical and school communities can mobilize resources for school development. Pupil discipline has become an acute challenge owing to poor parenting, extended family system, and youth employment. The chapter describes indigenous geographical communities, cultural communities, and school communities in Ghana. The chapter pays special attention to the School Management Committees (SMCs), institutionalized school communities. This chapter also describes how teachers and headteachers are positioned and regarded in the education system and how local and educational administration support school management.

Pages: 15

Based on the literature review and identified research gaps, this chapter presents the conceptual framework of the study. The conceptual framework builds on school management literature that argues the relationship among SES, school management, and educational outcomes. School management comprises managerial and pedagogical factors and actors at both collective and individual participation. The chapter introduces the concept of RT, which analyzes synchronies of mutual expectations and obligations among school-level actors. This chapter asks the following research questions: (1) To what extent does community participation function in school management? (2) To what extent are community participation, SES, educational outcomes, and RT related? and (3) How is RT realized between actors and in factors of school management to generate educational outcomes? This chapter explain the research method including rationale using the mixed method to answer the research questions, data collection, and data analysis.

Pages: 53

This chapter reveals the findings that answer the research questions through both quantitative and qualitative research methods. First, this chapter analyzes the trends of educational outcomes in the Akatsi South District to understand an overall picture of the district. Second, the chapter presents findings from the quantitative research and discusses the implications of the findings. Findings showed that “Teacher-parent RT” is correlated with the Ghanaian Basic Education Certification Examination results and the extent of collective participation is related to school enrollment. Finally, the chapter explains the results of qualitative analysis of three case studies, which compare two schools with similar backgrounds but different levels in the following educational outcomes: BECE, school enrollment, and pupils’ discipline.

Pages: 18

This chapter summarizes the findings responding to each research question, discusses what this study can contribute to literature, the implications for policy and practice, the limitations, the suggestions for further study, and the concluding note. This study contributes to the literature in the following from both theoretical and practical perspectives in the following ways 1) how RT links factors and actors in school management to yield educational outcomes; 2) how RT occurs as the mutual accountability among school-level stakeholders; 3) how RT is perceived as an interplay among participation, leadership and accountability; 4) how RT can make pupils the subject of learning; and 5) how RT can bridge the relationship between the individual households and collectives of school communities.