Revealing the community within: valuing the role of local community structures within evidence-based school intervention programmes

Schools and the families they serve are sometimes perceived as deficient and in need of fixing. One response has been the implementation of evidence-based family intervention programmes, which may be highly regulated and prescriptive as a condition of their (often philanthropic) funding. This article seeks to explore and bring to the foreground the often hidden role of the pre-existing, informal community networks with a view to more authentic evaluation of these externally imposed programmes. The article draws on a range of qualitative data reflecting the lived experiences of participants—including parents and other community members—in a family and parenting programme at an English primary school. The analysis uses the work of Tönnies as a theoretical lens. It suggests that while there are tensions caused by the rigid requirements of external programmes, these are overcome in many cases by the highly effective, but often unacknowledged, contributions of the informal aspects of community. It is argued that these operate within and complement the formal programme. Far from subverting the more overt procedures, they actually enable it to function successfully, leading to additional, unanticipated transformations among participants. The article concludes that these organic, often invisible connections need to be identified, documented and nurtured if their full potential is to be recognised and realised when evaluating similar interventions

A validation of the questionnaire on teacher interaction in Italian secondary school students: Effect of positive relations on motivation and academic achievement

The Model for Interpersonal Teacher Behavior, mapping the various teachers\u2019 interpersonal behaviors, has been applied for research in many countries. In order to measure the students\u2019 perceptions regarding the interaction with their teachers, the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) has been developed. The QTI has been shown to be a valid and reliable instrument in all the different language versions in which it was adapted. Translated and validated in many countries, the QTI has not yet received a validation in Italy. The present study was conducted on a population of Italian secondary school students with the aim to examine the psychometric properties of the Italian translation of the QTI in its 64-item version. Results show that individual and class-mean reliabilities and the values related to the scales\u2019 ability to differentiate between classrooms are in line with those of the original research and of the other validation studies. Moreover, the circumplex nature of the octagonal model of the QTI is confirmed by the interscale correlations. Finally, results show that the more positive are the QTI dimensions of affiliation and control, the more positive are students\u2019 academic achievement and learning motivation