Communities of Practice and Home Education (HE) Support Groups
Leslie Barson
The Open University
Paper presented to the BERA Conference
Manchester, England
16 – 18 September 2004
Contact:
0208 969 0893
lesliebarson@yahoo.com
1
Communities of Practice and Home Education (HE) Support Groups
Abstract:
A common practice of families who start home educating is to turn to a home education
support group for support, resources and guidance. The purpose of this paper is to examine
how far the community of practice framework applies to the home education support group.
The examination will be based on evidence from home educating parents collected through
fifty questionnaires, followed by nineteen in-depth interviews and follow up interviews.
Home education is a growing phenomenon in the last 30 years particularly in the United
States, Australasia and Britain. I will describe the main characteristics of home education and
my place within the movement which led me to this research.
An overview of the community of practice framework will be presented. It will be argued that
this framework can help explain the dynamics within the home education movement as well
as social aspects of learning (Wenger, 1998). This includes learning to be a home educator
through the practice of home education and participation with other home educators. Using
the main structures of the community of practice framework, joint enterprise, mutual
engagement and shared repertoire, the home education support group will be examined. The
social learning required with regard to the trajectory into the home education community,
becoming a ‘home educator’, maturing in the community and the parent’s trajectory out of the
community will be explored.
The home education support group can take many forms from a loose informal one-off
meeting to a more formal regular activity based in a particular venue. It may even take the
form of an internet chat room, a newsletter, or informal contact by phone. I will be focusing on
four different types of support group that have emerged from my research; a co-op, a theatre
group, phone support and an informal social group. Examples from each of these will be
presented and examined to show the various forms support groups take and how they
conform to the structure of a community of practice. Questions about the power relations
within these communities of practice, often neglected in the literature, will also be addressed
(Paechter 2003a, 2003b).
The main finding emerging from the research is that home education constitutes a
constellation of communities of practice as defined by Wenger. While the groups may share
enterprises, historical roots, face similar conditions, have members in common, have
overlapping discourses, compete for the same resources and share artefacts taken as a
whole the members of each community do not usually participate with the members of other
communities to share distinct and particular enterprises (Wenger, 1998). Each support group
reflects and is created by the specific needs of those involved. While the groups may share a
general enterprise of educating their children out of school, mutual engagement, including the
form the support group takes, may vary widely between groups and shared repertoires differ
across the groups. In conclusion the community of practice framework is useful for
understanding home education support groups but needs to be adopted to deal with the wide
diversity of groups.
References:
Paechter, C. (2003a) Masculinities and femininities as communities of practice Women's
Studies International Forum Vol. 26,No 1, pp.69-77
(2003b) Learning Masculinities and Femininities: Power/Knowledge and
Legitimate Peripheral Participation
Women's Studies International Forum Vol. 26,No 6 pp.541-552.
Wenger, E, (1999) Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge
University Press.
2
I have come to this subject through my own personal involvement. Neither of
my children have been to school and I am an active member of the home
education community, founding and running a community centre for home
educators for the past 11 years, called The Otherwise Club. I also edit an
independent magazine, Choice in Education, and run an annual conference
on home education as well as speaking and writing about it regularly.
I first experienced and then have seen many times in other home educating
parents a process of moving away from a standard educational model to a
more child led model. Wondering if parents learn this through the experience
of home education has lead me to the topic of my PhD thesis from which this
paper is taken.
To this end, through 35 in-depth interviews with home educators from Britain
and the United States, I have been trying to uncover to what extent and in
what way the choice to home educate has affected the parents involved. I
have been looking at parents who have been home educating for more than
three years as this is thought to reflect a time when families are settled into
this choice. The families interviewed were mostly happy and comfortable with
their decisions, therefore my thesis is not about whether this is a good choice
for these families but focuses on the affects of the choice on parents lives.
This paper, which represents an important research aspect central to the
thesis, will explain briefly what a HE support group is, describe four examples
of HE support groups and analyse their role using communities of practice
framework. This framework is helpful in understanding the role of HE support
group firstly, because it helps describe the HE support group through its
concepts and secondly it helps to contrast different types of HE support
groups.
