Spatial-temporal enactments of home-schooling among low-income families of primary-aged children

Abstract

This paper focuses on spatial–temporal enactments of home-schooling among low-income families of primary-aged children in England. COVID-19 re-set boundaries and spaces of formal education for children across the globe, bringing it directly into homes and shifting the involvement of parents/carers in their children’s education. In England, “home-school” engagement was brought into sharp focus as “home” became a more visible quasi-public space through which multiple government COVID-19 policies were enacted. Despite emerging literature on home-schooling during the pandemic, voices of parents and children from low-income families have been little heard. Here we take a critical family approach and draw on interviews with low-income families to understand how education was negotiated, enacted and reconfigured within the home during the pandemic. Drawing on literatures relating to policy enactment, carescapes and home-school engagement, we offer unique insight into spatial and temporal constraints of the everyday and the necessary reconstitution of wholescale policy enactment among low-income families.