How and why minoritised communities self-organise education: a review study

Abstract

Minoritized communities have a long history of self-organizing learning to meet their youth's varied educational needs. Community education is a widespread societal phenomenon, yet a conceptual framework mapping the diversity of educational initiatives remained lacking. We bring together the body of academic work on community education in a systematic literature review and extract an array of cases. By regarding these cases through a conceptual framework based on their organizational form and their main objectives we distinguish different types of community education and we deduce that different communities have different needs which translate into different intended purposes. Distinguishing similarities and differences in community education across communities and countries is a necessary step in acknowledging the resourcefulness of minoritized communities in self-organizing education which is pertinent for stakeholders of community schools as well for those researching community educational spaces.

The invisible support of community schools in a highly unequal education system: Exploring the experiences of minority pupils and teachers

“…As places of learning and additional educational support (Steenwegen et al, 2022a;Zhou & Kim, 2006), these CBEIs could provide invaluable insights into the tools needed and the changes necessary to provide equitable educational opportunities for ethnic-cultural minority youth. Although the existing literature gives us a broad overview of various types of community education and how ethnic minoritised communities organise educational support for their youth (Chevannes & Reeves, 1989;Lee & Hawkins, 2008;Steenwegen et al, 2022aSteenwegen et al, , 2022b, gaps in CBEI research still exist. Firstly, most studies conducted in this field are ethnographic studies that focus on particular cases, making it hard to uncover the overarching patterns across multiple CBEIs or across actors participating in different CBEIs.…”

“…In its broadest definition, the term CBEI encompasses a wide range of education initiatives, which are often either supplementary (supplementing the content offered in mainstream education with additional support and instruction) or complementary (offering additional content often not available in mainstream schools) (Thorpe et al, 2020) However, CBEIs can vary widely in their organisational structure, curriculum, the purposes they pursue and the motivations of the pupils (and their parents) to enrol (Steenwegen et al, 2022a). What they have in common is that they are all part-time, bottom-up, education initiatives self-organised by ethnic minoritised communities and that they aim to support youth in various ways during their educational trajectory (Steenwegen et al, 2022b).…”

“…In addition, an underlying political dimension works in tandem with the other three to move actors to (an understanding of) social action and resistance (Baldridge et al, 2017). Most recently, a fourth typology has been developed by Steenwegen et al (2022a). This is inspired by Biesta's threefold categorisation (Biesta, 2009) of the purposes of educationqualification, socialisation and personal development-and highlights how CBEIs are often organised along the same structure as mainstream education institutions.…”

“…It is almost always mentioned in studies on CBEIs, but mostly as a space to which the actors in CBEIs are reacting or positioning themselves. Although various attempts have been made to explicitly study the perceptions of CBEI actors (pupils and teachers) on mainstream education (Bridglall et al, 2005;Evans & Gillan-Thomas, 2015;Steenwegen et al, 2022a), there is limited research on how those in mainstream education perceive CBEIs. It thus seems interesting to utilise the data that we have on teachers' perceptions to narrow this gap in CBEI research.…”