Introduction: The year 2015 marks the fourth year of a drought in California. With no signs of the drought improving, communities in California are left to prioritize their water usage. In the Central Valley, the limited water supply has forced farmers to prioritize on acreage and planting, decisions that trickle down and may impact farmworker…

Community development and adult learning have long shared a common agenda--and often a common fate. People in both sectors are concerned with supporting people to develop their skills and knowledge, and to put them to use in the world around them. They often share a belief in social justice and democratic process as guiding principles for their…

The state of Oregon's (USA) land use planning framework has long been characterized by tensions between state and local authority, between traditionally-defined "urban" and "rural" concerns, and between the competing interests of various landowners. An examination of Wallowa County, Oregon's implementation of House Bill 3326, a…

Environmental educators are challenged to document behavior changes, because change rarely depends solely on outcomes of education programs, but on many factors. An analysis of 15 communities in the United States that have increased their preparedness for wildfire allowed us to explore how education programs encouraged individual and community…

The most pressing social problems facing humanity in the 21st century are what systems theorist Russell Ackoff referred to as "messes"--complex dynamic systems of problems that interact and reinforce each other over time. In this article, the authors argue that the lack of progress in managing messes is in part due to the predominance of…

This article describes a ten-year effort led by youth, community organizers, and a range of partners that resulted in two new, successful high schools and showed the power of grassroots mobilization for social justice. Since opening in 2009 and 2010 respectively, Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez High School for College and Career Preparation and…

Within the last half century, several communities in Boki Land have engaged in violent conflicts as a result of disputes over portions of land that have claimed many lives, and left many more injured. The Boki people, like most rural African peoples, depend largely on the land for their livelihood and economic development. Thus, any encroachment…

This article examines discourse in a community change project committed to undoing "business as usual"--attempts to "fix" problems within the community without involvement of residents in the process. We show how, despite commitments to recognizing community "voice," participants' orientation to powerful "centering institutions" (Jan Blommaert…

Community problem solving is believed to help coalitions achieve community changes and subsequent population-level reductions in targeted community health problems. This study empirically examined a community problem solving model used by CADCA, a national coalition training organization, to determine if the model explains how coalitions become…

The role of community in child and adolescent development is emerging as a significant area of theoretical inquiry, research, and application. This article describes the development and utilization of a comprehensive community change effort designed to increase the attention of all community members toward strengthening core developmental…

Background: Currently, there is great enthusiasm surrounding place-based initiatives for school reform, such as the Harlem Children's Zone, Promise Neighborhoods, and other initiatives that attend to the multiple contexts that influence child development. However, past efforts to bridge schools, families, and communities have been undermined by…

This article examines a racial awareness activity conducted as part of a community-wide change initiative at which we found that the majority of racial identity events occurred in schools. Given the prevalence of schools in participant narratives, we argue that schooling is a societal marker, or what we will call a touchstone, of racial identity…

Although service learning was established as a method for combining relevant student learning opportunities with community engagement, recent critiques highlight the shift from achieving community-defined goals towards a predominate focus on assessing student learning. Focusing on a community's decision-making process regarding a homeless shelter,…

Seymour Sarason passed away on January 10, 2010 at the age of 91. He was the author of more than 40 books, including The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change (1971), The Creation of Settings and the Future Societies (1972), and The Psychological Sense of Community: Prospects for a Community Psychology (1974). His groundbreaking ideas…

In this article, Michael McAfee and Mauricio Torre reflect on the successes and challenges of the Promise Neighborhoods movement as it works toward education equity, and on what it takes to effect large-scale, sustainable change for low-income communities and communities of color. Together they discuss the Chula Vista Promise Neighborhood project…