BlackWashing: A QuantCrit Analysis of How Black Home Education is (Mis)Represented in Quantitative Homeschooling Literature

• In Event: Looking Back and Moving Forward: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Today’s Black Home Education Movement

Abstract

There is a scarcity of quantitative studies on Black Home Education (BHE) within academic scholarship. The absence of thoughtful quantitative analyses on BHE limits the access policy makers and legislators have to an important demographic within the Black community. Quantitative research is often used by policymakers because of its ability to portray broad trends related to a particular sub-group. Recent qualitative literature has challenged this myth and suggests that sub-racial analyses of home educators could help provide meaningful information about the needs of Black families who have chosen to exit traditional schools. BHE research is an example of how qualitative and quantitative literature can work in tandem to amplify the experiences and needs of groups historically pushed to the margins of research.
BlackWashing as a term is commonly used in the American slang construction to denote the intentional changing of a character in film or television or from a book to a non-white character. It is the opposite of whitewashing– the use of a white actor to portray a non-white character (Ware, 2021). Our use of the term is a repurposing of the term. Where we take an intentional analysis of the scholarship we examine while asking questions about the lack of inclusion of Blackness or recognition of Black participants in studies on homeschooling. In this presentation we posit that whitewashing is at work, and we intentionally take a black gaze to scholarship that is often whitewashed. We hope that through this discursive move, we will set the stage to work toward a quantitative scholarship that centers on the experiences and outcomes of black home educators.
The purpose of this systematic literature review is to learn how the experiences of Black home educators are explored in the broader body of quantitative research focused on homeschooling. Specifically, we ask: 1) What methodological choices are aiding in the (mis)representation of Blackness in home education? 2) How is race theorized throughout the literature? 3) How do the logics of quantitative research on homeschooling compare to the logics of the qualitative literature focused on Black home education?
Through this review, we hope to provide guidance for future quantitative work on Black home educators by examining the current literature through a QuantCrit lens (Garcia, Lopez & Velez, 2018). We only know of one quantitative study focused exclusively on Black homeschooling (Ray, 2015). Most studies of Black home educators have taken qualitative approaches (Fields-Smith & Williams, 2009; Mazama & Lundy, 2015; Puga, 2019; Stewart, 2020;). Our preliminary findings reveal that the unique experiences of Black home educators are obscured in the majority of quantitative studies focusing on homeschooling. This obfuscating of Black home education is mediated through a host of methodological choices that lead to a centering of White experiences, essentialized or colorblind narratives of race that lurk within the framing of the studies as theoretical underpinnings, and a focus on outcomes that often don’t reflect the values and goals qualitative literature suggests are most salient to Black families who educate their children at home.

Authors

• Carla P. Wellborn-Watts, Vanderbilt University

• Timberly L. Baker, Arkansas State University