Home Education Movement in England
The roots of the home education can be traced back to the works of
Rousseau, Locke, Montessori and more recently John Dewey and Bertrand
Russell. The recent move toward home education evolved from the writings
of theorists such as, Friere, Paul Goodman, and Ivan IIilch. A.S. Neill and the
free school movement were also influential. The most immediately significant
writer is John Holt who through his book, ‘Teach Your Own’(1981).
The oldest home educating organisation, Education Otherwise (EO), was
formed in 1977, in England. EO produces a magazine which contains letters
about various issues in home education and advertises home educating
events. Most of the writing about home educating has been in this newsletter.
EO, through the production of a contact list, puts home educators in touch
with each other and this gives rise to local groups which meet regularly for
activities and to talk about issues specific to home based education.
In England and Wales the 1996 Education Act states that ’the parent of every
child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time
3
education suitable a) to his age, ability and aptitude and b) to any special
educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or
otherwise’ (Elective Home Education Legal Guidelines, 1999). It is this last
clause that allows home education in England and Wales. The Local
Education Authority (LEA) has the duty to ensure that this law is obeyed but
has no automatic right of inspection of the child and no right to monitor the
child.
As there is no legal requirement for parents to inform their LEA’s that they are
home educating, the numbers of home educators is not known. There are
estimates of 80 – 100,000 children in England and Wales being home
educated (Meighan,2000) but Petrie et al (2002) concluded that the number
of home educators was not possible to gauge.
There are two main reason why families chose to home educate. The first is
due to ideological reasons including ideas about educational theory and
practice. Home education provides the flexibility that enables many different
learning styles, from ‘school at home’ with timetables and text books at its
core to free range education allowing families to follow their own and their
children’s interests. The second reason families chose home education is due
to problems at school. These can be anything from bullying to failure to thrive.
These families often come to home education as a last resort. Children who
are home educated for either of these reasons may go to school at some
point.
Home education has been studied very little partly because of the ad hoc
nature of the rise of the home education movement in Britain and partly due to
the prevalence of school based model of education. Most of the writing about
home education is anecdotal in the form of letters to home educating
newsletters and in more recent times, e-mail lists and websites. Much of the
studies in Britain in recent times have been on the effect home education has
on the children, their education and their social circumstances (Douty,2000,
Rothermal, 2002).
Communities of Practice
The community of practice theory was first developed by Lave and Wenger in
‘Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation’, (1991). In this short
book Lave and Wenger moved the site of learning from formal teacherlearner relations to situated social learning. 1 They suggest communities of
practice are all around us in life. Each of us belongs to several although we
may not be conscious of it. According to Lave and Wenger communities of
Wenger in 1998 published ‘Communities of Practice; Learning, Meaning and
Identity’. This book is a more thorough analysis of the theories of community
of practice and situated learning. Wenger has extended his ideas since 1998
in articles, for example Communities of Practice and Social Learning
Systems’, (2000).
1
4
practice are diverse and can be made up of any number of people. They are
collectively constructed and collectively maintained. The community of
practice supports a communal memory and collective knowledge that allows
individuals to practice within them without needing to know everything. It helps
newcomers to join the community, it generates specific perspectives and
terms to enable accomplishing what needs to be done and it creates and
maintains a culture "in which the monotonous and meaningless aspects of the
job are woven into rituals, customs, stories, events, dramas, and rhythms of
community life"(Wenger, 1998,p46). People within the community of practice
"act as resources to each other, exchanging information making sense of
situations, sharing new tricks and new ideas as well as keeping each other
company and spicing up each other's working ideas"(Wenger,1998,p.47).
Wenger (1998) outlines three main elements in communities of practice: joint
enterprise, mutual engagement and shared repertoire.
A community of practice requires a 'joint enterprise', a common purpose. The
joint enterprise is defined by the participants and it creates ways the
participants are mutually accountable. This process is continually being
renegotiated and rewritten.
