Schools as Nested Communities: Sergiovanni's Metaphor Extended

This article discusses Sergiovanni 's metaphor, school as community. By proposing this metaphor as an alternative to school as organization, Sergiovanni encourages educators to think in new and different ways about how schools work. However, he discards the notion of organization too quickly and depicts the phenomenon primarily as a unified, cohesive school culture. His metaphor fails to conceptualize the multifaceted nature of schools and to account for the social complexity and inevitable conflicts present within them. An extended metaphot; the concept of schools as nested communities, is proposed and illustrated with a case study conducted in a multiethnic urban high school.