Record: Christine Brabant and Sylvian Bourdon, “Le Changement en Éducation et la Gouvernance réflexive. Expérimentation d’un Modèle d’Appropriation du Changement pare des Groupes de Parents-Éducateurs au Quèbec” in Education et Francophonie XL: 1 (Printemps 2012): 32-55.
Summary and Appraisal: This week’s post is written by guest reviewer Helen Lees of York St. John University in the United Kingdom:
Well, thank goodness for Christine Brabant! Seemingly lucky home educators in Quebec, Canada got to spend time supported and facilitated by her research project in self-determining the forms of institutional governance relevant to their practices, as an iterative and open, confidence boosting process.
As most home educators are aware, dealing with authorities around home education practices and their “governance” can be a site of tensions. These tensions are formed of incommensurable and differing viewpoints of what education both is and should be as well as a rich mix of basic miscomprehensions and ignorance from both sides. Often however home educators come off worse from any battle because of such deficiencies, because they are the marginalised and thus vulnerable group subject to the extensive power of the state. By virtue of their unusual educational choices which do not fit a norm, they are viewed with suspicion in this (Foucauldian) age of surveillance, discipline and punishment. Home educators too often find themselves emotional, without voice or power to influence decisions and frustrated by a lack of institutional sympathy for their chosen pathways.
Brabant tracked the processes, in conglomerated groups of home educators she observed, for changes in dynamics around solidarity and collective acting towards political action. What she suggests is that the participants of these groups became more flexible and inter-dialogic, more sensitive to each other and more open to motivated, confident action and leadership to address problems with their place as home educators vis-a-vis governmental structures and procedures, because of the framework of deliberations her research afforded. This happened largely because the parents – mostly mothers – were facilitated to meet (offered childcare for instance) and given a structure of the meetings that also included the researcher in the group as a semi-involved participant but perhaps also as a reminder for polite, organised interactions. Having such an organised set up seems to have reflected back on the way the groups evolved as organised for political efficacy. They were helped to come together strongly by the research itself to develop and deepen from a situation of semi-organisation in their localities, which perhaps was previously without deep levels of understanding about how to act together for impact in and on governance structures.
The process of transformation of the group identity as working as a team for common aims was noticed to be significantly stimulated by triggers of the unknown in the form of new information or matters to accommodate amongst themselves such as a conflict. In other words, getting together to rub along together had the effect of making the group an organisation.
Perhaps one of the most interesting findings from the research conducted is that transformation into a collective requires time. Although this might seem intuitively necessary and commonsensical it is also important to note in the home education context for it acts in line with much about home education that is so badly understood: results are not on demand and cannot be rushed; although surely given sufficient time, space and the right material conditions success emerges. The democratic underpinnings informing much about the freedoms of home education life and practices require deliberative space. This also applies where and when home educators need to talk with authorities and this research shows that authorities are required to take such slowness into account if they are to get to talk to politically informed and formed representatives of home educators in the region who genuinely reflect more than their own individual voice.
It also appears that this process of group evolution allows some insecurities about their home educating position in regard to the state and its power to diminish such that confidence and openness becomes more the attitude which prevails. This is a major achievement given some of the difficult feelings some home educators can have towards authority and its uncanny ability to continue to be unsympathetic to their educational choices despite often clear state guidelines outlining best practices for interactions. The group participants were enabled in coming together in a rationally enhanced manner, leaving behind ideology and fear.
The strength of this paper is in showing how a deliberative structure for home educators – who often self-assess as unique family units with little commonalities between units – can be formed such that connections can be made to strengthen individual power by becoming a sum of parts. The difficulty, however, is that the facilitation of this structure in the case of this research activity required material funding to support the parent members of the groups to attend the meetings: two groups were tracked and observed in full and a 3rd in a less involved way due to a lack of funding. The role of the researcher in the research project – which lasted 20 months from start to finish – as an attendee of the meetings is also to be questioned for its necessity. Did this half-way person (friendly and not foe but not “included” as a home educator proper) offer a calming presence and also an sense of being watched, thereby bringing into the data a balancing element as well as a force working upon the participants of the groups to “do well” at co-operating?
The weakness of this paper and one that makes it hard to read (although I must admit that my French is not perfect at all and so I was required to concentrate a lot) is that there are no real life stories. There are no direct examples of the experienced problems discussed in these groups and surprisingly nor of the “tensions” mentioned that the groups were setting out to address. Despite eventual mention that the purpose of coming together was the production of governance proposals for the local authorities this is only stressed late on in the text and at no point do we hear the voices of the group members. This would have been a valuable element and is, to my mind, an opportunity lost for the kinds of problems the process of the groups were addressing to be known. Thus the paper was a rather academically dry experience, written at a fairly abstract level; albeit generalizable. The article was for me too long-winded on the set up of the project and disappointingly short on actual comments from the data itself compared to the text spent on lengthy explanation of the methodological details which I sense could have been written in a more condensed manner.
Nevertheless the fascinating aspects of this work are its commonality with so much other “actor” action for political ends to benefit home education status. Uniquely however it shows that home educators can collect to act for broad and community aims given the right circumstances and volition in the context of an organised and regular commitment to do so for the sake of being collected. This is shown as similar to experiences elsewhere such as those documented by Stevens (2003)or Safran (2008) but offers an opportunity to see clearly that deliberate collectivism is a much needed gap in the home education arsenal against the ignorance and prejudices of authorities. As an example of how this can be best achieved in democratic fashion the paper – using stages of democratic actor evolution from theory of Marc Maesschalck – outlines the talent of home educators to prepare to defend or present themselves in a dialogic and open manner, whatever may be said or done.
Helen E Lees
Milton Gaither, Messiah College, author of Homeschool: An American History
References
Safran, L. (2008). PhD thesis: Exploring Identity Change and Communities of Practice among Long Term Home Educating Parents. The Open University, Milton Keynes.
Stevens, M. (2003). Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press.