Mutual engagement refers to membership of the community of practice.
People work together within the community of practice creating differences as
well as similarities.
It is said that each person's involvement in the community of practice further
integrates and refines it. Mutual engagement also refers to the relationships
created within the community of practice. Membership takes a lot of
commitment and work and therefore if a person does not feel able to do this
they fall away from membership of the community. In this way membership is
self-selecting and the continued life of the community of practice carries on as
long as members are interested in maintaining it. Engagement in communities
of practice is essentially informal and the 'rules' are rewritten constantly within
the community. To learn the 'rules ' you must be engaged in the practices of
the community.
Shared repertoire refers to the common culture of the community. This is
made manifest through its stories, slang, 'in' jokes, jargon, routines, artefacts
and modes of operating. "To be competent [in this shared repertoire] is to
have access to this repertoire and be able to use it appropriately"(Wenger,
2000,p.229)
Lave and Wenger (1991) describe in some depth how a newcomer joins a
community of practice. They concentrate on the apprenticeship model of
learning which shows most distinctly the learning process of communities of
practice. New members must be integrated into the community through
participating in it and thereby learning the shared repertoire of the community
of practice. For this to occur two things must happen. First the peripheral
member needs to have legitimacy as a newcomer even though they are not
5
yet full-fledged members. This is the only way the old-timers are likely to see
them through the learning process and all that this involves.
Secondly, the newcomer must have some affinity, although not necessarily
explicitly, with the three main areas of practice explained above, joint
enterprise and its negotiation, mutual engagement, and the shared repertoire
in use. The newcomer is then exposed to full participation in the form of
stories, explanations and some observation.
The participation of newcomers in the community is as much a part of the
process and growth of the community of practice as the continual revaluation
of the community by the old timers. Members, new and old, continually
interact, discuss, re-evaluate, negotiate new meaning and learn from each
other. In other words, communities of practice produce their membership in
the same way that they come about in the first place.
One problem for this study of HE support groups as communities of practice is
that in each case only one member of the support group was interviewed.
Therefore we only see that one member’s interpretation of the group. It is my
contention that it is still possible to get a picture of a community of practice
from only one member’s description of it. That member can describe the joint
enterprise, the way of engaging and the shared repertoire. Also other forms of
evidence were elicited such as new members guidelines and web sites
specifically run by HE support groups.
The Home Educating Support Group
The home education support group is very important aspect of the home
education experience as it is here that many parents will learn much of what it
is to be a home educator. Many factors such as demographics, size of family,
financial situation and other less objective factors, such as family support or
lack of it, contribute to the experience of the parent as home educator. As
there are no set guidelines or practices for parents to follow, most will look to
national organisations and/or local support groups.
Parents in the transition to HE have to deal with many areas of uncertainty. By
implication parents are making some judgement about and challenging the
school system; they may have to sacrifice a career option and some financial
stability; HE means parents will have to take responsibility for the education of
their children, usually thought to be the domain of experts; friends, relations
and the parents’ community may be sceptical about this choice or, even
worse, against it; and there is very little direct help to do all this. The American
sociologist, Michael Stevens (2001) sees the role of HE support groups as
helping parents make the “transition from [this state of] apprehension to
commitment”(p.32). It is through the support group, where new parents can
meet and talk with those who are already home educating, that many parents
are able to redefine educational objects away from the school system and feel
more confident about their choice. Therefore it is unsurprising that for many
parents considering home education the HE support group is their first port of
call.
6
The organisational structure of a group will reflect to some extent the
philosophical and educational styles of those involved. To incorporate all
these issues in practice the HE support groups can take many forms. In
general they often begin with a few families who get together on a regular
basis. Where they get together, what they do there and the purpose of the
meeting can take any number of forms. A familiar scenario might be that a
parent begins to think about HE and contacts a national organisation. This
organisation puts them in touch with a local coordinator who tells them about
other home educators in their vicinity. There may be no organised groups
nearby and they may have to travel if they wish to join a group.
