Homeschooling in urban areas is on the rise across Canada, although official data is sparse. Drawing on our ongoing research with homeschooling families in Ontario and Quebec, this talk traces homeschooling across three registers: as disengagement from standardized schooling, as infrastructural re-mantling through everyday tools, spaces, and networks, and as a unique form of engaging with the city.
By situating homeschooling within broader urban ecologies, this work invites us to see how families reconfigure learning environments in ways that challenge dominant models of education and reveal overlooked forms of care, creativity, and resistance. In re-examining homeschooling, we are also invited to reimagine our cities not just as sites of formal schooling, but as infrastructures that could better support pluralistic, distributed, and community-shaped learning.
*Please note: this is on online event. Zoom details will be sent out closer to the session*
About the speaker
Samar Sabie is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology at the University of Toronto, where she directs the Open Design Collaboratory. She also hold a graduate appointment at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Landscape. Samar’s research investigates the role design as a socio-material practice can play in how communities develop an adaptive capacity towards sustainable change. Her research draws on my multidisciplinary training in architecture, software engineering, ethnography, and philosophy.
