A Journal Article by Cheryl Fields-Smith and Timberly L. Baker – Summary and Comments
Background
Fields-Smith and Baker (2023) identify a significant gap in the existing literature by focusing on the intersectionality of home education, Black families, and rural communities. The authors point out that there have been a few studies that have focused on Black home-educating families, but these tend to be focused on families from urban areas. However, this is not congruent with demographic data which the authors present showing that most Black home educating families live in rural areas.
A unique aspect of this study is that the authors did not define “rural” to the study participants before soliciting qualitative data to answer the research questions. Rather, the researchers let the participants provide their own definitions of rurality, and these descriptions provided emerging themes that formed a key aspect of the study’s findings.
Methodology
This research was a qualitative pilot study intended as an initial foray into this subset of home educators who are Black and who live in self-described rural communities. The researchers use a “community nominating process” whereby potential participants were referred to the study by other community members. In the end, twelve participants were selected, all of whom were home educating mothers. The participants represented eight states, and all of the participants had college degrees with a majority having advanced degrees (four with Master’s degrees, one with a law degree, and five with PhDs).
Participants were interviewed via video teleconferencing (due to Covid restrictions), with interviews lasting 60-90 minutes, yielding verbatim transcripts averaging 55 pages in length. Initial interviews were supplemented with “Sister Circles,” which the researchers described as “a culturally responsive method of engaging in focus groups” while acknowledging that this is a concept that originated in counseling and health profession but has been more recently applied to education research.
The research questions of this study were as follows:
1. How do rural, Black mothers define and know they live in rural spaces?
2. How do rural, Black mothers discuss the role of race in their homeschool decisionmaking, homeschool practice, or everyday living?
Findings
Findings on the first research question were notable as participants tended to describe what was not present or available as a defining feature of their home education context. Not being near readily identifiable places such as large cities, but also not having access to large city advantages such as larger home educating communities, especially those that might be geared towards their family’s ethnic culture. However, not having some advantages at hand was juxtaposed with having opportunities afforded by owning land or participating in agriculture or animal husbandry activities.
Findings on the second research question seemed to be an enhancement of the geographic isolation already described from the first. A number of participants highlighted that they found themselves as the only Black family present or participating in some of the opportunities in the context of their choice to home educate in a rural setting. In larger populations there is more opportunity to divide and subdivide the home educating population by specific criteria (religious, ethnic, etc.), but in the rural communities there are fewer subdivided groups of home educators. Some participants indicated using social media-based communities to help provide a connection to home education for their children that also connected them to other Black families.
Participants described the relevance of ethnicity to their home educating experience in the rural context. Because Black families are not proportionally represented in their rural communities as a whole, this underrepresentation was even more pronounced home educating communities. Therefore, in response to the research study questions, ethnicity emerged as a defining characteristic of these families’ participation in local home education communities.
Finally, the representation of Black families in these rural communities also impacted the lived experiences of the participants. This seemed to motivate these participants to ensure their home education efforts included intentionally developing the cultural identities of their children. As an example, some participants mentioned tailoring history instruction to make sure key aspects of these family’s ancestry was adequately and accurately presented.
Conclusion and Discussion
This study was an exploratory qualitative study into the perspectives of Black home educating mothers’ lived experiences in the context of a self-described rural geographic setting. The authors note both the benefits of such a setting contrasted with the challenges of isolation being manifested in varying realms. They concluded, “this initial study of rural Black homeschooling disrupts the idea that homeschooling is a white and urban/suburban only phenomenon, and contributes to counter narratives demonstrating that Black families everywhere care about, and invest deeply in their children’s education.” Finally, the authors note the need for large-scale research for this population of home educators while acknowledging the challenges of accessing data in the ever-changing educational landscape.
References
Fields-Smith, C. & Baker, T. (2023). Centering the lived experiences of rural black homeschool families. Thresholds in Education 46(3), 399-419.