There is also the real possibility of starting a new group. If they choose to do
this a typical procedure consists of a family choosing a place, for example a
park and advertising that on a certain day and time they will be there. Others
will then come. A group may meet at a free public space, usually parks. They
may chose to meet at each other’s houses, rent a space in church halls or
community centres or the group may combine its social aspect with a trip to a
swimming baths or sports hall or an educational visit of some sort. The group
may remain this loose and informal in nature with the purpose of meeting to
socialise. It may develop into a more defined group with a narrower purpose.
This will depend on the needs of the families involved, the organising energy
of the parents in the group and will change over time as children grow.
The reasons families meet at a support group are very varied and may
change over the HE lifetime of a family. In the beginning families may need
the support and advice of more experienced home educators with practical
issues such as the law or educational style. They may also be looking for
families with which to socialise or a combination of reasons. As newcomers
enter the HE support group those families once new, find themselves
becoming elders in that community.
Stevens (2001) details the findings from his study of the home education
movement through in depth interviews through the early 1990’s. He argues
that the reason a family choose to join one HE group over another is directly
related to their style of home education. That is they come to the group with
some propensity towards one style of education and a philosophy of life.
Parents may not feel confident in this style and often it is not made explicit
until they have been home educating for some time. The HE support group
the family choose to go to, therefore, reflects to some extent the family’s HE
style. The group does not dictate the family’s HE style although it may
influence it.
Stevens(2001) argues that each HE support group is underpinned by the
inner conviction of the parents involved. The philosophical convictions of the
parents in that group are mirrored in the organisational structure and purpose
of the HE support group. For example, parents who feel their children lead the
way in their own education would favour a support group that allowed children
the freedom to lead the way. They would not be so happy in a more formally
organised group where the children are expected to do certain things at a
7
certain time whether they wanted to or not. So while it is true that parents may
learn what it is to be a home educator from the HE support group they may
also choose a group because they come to that group already feeling some
affinity with its underlying ideals. Also each parent will contribute to and
thereby change that group.
This procedure may be complicated by the fact that as new home educators
families may as yet not be committed to a particular ‘type’ of HE. They may be
open to suggestions and be influenced by the group they first approach. But
this influence will only extend so far. As HE is uniquely open to whatever type
of educational style or underlying philosophy the family chooses, the parents
can try a style for a while and see how it develops. They can change
dramatically to a different style or use combinations of many styles. The HE
support group also needs to be able, like the parents for the children, to
address and mirror the families’ needs with regard to educational support. The
HE support group will only be useful to parents so far as this is true as Alice’s
case below, clearly shows.
There is a further complication in that the reason parents chose to home
educate may affect what they require from a HE support group. Those who
have chosen to home educate for ideological reasons, it would seem, may
chose a group closest to their own beliefs and require less induction into the
group than families who are thrust into HE as a last resort due to their child’s
unhappiness at school.
A further issue is locality. Due to the fact that there are not that many home
educators, just the fact that a family home educates in an area may entitle the
family to be welcomed and feel quickly at home in a HE support group. This
legitimacy would not depend on any ideological alliance but mere location.
Usually, parents will tolerate large differences in the group, as they do not
expect it to reflect all their HE attitudes. It is only ever an approximation. As
long as the benefits out weigh the compromises, parents will stay in the group.
Parents also find they have to “fit their identity and desires into an
organisational landscape not entirely of [their] own making”(Stevens, 2001,
p.154).
As time goes by, families’ relationships change toward the support group.
Sometimes parents, despite being in the throes of HE, choose to leave the HE
support group. They have become more confident with HE issues and may
have found a group of friends outside the support group, which then lessens
in importance for them. Or there may come a point, as their children grow up,
where many parents’ interests in HE issues wane and therefore they find they
have less need for HE support group. Also as their children near the end of
the HE life, the children begin to travel by themselves and have needs that
can be satisfied in the adult and peer world making the HE support group
redundant.
From research in America HE support groups would seem to be important to
home educating families. Lyman, (2000) states in one HE survey of fifteen
8
hundred HE students, 85% attended a support group or intended to join one.
