This study is designed to explore the roles of a school as a community hub, and to bring more understandings for local communities to accept and relate it as a place to promote community cohesion. It focuses on the extent that local communities have to give more respect to the relationship between their own nature and the community facilities available. Lessons can be learned from this and so is its contribution to the body of knowledge and to the practice in practical.
After all themes or categories to develop the conceptual framework process were finalised from the interviews (see Chapters 6 and 7), the researcher seeks a series of expert interviews on the final idea to identify a list of factors which become the gaps occurring from the case studies. Accordingly, the gaps will be revealed from the case studies findings when on some issues, the expert opinions may show some opportunities, weaknesses and contradicting statements with the finalised findings (Bryant, 2009). In particular, by getting expert opinions, insights to finalise evidence on community strategies need to be further clarified and refined in finalising the development of the new conceptual framework in this chapter. Hence, expert opinion is a way of clarifying the validity of the conceptual framework that has been developed and explained in the previous chapter (Auerbach and Silverstein, 2003).
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By using the same research protocol developed (see Chapter 4), ten expert interviews were carried out to identify and obtaining further expert views on key strategies or significant adding factors needed for the framework in this study. Four respondents are from people who have closed connections with local community schools in England setting, whilst another four respondents are people who have created and organised community joint programmes with national schools in Malaysia setting. These respondents who backgrounds are highly knowledgeable about school developments with its social objectives, local community‘s activities, stakeholder organisations and general school management. Another two respondents are representatives from each local authority in both case studies respectively.
8.1.1. Scope of Interviews
The scope of the interviews is similar to what was done earlier for both case studies in this research. Only this time, the questions were from the research problems subsequently derived from the anticipated questions that have been used and explained in both case studies.
The scope of the interviews has a controlled aspect of the local communities‘ experience and after their long observation on living together in the same neighbourhood with their local schools. The data from the interviews were analysed with open coding process and then axial coding to select the attributes or categories as findings to fill in the gaps in developing the emergent cores or themes in enhancing the second version of the conceptual framework in this study (Gorra and Kornilaki, 2010).
The researcher took notes relating to important points and impressions from the interviewees, only when they emphasised on the community‘s relationship, their experience with school services in term of community cohesion and their knowledge of school as a community hub. Appendix H shows the sample of notes taken during the interview sessions in Case Study 2.
8.1.2. Rich Picture Diagram- Analysis of the Expert Interviews
The importance of identifying the right key strategies to seek the extended roles of schools as a community hub was highlighted by the respondents. This helped to further explore and identify the opportunities and contributions of the new conceptual framework. As most common schools are currently located in the people‘s neighbourhood and become the heart of the locality, people who had experience engaging with the school and the community could be appropriate respondents in the phenomena being investigated.
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Emerging from the interview findings, the identification of respondents involved in the school and community relationship for the role as a community hub that is sought would come from the same selected groups from each of the case studies. Although each of them is within the same locality as the other respondents, these selected groups are distinct.
Conceptually there are a great number of positive social effects that a school can have on its wider community, namely parents and school relationships. Unlike community cohesion, the effects of using schools as a community hub facility is not clear enough among local community members (as discussed in Chapter 5). It has been suggested by some that schools, by location and purpose, are in a prime position to contribute to cohesion, and this research investigates the extent to which this is true in the context of promoting community cohesion beyond its normal scope and boundaries. Thus this research examines and understands local peoples' perceptions with both traditional and contemporary roles of schools as their community hub in terms of exploring its impact on promoting cohesion.
The first group represents the school sector that is currently the school facilities operations and holds the ownership of the assets. The second group represents the whole communities, as the council members are chosen by the community to take care of their interests and better knowledge of what the community needs. This chapter will only try to focus on decision making/top management level in order to gain an insight or understanding until the new framework will be developed.
As a result of the expert interview findings, the researcher found that it is important to show the gap situation of the analysis with rich picture diagram based on the cross literature review findings, as compared to the local communities‘ requirements to engage and participate in fulfilling the role of school as a community hub. Later, those requirements could be matched in order to seek the enablers for a new conceptual framework for applications in the guidance of the school‘s roles as a community hub.
Accordingly, Figure 8.1 is a rich picture diagram that needs to understand the outcome of the last area of the investigation for the new conceptual framework which could then be developed. It was believed that the environment of good school facilities influences the perception of people who wants to be cohesive. This research study learned from the data that immediate physical surroundings shape the characters and behaviour of the communities. The management work of school facilities therefore becomes as important as
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what has been taught inside them, and the challenge for community based facility planners becomes finding the design solution best suited to enhancing people‘s relationship within a diverse group of communities (Zainal et al., 2010).
Community Groups
and leaders Local business
Faith communities Professionals Media
interaction in te ra c ti o n interaction in te ra c ti o n Character and Behaviour of Local Communities School Facilities To Exist As A Community Hub Promoting Community Cohesion
School creates positive environment
Figure 8.1: The Rich Picture Diagram shows the Good Environment of Schools Facilities Influences Community‘s Perception on Promoting Community Cohesion