From streets to classrooms: Exploring urban slum children's identity development in Jakarta's nonformal education spaces

• In Event: Youth as Agents of Change: Cases from Nepal, Rural USA, Saint Lucia, and Dominican Republic

Proposal

A. Problem Statement & Background. Globally, rapidly growing urbanization has polarized city life, accompanying slumization represented by urban poverty and socio-spatial inequality. Currently, academic studies on education in urban slums are prevalent with a deficit view, perceiving urban slum children and urban slums as the embodiments of despair, deprivations, risk, malice, victimhood, and exclusion (Cameron, 2012; Hasanah et al., 2019; Kielland, 2015; McCarthy, 2004; Naik & Jogdand, 2013; Rahma et al., 2018; Wirutomo, 2016). In this context, existing studies that covered non-formal education (NFE) programs in urban slum contexts took a problem-solution approach, perceiving NFE programs as a panacea that addresses slum children’s hardships and correct their socially unacceptable behaviors. However, either deliberately or inadvertently, those studies contribute to typifying, consolidating, and perpetuating children’s marginalization and educational injustice in urban slums.

Yet, it is important to recognize that supportive mechanisms and protective factors are available in urban slums for children’s academic and socio-emotional learning and to explore how those physical and social resources positively impact children’s identities. According to scholars on geographies of education, children’s presence and role in urban spaces are crucial (Coll & Falsafi, 2010; Hammond, 2022; Somerville, 2007; Templeton, 2020). They argue that children physically, socially, and affectively interact with urban spaces, from which both children’s identities and urban space entities are constructed in reciprocity. This suggests the significance of exploring how children’s daily interactions and learning activities in urban slums (mainly NGO’s NFE centers and neighborhoods) are played out and impact their identity development, which is the objective of this study. Exploring children’s interactions and learning activities through an asset-based approach, both slum children’s agency and the supportive educational environment created by adult stakeholders can be illuminated.


B. Purpose of the study. This study aims to explore the geographies of education in urban slum NFE spaces regarding how children’s identities are constructed in Jakarta, Indonesia. The rationale behind the selection of Jakarta is that the focus on urban slum education in previous studies has been limited to several geographic contexts (i.e., Bangladesh, India, and Kenya) (Cameron, 2010; Mugisha, 2006; Oketch et al., 2010; Shah & Sen, 2008; Tsujita, 2009). Thus, this study attempts to add a new layer of understanding of children’s spatial-identity development by exploring Jakarta where almost half of its subdistricts contain slums (The Jakarta Post, 2019).

Recognizing that children’s interactions with other people and non-human objects contribute to children’s identity formation (Coll & Falsafi, 2010; Hammond, 2022; Somerville, 2007; Templeton, 2020), this study will focus on (1) interactions with key stakeholders (i.e., peers, teachers, parents, and local development specialists); and (2) interactions with objects (e.g., whiteboard, streets adjacent to the learning center) in and around urban slum NFE center. Drawing on a child’s spatial identity construction, this study will address the following research questions:

1. How does an NFE space contribute to the identity development of the children in the urban slums of Jakarta? How do they make sense of the space?
2. How do parents and NFE teachers interact with children and impact children’s identity development process?


C. Theoretical Framework. For systematic analysis, a framework is created by integrating and adapting the two concepts: (1) geographies of informal education (Mills & Kraftl, 2014); and (2) Raffo’s (2011) three-level approach that comprises macro, meso, and micro levels that examine space-specific educational identities of young people in disadvantaged urban environments. Converging the adapted Raffo’s approach with the concept of geographies of informal education, the new framework deems that in the spaces of meso and micro levels, children experience cognitive and socio-emotional development through their interactions with others and objects.
Through this framework, the analysis will take place in two stages. The first stage of analysis focuses on children's interactions with others and objects in meso and micro levels of spaces, looking at what actions (doing), cognitive aspects (thinking), and socio-emotional aspects (feeling) appear in the interactions. In this way, the aspects that embody the geographies of education can be understood (related to research question 2). The second stage of analysis focuses on how these aspects are linked to slum children's identity development – "individualistic self-actualization" (e.g., self-agency, goals) and/or "horizontal relationship" (e.g., sense of belonging) (relate to research question 1).


D. Methodology. To center children’s perspectives, this study adopts photovoice, a participatory photo-elicitation methodology that reveals the world from the participants’ ways of seeing (Clark, 2005; Shah, 2015). Photovoice is implemented with children aged between 11-16 at an NGO’s learning center. It is expected that photos that children take in/around the learning center will elicit children’s experiences and interactions that contribute to their identity development in Jakarta’s urban slum NFE space. Children’s participation in the photovoice will also empower them by raising their voices that have often been silenced. Additionally, the study employs semi-structured interviews with the adults (i.e., parents, NFE teachers, and local development specialists at international development agencies), who closely interact with children and/or support children’s education condition. The adults’ narratives will reflect supportive mechanisms in urban slum spaces for children’s academic and socio-emotional support.


E. Significance. The results of this study will advance the understanding of how NFE spaces construct slum children’s identities. The conceptual framework is an original contribution of this study that leads to research findings through a systematic analysis with a specific focus on children’s interactions with people and objects. Hence, the new framework is an important contribution to the field of education in terms of progressing the concept of the spatiality of education, and other researchers can adopt and further develop this approach. Moreover, by approaching this issue from an asset-based lens, this study contributes to rectifying the currently dominant deficit discourse by shifting the tide in the urban slum education condition from despair to hope. This aligns with the theme of CIES 2024 in terms of facing injustice and challenging the status quo for pursuing a more just and inclusive education discourse. On a practical level, this research showcasing children's lived experiences will help practitioners develop curricula and pedagogy that are relevant to children's lives.

Author

• InJung Cho, The George Washington University