Also Barfield (2002) chronicles twenty-one home educating families of which
fifteen mentioned using a type of HE group. Three of these were internet
connections and five were called co-ops and may resemble the type of group
Wendy describes below. That such a high percentage use some kind of HE
group does not seem surprising. What is more surprising is that Barfield finds
six families who do not mention any type of HE group. This highlights the fact
that the need for or use of an HE group cannot be assumed.
HE Support Groups Examined as Communities of Practice
The HE support group is an unusual community of practice because unlike
other areas where this analysis is applied, HE is not an defined institution
such as an office, hospital or school with general well known structures. In the
HE support group there is no defined structure, no formal obligations, no
agreed way to do things and their joint enterprise may not be made explicit.
Each group will have its own joint enterprise, way of engaging, and shared
repertoire with similarities between groups but unique differences as well.
Therefore each HE support group may be a discrete community of practice.
A HE support group can explicitly understand and support the issues involved
in home educating. Through the group the history, stories and lore of home
education is transmitted, newcomers initiated into the community and its
debates creating the shared repertoire.
Of the parents that mentioned an HE support group in my study, in four cases
the group was central to their lives. Each of these four parents, Wendy,
Dinah, Sarah and Alice had a different experience with a different type of
support group . I will look at each case in turn.
Wendy has four children aged 11 through 25 years old at the time of the
interview. She has home educated her four children for at least some of their
school career. She is part of a ‘co-op’. This type of group may be more
common in American, as it was only mentioned by American home educators
in my study.
The co-op model may vary but it has a common element: meeting regularly
with other home educating families for more formal work that resembles the
style of education usually done in schools. The co-op parents meet together
beforehand to discuss what the children will study and how they will go about
it. With regard to a community of practice, the mutual engagement with this
educational structure has grown from the needs of those home educating
families that attend and changes over time as these needs change.
Wendy’s co-op is a large part of her life. She describes her best friends as the
“4 or 5 other home schooling mums that I have co-oped with since the oldest
ones were little.” She began by explaining what the co-op does. “We get
together to do unit study kind of things, projects”. Wendy describes their coop as spending a year on a topic such as science or world history. One day a
week the children meet to follow one of the parent’s planned academic
9
activities around the topic. The co-op, for Wendy, gives shape and purpose to
the HE parent, mirrors life by setting external goals that the children must fulfil
such as deadlines and makes them accountable to someone other than their
parents.
Wendy has been in the co-op for some time and her children have grown up
in it. She remarked how close the families in the co-ops have become.
The co-op has maintained HE continuity for both parent and child. The co-op
gives a shape to the year for the whole family, also providing social outings for
the prime home educators in the form of a social weekend away and activities
during the whole week related to the study topic. Fathers also become more
involved she feels and get to know the other co-op families. The co-op
requires a big commitment. It must come first in families’ schedules, for
example they plan holidays around it but for Wendy the benefits are such that
families are happy to do that.
The co-op has been such a large part of their HE life that it has meant the
families are able to help each other when there is a crisis. She retold with
pride the way the co-op were able to help a family after the father fell and
broke both legs and his arm. The mother then had to begin work to support
the family but other HE families were able to continue home educating the
children due to the community formed through the co-op.
Wendy’s co-op style of group is the most formal and most structured of the
HE support groups and making the case for it as a community of practice is
clearer. The joint enterprise involves more than educating their children.
Parents in this community of practice have the joint enterprise of teaching
their children a curriculum designed by the parents together. Mutual
engagement is through the organisational meetings, regular weekly meetings
of the whole group and the parties that surround the co-op. Their shared
repertoire is created through this project. Wendy exemplifies shared repertoire
when she says the co-op parents refer to certain work as ‘the Barnum and
Bailey stuff’. The members of that community of practice know what they
mean by that phrase. This community of practice is particular to these families
and seems to suit Wendy very well, fulfilling everything she expects from it.
Although three of her children have grown up and left the community, she still
feels very much a part of it.
