Why Families Homeschool

What early research told me about homeschooling parents, their motivations, and their educational values

As a mum new to homeschooling my kids I was desperate for reassurance I was doing the right thing by them. I wanted to know that this educational and social experiment we were conducting on their childhood wouldn’t do lasting developmental damage.

The home education movement in Australia was still relatively new, with only a handful of families in each state openly homeschooling their children. Academic research on the topic was thin on the ground too.

In the 1990s I looked to see what had been published overseas.

In the late 1980s research by Jane Van Galen highlighted two main groups: one that primarily rejected the moral/secular values of schools, and the other mainly dissatisfied with school methodologies and who desired child-centric or alternative learning.

Educational researchers Roland Meighan and Brian Ray focused on the academic effectiveness of home education, publishing data that indicated home-educated students scored just as well, and frequently significantly higher, on standardized tests than their publicly-schooled peers.

A study by Tizard and Hughes (1984) considered informal learning in the home, concluding that everyday living and continuous parent-child interaction provided incredibly rich, natural learning environments compared to institutional nurseries. This was echoed in a 1998 study by Alan Thomas investigated 100 home-educating families across the UK and Australia.

At about that time I met Australian home educator and researcher John Barratt-Peacock when he was interviewing families for his thesis, which noted that early home-educating families almost always started by trying to “reproduce school at home”. He found that this phase rarely lasted, as home education naturally evolved into a fundamentally different process from institutional schooling.

US researcher, Brian Ray focused on the outcomes of home-schooling legislation and the shared belief among parents that education is a primary family responsibility.

Julie Webb conducted longitudinal research on the long-term outcomes of home education in the UK, specifically tracking of home-educated children into adulthood.

From all of this information I collated the following information about the characteristics of home educating families and the reasons they chose to educated their children outside of the school system

Reasons

The reasons families chose to begin or continue homeschooling tend to change over time as the benefits become more apparent. Some of the reasons, cited in research include:

• A marked lack of confidence in state related institutions, with a tendency toward conservative view points;

• Lack of direct influence in determining curriculum and school agendas;

• Opposition to the ideological content of school programs and/or methodology used;

• Conflicting value orientations of home and schools;

• Need for individualised attention for children with special needs (gifted and talented and specific learning problems);

• Focus on perceived gains in social development from home education, with a strong emphasis on family unity and relationships;

• Concern with declining academic standards in schools;

• Perceived lack of availability of educational programs to suit individual children’s learning needs, styles, rates and interests;

• Avoidance of negative peer influences and damaging socialisation experiences;

• Perceived lack of attention in schools to holistic development of children, including spiritual:

• Strong parental sense of primary responsibility for children’s education, with a need to have access to, and some control over, their children’s educational experiences as a strong motivational factor;

• Offers solutions to present or potential educational problems, sometimes as a result of deterioration of communications and hostile relationships between families and schools;

• Parents’ own educational experiences, or memories of unhappy or unsuccessful personal experiences of schooling;

• High cost of alternative and private schooling, including correspondence education;

• Lack of educational and schooling choice in local area;

• Opposition to the competitive nature of schooling, grading or testing;

• Perceived gains in autonomous home learning programs, independent study skills and higher student motivation;

• The development in parents of a stronger sense of satisfaction with their own lives through directing their children’s education;

• Home education offers a natural learning and socialising environment as opposed to the contrived and artificial environments and learning programs of schools.

Characteristics

Each homeschooling family undertakes a journey, an adventure in home learning that is not static, but flexible, responding the to ever changing conditions, situations and opportunities that active learning brings.

This creates a diverse range of homeschooling practices, but the following characteristics are common to most homeschooling situations.

• The practice of home education follows closely from the reasons for choosing it and from lifestyle choices.

• Parents are highly interested in children’s personal, social and spiritual development.

• Both parents are actively involved in home educating their children with the mother generally fulfilling the role of ‘teacher’ most of the time.

• Most, though not all, parents have attended or graduated from some kind of tertiary education.

• Learning programs tend to move from formal structured activities to generally more informal, spontaneously generated learning activities, with time and experience.

• Learning programs tend to be flexible and highly individualised with use of both home made and purchased curriculum materials.

• Home educated students study a wide range of subjects, including conventional school ones.

• Many families are interested and involved in home birth, breast feeding, and healthy lifestyle choices.

• A variety of religious beliefs are represented among home educating families.

The research confirmed and affirmed my personal experience, both as a homeschooling mum and someone who had met hundreds of families through local and national home educating networks.

© Beverley Paine

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If you’re homeschooling in Australia, don’t forget to download my FREE Resource Directory for a bumper list of educational and curriculum providers and suppliers, as well as comprehensive guide on getting started how to register as a home educating family.

Whatever your approach, your lifestyle or education philosophy, I’m here to support you. Take what you need, leave the rest. I want you to lean on my experience because I’ve leant on others — we are in this together, growing and learning from each other!

That’s all for now! Until next time, Beverley