Towards co-operative working in alternative education
When I first sat down to write this article a few weeks ago, I was conscious of the ways in which my ‘voice’ might be situated amidst those of existing home educators and parents who have had no choice but to facilitate their children’s education at home. When a community resource emerges organically, as Learning in the Time of Corona has, there can sometimes be a disconnect between the intended purpose and the ways in which it might be populated in practice. I am acutely aware of the historical struggles that alternative educators have and continue to face in receiving mutual recognition and wider acceptance for the practice of enacting education differently, and sometimes without conventional schooling.
It feels important to say that I am writing this post from the vantage point of an educator and researcher who has been interested in forms of alternative education for a while now. I am passionate about a socially just, more equitable education system that is fit for purpose. Over the past 4 years, I have channelled much of this energy into helping to rebuild the confidence of students who entered higher education with dis-empowering experiences of school and learning. Just before lock-down, I started a new job and, and like others, have been wholly reliant on video calls and social media to maintain contact with the outside world. What follows, are some of the challenges, opportunities and experiences that have occupied my thought.
At this moment in time, there seems to be an emphasis on capturing and measuring the impact of learning at home. Ethical issues aside, I am concerned by the design of some of the scoping surveys that have cropped up on social media to evaluate ‘home-schooling’. Given the highly individualised nature of learning at home during the pandemic, the temptation to search for immediate truths and to reinstate quantifiable outcomes seems overly reductive. Measures of impact should be much broader and built into long-term co-produced cross community learning exchanges/partnerships. In my view, the process and means by which we research, talk about and reflect on education during and in the long-term aftermath of this pandemic should be as dynamic and wide ranging as possible.
Secondly, the absence of children and young people’s voices in wider discourse and policy making with respect to exam postponement and returning to school in England is discouraging. That is why movements like Pupil Power and No More Exclusions are inspiring and fill me with excitement and energy. It has been a pleasure and joy to participate in some of the lively discussions that have taken place in the Radical Education Forum online over the past few months and I would like to thank Phoenix Education for their supportive role.
Most importantly, I have been occupied with thinking about how we might further expand and extend our working across networks and organisations with shared principles to achieve some of the bold and ambitious ideas put forward for long term change. In these unique and ‘strange’ universes of our own (Max Hope, 2020), the greatest challenge is in building opportunities to connect and expand our practice between disparate networks and spaces within and around ‘alternative education’. Part of what makes this difficult is because alternative education means different things to different groups. If we unpick the element of ‘alternative to what’ and ‘alternative to whom?’, we might focus on place and space as markers of differentiation. For example, alternative provision and pupil referral units are still tied to relatively formal models of ‘schooled provision’, while an unschooling parent might see little in the way that connects to their family’s practice. Equally, if we think about alternative education as a field, or site of knowledge, diverse pedagogic approaches, experiences, and ideas collectively enrich the landscape.This diversity can, however, sometimes make consensus building challenging during face-to-face meetings, let alone online.
At this moment, perhaps we need to focus on the values that unite rather than separates a broad coalition of networks and communities. We might all be operating at different levels with different visions, interests and approaches, but there is more that unites rather than divides us. Phoenix and numerous others have already modelled this co-operative way of working. Individually and collectively, I hope that we can continue to expand and build on this to sustain and achieve meaningful change.
If anyone reading this blog is interested in sharing ideas, please feel free to contact me: amber.fensham-smith@open.ac.uk