The other three parents found their interest in the HE support group more fluid
and relied on it much less than Wendy although the degrees of need for the
group varied. Dinah found there was only a small HE support group when she
moved into the area where she now lives. She wondered if she would be able
to carry on home educating without the help of a HE support group. Together
with one friend she found locally, they worked hard and within a year had a
thriving HE group that Dinah oversaw at the time of the first interview.
Dinah’s group has a complicated schedule of activities from the traditionally
educational such as science days and those geared to the needs of the
children and young people such as ‘babysitting classes’. The group meet in a
designated room where they can plan new activities and store resources that
10
they have communally bought with grant money. They also meet outside this
space to do specific activities such as ice-skating and share allotments where
families can go and work together.
The group has a routine to welcome newcomers. Dinah explains that when
someone new comes to a meeting they are given
…a new member paper that explains about the building, what our
responsibilities are, to each other as well. And so we take them through
that before they actually use the building. And we also say in there if
you’d like to join [the local group] on the internet or if you want to join
up with [another day’s] club or anything like that then these are the
names of the people you want to contact.
Dinah’s children are now going to school and she talks about her trajectory
out of the community. Others have taken over her roles so she feels the group
will survive. The fact the others can take over Dinah’s roles is evidence of a
community of practice. Further, evidence of joint enterprise is that others in
the community want to take over Dinah’s roles to keep the community
working. The community’s mutual enterprise is visible to members in it, such
that they can see what needs doing and find a way to do it.
Sarah was local coordinator for EO, the national organisation. She told me
about her support group in her second interview. There were very few other
home educators when Sarah began home educating. The support group
began informally from the few families around but developed as time went on;
“We met up, had picnics once a week did different things and also tried to
encourage people who had something that they had to offer, whether it was
doing something with painting or whatever.”
This particular group’s ethos according to Sarah was to allow participation
relevant to that family; “It wasn’t that everybody did everything. Some people
wanted to share and/or learn a particular skill. So it was kind of offering a
group framework where people could come and go as they wish and could
offer and take as they wished various aspects.” What was on offer therefore,
varied, as did their base. The needs of the area meant that a permanent base
was not viable and the group chose to meet at different places depending on
what the activity was.
There was no real formal structure. The group did not write any guidelines
about activities or behaviour. The did have a telephone tree (this group
existed before the days of easy internet access) in which to inform each other
of events and could do so at short notice. This informal structure meant the
shared responsibility for the group was easier to maintain. Sarah said, “ It
was everybody sort of chipped in really.” Although the community did not have
any written structures, I would argue, the phone tree is an example of shared
repertoire and is evidence of a community of practice although of a most loose
type.
11
Sarah, as coordinator for her area would often be the first to talk to
newcomers in the area. “I would speak with them first, visit or come and see
me or whatever and often with new people, especially if there were children
who had anxieties about attending school and were a bit tense or whatever
we found it was better if they came along to a big general kind of outing, say
going up to B. Rock, people are just dashing around or otherwise, depending
on the age, so you weren’t in too confined place attending a set thing which
might have been too much.“ Despite Sarah’s privileged knowledge as
coordinator she says others in the group would also actively take on the role
of making newcomers feel welcome and part of the group; “… everybody
would know what the programme is …[T]hey could come along to whatever
they fancied and because it was … not a massive group, it was always very
obvious who the new people were. People remembered from their
experiences of being new and how you might feel and try to make people feel
welcome.”
Membership to this community will be self selecting (Wenger, 1998) such that
if, on speaking to Sarah, parents do not feel supported, they will look
elsewhere for their HE support. In this way the local coordinator, often the first
point of contact for a prospective family, helps create the community through
being the ‘gate keeper’.
When Sarah’s children no longer wanted to attend these meetings she says
“there was a natural hand over because you do move on. You find that
somebody else is come along. They’ve got younger children so and they’re
interested in organising things, doing a bit more that way anyway, so it’s a
natural progression, and there are people who are more actively involved
because of having younger children who came in and became coordinators.”
