Category Archives: United Kingdom

AERA 2012: Supplementary Schools Making a Difference to the Attainment of Black Children

American Educational Research Association

April 15m 8:15-9:45

Uvanney Maylor

University of Bedfordshire

“Supplementary Schools Making a Difference to the Attainment of Black Children”

This paper reports on an English government commissioned study in 2009-10 which sought to understand the reach/provision of supplementary schools, and identify the unique contributions that they make to the mainstream school learning/attainment of nationally low attaining African-Caribbean, Somali, Turkish and Parkistani heritage children aged 5-18 (DfE 11). The study was intended to build on government perceptions that:

supplementary schools can help to access and unlock the hidden potential of students whose individual intellectual potential has been reduced by a culturally uniform approach to learning? Supplementary schools can engage pupils effectively and help to translate elements of the mainstream curriculum into a culturally embedded context. (Ryan, MP 2008: Hansard columns 1066-7)

Running through this study was also a government/educational policy maker desire to understand the active involvement of minority ethnic parents in supporting their children?s education. In furthering such understanding, this paper is specifically concerned with the experiences of Black (African and Caribbean) children, and examines the difference Black supplementary schools make to Black children?s learning and educational outcomes.

AERA 2012: Black Women’s Community Othermothering and Supplementary Education

American Educational Research Association

April 15, 8:15-9:45h

Amira Millicent Davis

“‘Educate a Woman and You Educate a Nation’: Black Women’s Community Othermothering and Supplementary Education”

This paper is of a yearlong qualitative ethnographic study of women of African descent in the U.S. and UK who provide supplementary education programs in their communities. Data was collected through interviews, primary and secondary sources and social media. The cultural work of these women is interpreted through the lens of maternal activism articulated in Hill-Collins community and othermothering in which Black women’s epistemologies are privileged. The women presented have created sustainable community education spaces that simultaneously enhance academic performance, wage resistance, perpetuate traditions and rituals and preserve cultural knowledge. The goal of this work is to share their experiences as models for community-based literacy programs, educational advocacy and individual and community empowerment with activists, practitioners, scholars, funders and policymakers.