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

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Papers in this session provide historical and contemporary perspectives on today’s Black home education movement. Currently, Black families represent the fastest increasing group in home education. Home education affords parents the greatest autonomy in their children’s learning. For Black parents, home education provides the freedom to create learning spaces/opportunities that align with their children’s interests/needs while also buffering the harm from racism experienced within and outside of schools. Authors in this session employ theoretical constructs of m/otherwork, womanist theory, self-determination, African American resistance, and QuantCrit. Combined, the papers in this session augment understanding of the ways Black families have and continue to resist the oppressive and destructive impact of racism in the education of Black children.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Research Focus on Black Education

Chair

• Martez D. Files, University of Pittsburgh

Papers

• (Re)turning to Our Homeplace: Home Education as a Praxis of Black M/otherwork - Amber Neal-Stanley, Purdue University; Renee Serrell Gibert, Purdue University

• Learning and Liberation: Black Home Education as a Social Movement - Ashley Gwathney, Rutgers University - Newark; Charity Anderson

• "Power to the Providers”: Black Home-Based Child Care Providers Are Educational Powerhouses - Cheryl A. Fields-Smith, University of Georgia

• “This Is How We Raise Free People”: Conceptualizing Black Unschooling as Modern-Day Marronage - Courtney A Douglass, University of Maryland

• BlackWashing: A QuantCrit Analysis of How Black Home Education is (Mis)Represented in Quantitative Homeschooling Literature - Carla P. Wellborn-Watts, Vanderbilt University; Timberly L. Baker, Arkansas State University

Discussant

• T. Elon Dancy, University of Pittsburgh