The relationship that Sarah describes is one of being in a community of
practice. Mutual engagement takes place through telephone calls and
meetings. It takes a lot of time and effort but it has also meant she is active in
the process of forming the community. She does this by being available to
others, in what she says to them and how she says it.
The engagement in these communities is informal although as said before,
there are unwritten rules which the newcomer will learn as they go along.
They will also help create the unwritten rules. This tendency is shown to be
true in Sarah’s case where although she was a newcomer she took on the
main contact role of the community. Again the joint enterprise of the
community is more than educating their children but is a complicated mixture
of support, friendships and language for all involved.
Alice was heavily involved in a HE support group from the beginning of her
HE time. She spent much of the interview talking about these relationships
and what had gone wrong in her HE support groups. As soon as she made
the decision to home educate Alice felt, like Dinah, that she needed a group to
home educate with. She contacted friends of friends who were also thinking
about HE and started a ‘home club’. “And that was the beginning of our home
schooling and it was the first time that I had other adults around that were
12
interested in being with their kids, at home with them…” Alice was pleased to
have found like-minded people in that the other parents also enjoy being with
their children. To this extent they share a joint enterprise of being with their
children at home, and a way to do this, mutual engagement. While she did not
mention specifically any shared repertoire it can be inferred that the group
shared stories from its history and other related ‘talk’ that defined it as a
group.
Unfortunately, Alice continues, one of the main organisers wanted to make the
group into a business, paying her self a salary to run the group. “She had a lot
of agendas that had nothing to do with what we were trying to do and weren't
really good for the group. So it had a very rocky beginning. But a lot of people
came together…” Alice no longer shared the joint enterprise with the rest of
the group as she did not want to share the enterprise of a business which
other parents in the group may have wanted.
After joining a second HE support group, Alice felt the club went well until the
children were older. The classes and workshops that the group ran went fairly
smoothly until two developments changed the group:
One was that people got rather doctrinaire about how things were done
and really alienated a lot of people and they started going to another
group. Which meant those people started to do some processing about
how people were treating each other, which was a good thing. Which
we could never get it together to do. Then what happened was a
[theatre] group performed at the … club and that really became the
main focus of the group.
In the first group the disagreement was about mutual engagement that can be
inferred from her statement “people got rather doctrinaire”. This may imply a
mutual engagement, which made it impossible for Alice to remain in the
group. This disagreement also may have been evidence of a fundamental
disagreement about joint enterprise within the group. It is not possible to know
from what Alice said exactly where the dispute lay but it may be that Alice
wanted a more loose joint enterprise while others in the group want a more
focused singular aim. The shift in focus to the other group was able to cover
over the differences for a time.
The second group seems to have had a different focus to the first club but
Alice left that club acrimoniously; she felt that issues about the children’s
social relationships were not addressed and her attempts to bring them up
were dismissed. She described this ending as very disturbing and painful.
Again the disagreement was ostensibly about mutual engagement, that is, in
what way the group should be run. Alice went into some length about the
differences between how the group was run and her own ideas of how the
group should be run. This is an attempt to shift the joint enterprise.
Alice felt if anyone tried to address these issues they were vilified. The shared
repertoire in the community became tied to others in the group who held
power. When Alice tried to address the problems she felt, she became
13
ostracised. Not only did Alice have the bad experience of fallout with the
group, she and her children lost friends as a result. Alice was somewhat bitter
about this experience. It seems that the group contained joint enterprise,
mutual engagement and shared repertoire that Alice herself did not feel
comfortable with and she felt unable to carry on in the group.
