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This study aims to explore how Black homeschooling organizations based in the United States with a public web presence in 2023–2024 characterize their missions and what these mission statements can tell us both about the growing homeschooling movement among Black parents, as well as its potential implications for education as a means of individual and collective uplift and positive social change.

This paper used critical constructivist grounded theory (Levitt, 2021) and emergent coding to analyze the mission statements and organizational descriptions of all 19 U.S.-based Black homeschooling organizations with a public facing web presence identified via Google search in 2023 and 2024.

Utilizing Afrofuturism as our theoretical framework, themes such as Black self-determination, community, support, and resources, and safety and empowerment emerged. Black homeschooling organizations offer families a safe and informative community as they seek agency, autonomy and brighter futures for their children than may be on offer in traditional schools.

Our research fills an empirical gap in the literature on Black homeschooling by examining an existing but, so far as this paper could determine, unstudied population of U.S.-based Black homeschooling organizations. Our research also contributes by applying Afrofuturism and fugitive pedagogy as novel theoretical frameworks to better understand the move toward homeschooling by increasing numbers of Black parents.

Work-study programmes aim to support young adults transitioning from tertiary education to work and contribute to enhancing their employability. The purpose of this study is to provide a detailed analysis of the learning experiences of trainees in work-study programmes within the broad field of engineering.

The data gathering procedures used interviews with participants of a specific work-study programme and conducting thematic analyses to identify and understand the motivations of these adults for enrolling in work-study programmes and their associated workplace learning experiences. Fifty-two alumni of electrical and logistics engineering programmes completed 12 months of a separate work-study programme and consented to participate in an hour-long interview. They elaborated upon their work-learn experiences to explicate their work-learn needs and challenges in those interviews.

Findings include workplaces facilitated skills development through providing combinations of work tasks comprising both routine and novel work assignments; challenging circumstances at the workplace provided trainees with opportunities to develop adaptive capacities; and engaging in non-routine work processes fosters integration into the engineering workplace community.

The findings contribute to the existing literature by exemplifying how routine engineering activities are practical affordances through which engineering trainees construct knowledge and dispositions for engaging in challenging, non-routine engineering work. Such experiences are crucial in preparing trainees for advanced roles in logistics or electronic sectors.