Please don't forget to pray for us, Brazilian homeschooling parents. Homeschooling is not yet legally recognized here, so many families are reported to the authorities and risk fines or even imprisonment. We pray for educational freedom.
I didn't try 'school at home' but that's largely because of the insistence of Facebook groups that everyone did and you didn't need to.
Also, I had a child in burnout at the time.
My personal observation is that most UK home educators (about 60% according to a Facebook survey) run semi-structured, but the predominant online culture is to urge people to run completely unstructured and that's just confusing for 'forced home educators' who are starting out. Unschooling is extremely hands-on and involved, involving a lot of conversations and observations of progress, and it's something you definitely have to learn to do by practice.
On English home ed Facebook groups, you see a lot of parents who are urged to let kids play video games and do some baking and the parent has no idea what to do with that. Luckily, because I started out with an high-academically-gifted boy with zilch interest in Roblox or baked goods, I managed by luck, rather than good judgement, to avoid veering straight down that particular rabbit hole.
It took me six years to transition from playing ‘school-at-home’ to leaning into natural learning and unschooling. I had to see the evidence, which is where my diary and calendar and scrapbooks came in handy - they proved to me that no matter what we did, even weeks where we did no school work at all, the kids were still learning progressing.
My daughter describes her homeschool as eclectic, and my son’s family are unschooling.
You are right - unschooling is very hands-on and attentive, not what most people new to homeschooling expect!
I'm keen on seeing that too. I think it's still a little too early but there are a few studies, such as this one. I'll take a look at it. Most of the other studies I found were mainly focused on the effect of lockdown schooling during Covid.
Homeschool participation: Post-pandemic persistence and growth trends:
Thanks that looks interesting - America is slightly different in terms of home ed to where I am (U.K.) but there are definitely parallels. I’ll see if I can access the full thing.
Barratt-Peacock's finding is the really interesting. I didn't know that families almost always start by trying to reproduce school at home, and almost alway give up. I cans see why though, the home is a fundamentally different kind of teaching space, and the impression I have is that families who thrive are the ones who stop apologising for that difference and embrace it.
John conducted his research in the 1990s, interviewing over a 100 families. Much less was known about homeschooling back then, with very little support and only a handful of homeschooling networks in Australia. Many of us relied on curriculum materials imported from the USA. I think most of us started teaching our children the way we'd been taught at school ourselves - it's what we thought education was!
Please don't forget to pray for us, Brazilian homeschooling parents. Homeschooling is not yet legally recognized here, so many families are reported to the authorities and risk fines or even imprisonment. We pray for educational freedom.
I won't forget. I hope things change in Brazil for the better soon.
Will pray for Brazil's children and for you.
As always, this essay packs in so much valuable information!
I didn't try 'school at home' but that's largely because of the insistence of Facebook groups that everyone did and you didn't need to.
Also, I had a child in burnout at the time.
My personal observation is that most UK home educators (about 60% according to a Facebook survey) run semi-structured, but the predominant online culture is to urge people to run completely unstructured and that's just confusing for 'forced home educators' who are starting out. Unschooling is extremely hands-on and involved, involving a lot of conversations and observations of progress, and it's something you definitely have to learn to do by practice.
On English home ed Facebook groups, you see a lot of parents who are urged to let kids play video games and do some baking and the parent has no idea what to do with that. Luckily, because I started out with an high-academically-gifted boy with zilch interest in Roblox or baked goods, I managed by luck, rather than good judgement, to avoid veering straight down that particular rabbit hole.
It took me six years to transition from playing ‘school-at-home’ to leaning into natural learning and unschooling. I had to see the evidence, which is where my diary and calendar and scrapbooks came in handy - they proved to me that no matter what we did, even weeks where we did no school work at all, the kids were still learning progressing.
My daughter describes her homeschool as eclectic, and my son’s family are unschooling.
You are right - unschooling is very hands-on and attentive, not what most people new to homeschooling expect!
Would be dead interested to see if/how this has changed since covid. My feeling is that it has - but I’d love to see more research.
I'm keen on seeing that too. I think it's still a little too early but there are a few studies, such as this one. I'll take a look at it. Most of the other studies I found were mainly focused on the effect of lockdown schooling during Covid.
Homeschool participation: Post-pandemic persistence and growth trends:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15582159.2024.2422742
Thanks that looks interesting - America is slightly different in terms of home ed to where I am (U.K.) but there are definitely parallels. I’ll see if I can access the full thing.
Barratt-Peacock's finding is the really interesting. I didn't know that families almost always start by trying to reproduce school at home, and almost alway give up. I cans see why though, the home is a fundamentally different kind of teaching space, and the impression I have is that families who thrive are the ones who stop apologising for that difference and embrace it.
John conducted his research in the 1990s, interviewing over a 100 families. Much less was known about homeschooling back then, with very little support and only a handful of homeschooling networks in Australia. Many of us relied on curriculum materials imported from the USA. I think most of us started teaching our children the way we'd been taught at school ourselves - it's what we thought education was!