Alice’s experience with her HE support groups exemplifies the point made
earlier that families enter a HE support group with an idea of how the group
can supplement their HE experience even if they cannot articulate this at the
time. Alice’s first HE support group supported them for a time until she ceased
to share goals with other members. Her example highlights what may be an
important factor for home educating families joining a HE support group. While
many do not necessarily feel part of or agree with all the group’s joint
enterprise or mutual engagement, there must be a balance whereby they find
enough in it to remain a part of the group. It is here that the analysis provided
by the notion of a community of practice can help articulate this balance that is
so delicate for some families
Given the information from these parents their HE groups seem each to
constitute a different types of communities of practice. Although the groups
may themselves be communities of practice, the parents use that community
as only part of their HE repertoire. Therefore the HE support group community
of practice for these four families will have limited influence for their entry and
practice of HE. These four parents were all involved in other groups outside
HE, such as church, scouts and youth groups, orchestras and music groups,
sports team and groups. This fact is also confirmed by American studies such
as Dobson (1999) and Barfield (2002).
Power Relations within Communities of Practice
Clearly there are issues of power in communities of practice. This fact is
somewhat acknowledged by Wenger(1999) in his outline of how someone joins
and becomes a legitimate member of a community of practice. But he
concentrates more on the criteria for joining a community of practice rather than
the power dynamics inside one. In HE support group communities of practice
legitimacy in the group is very much conferred by having a child of school age
out of school. Through this, parents joining a HE community are accepted as
new members, treated in a certain manner, and conferred with a legitimate
place in the group. But there are other areas where power relations are
prevalent as pointed out by Paechter (2003a, 2003b). For example, in the HE
support groups, areas of power that could dominate a person’s experience
within a support group are how power is shared and perpetuated by old timers,
how it is conferred on newcomers, and how any disputes are dealt with by the
community of practice.
Conclusion
The advantage of the community of practice model is that it helps us to
understand how newcomers can become members of a movement that is
diverse, grass roots and non hierarchical. It can describe and explain the
14
mechanism whereby these groups remain active and useful and explain why
they do so. It also envelops ideas of social learning, involving parents learning
through activities in a social context.
The HE support group community of practice can be an integral and important
part of the families’ lives through the practice of home education and the
participation of the members of the family in it. Learning is shared through the
practice of the community either consciously or not. The members of the
home educating support group are connected through their joint enterprise,
mutual engagement and shared repertoire.
Each support group reflects and is created by the specific needs of those
involved. While the groups may share a general enterprise of educating their
children out of school, mutual engagement, including the form the support
group takes, may vary widely between groups and shared repertoires differ
across the groups. In conclusion the community of practice framework is
useful for understanding home education support groups but needs to be
adopted to deal with the wide diversity of the groups.
References:
Barfield, R. (2002) Real-Life Homeschooling Fireside, New York, New York.
Dobson, L, (2000) Homeschooler’s Success Stories Prima Publishing, California
Douty, T, (2000) Free Range Education: How Home Education Works Hawthorn
Press, Glos.
Holt, J.
(1981) Teach Your Own Lighthouse Books, Liss, Hants.
Lave, J and Wenger, E (1991) Situated Learning :Legitimate Peripheral
Participation, Cambridge University Press.
Lyman, I (2000) Home Schooling and Histrionics Cato Institute, May 31.
Meighan, R. (2000) Learning Unlimited: the home-based education case-files,
Educational Heretics Press, Notts
Paechter, C. (2003a) Masculinities and femininities as communities of practice
Women's Studies International Forum Vol. 26,No 1, pp.69-77
(2003b) Learning Masculinities and Femininities :Power/Knowledge
and Legitimate Peripheral Participation Women's Studies International Forum Vol.
26,No 6 pp.541-552.
Petrie, A. J., Windrass, G., and Thomas, A. (1999) The Prevalence of Home
Education in England: A Feasibility Study Report to the Department for Education
and Employment
Rothermel, P. (2002) Home-Education: Aims, Practices and Outcomes BERA
Annual Conference, Exeter
Stevens, M.L. (2001) Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the
Homeschooling Movement Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, USA
15
Thomas, A (1997) Educating Children at Home, Cassell Education, London.
Wenger, E, (1999) Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity,
Cambridge University Press.
Wenger, E. (2000) Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems,
Organization, Vol.7, No 2, p.225-246.
Non published Papers:
Elective Home Education Legal Guidelines, (1999)
Available from <choiceineducation.org.uk>
16
17
18