Record: Oz Guterman and Ari Neuman, “Personality, Socio-economic Status and Education: Factors that Contribute to the Degree of Structure in Homeschooling” in Social Psychology of Education 21, no. 1 (February 2018): 75-90 [abstract here]
Summary: This is the latest of a long list of publications by Guterman and Neuman. The pair has released several studies since 2016 about homeschoolers’ perceptions of education, the goals of homeschoolers, emotional & behavioral development of homeschooling children, motivations for homeschooling in Israel, individuation as a parental goal, and the effects of peer interaction on homeschoolers. The current study continues their effort to incorporate psychology into homeschooling research, and it also adds an economic dimension as it tries to link pedagogical choices to a parent’s socioeconomic status (SES) and personality traits.
They authors begin with a literature review stressing the well-known distinction originally articulated by Jane Van Galen between homeschoolers who choose to do so for ideological reasons using school-like pedagogy, and homeschoolers who reject the rigid formalism of institutional schooling, embracing a more child-centered, informal pedagogy. They note that these two options exist on a continuum, and that families can shift their position along this continuum over time.
They then survey a type of literature seldom discussed in homeschooling research–the connections between SES and personality factors on parenting style. Factors surveyed include the “Big Five” personality traits and attachment theory. Review of the literature on these variables suggests that extroverted parents have a more active and assertive parenting style and emphasize discipline and boundaries to a higher degree than do introverts. It also suggests that conscientiousness in parents is associated with a more structured and consistent environment for children. It also suggests that families with anxious attachment often exhibit strict, inflexible parenting, and families with avoidant attachment tend toward more distant parenting.
Regarding SES, mothers with higher levels of education and more wealth spend more time with their children in educational activities and are more involved in their formal educations, while poorer and less well-educated families tend to watch more television.
With this background in place, Guterman and Neuman explain their sample and study. The study took place in Israel, where both scholars live and teach. Israeli homeschooling laws require parents to submit a family plan, but that plan is seldom monitored by the government. Thus homeschoolers are afforded wide latitude in how they structure their homeschools. The researchers visited meetings of homeschoolers around the country, explaining their study and eventually recruiting 139 homeschooling parents (103 women and 36 men), the vast majority of which were married, to participate. All had children aged 6-12 years. The sample was significantly richer and better educated than the Israeli mean.
The adults surveyed took the Big Five Inventory Questionnaire, the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale, and provided demographic information and data about the degree of structure and length of time per week devoted to “organized instruction” in their homeschools. (p. 81) The findings were as follows:
The higher the educational level of the mother, the more time devoted to organized instruction. The richer the family, the more time devoted.
Of the big five personality traits, only conscientiousness explained a statistically significant degree of difference in organization in homeschools. The higher the conscientiousness score, the more structured the homeschool. This was only true for poorer families, because richer families were already maximally structured. Thus, being conscientious made a poorer homeschooling parent behave more like a rich one.
Avoidant attachment style was associated with a less consistent family schedule and fewer hours of formal teaching across SES brackets, and being anxious made the parent more engaged with homeschooling, especially among wealthy families.
The perfect recipe for an unstructured homeschooling household, then, is a mother with lower levels of formal education herself, avoidant attachment, and less conscientiousness.
Guterman and Neuman conclude by noting that the Israeli setting might limit generalizability of these findings, given the high levels of confidence Israelis generally express in their country’s education system and government. Acknowledging that, they nevertheless generalize that families with higher levels of wealth and education might be “better equipped” to handle the challenges posed by homeschooling.
Appraisal: This is a wonderful study to have. The sample, as is so often the case in homeschooling research, is a convenience sample taken from among homeschoolers with the resources and motivation to join weekly meetings. It is very likely that such a sample self-selects toward competence and higher status. And their caveat about Israeli confidence in national institutions is important, given how stark the difference is on that score in the United States. Nevertheless, there was enough diversity in the sample to allow meaningful findings to emerge.
These findings jostle somewhat uncomfortably with those of other studies connecting parenting style and homeschooling. Rebecca Allahyari’s case study of several families involved in a progressive co-op in Albuquerque, New Mexico connected relaxed pedagogy to attachment-style parenting and bohemianism, not to low economic status and avoidant attachment. Rebecca English, likewise, found that unschooling emerged out of a broader philosophical commitment among Australian mothers, most highly educated, to attachment-style parenting. So did Kristan Morrison. Mothers who start with natural childbirth, family bed, extended breast-feeding, aversion to vaccinations, and so forth often evolve into unschoolers.
On the other hand, this study’s findings fit nicely with Martin-Chang, Gould, and Meuse’s important study on academic achievement, which found that less structure correlates with lower achievement. While that study just found a correlation, Guterman and Neuman suggest causes–family wealth, a conscientious homeschooling teacher, and a non-avoidant attachment style.
Where to go from here? As Guterman and Neuman suggest, we need more studies of other samples to see if these results are replicable. It would be especially interesting to run these personality tests and SES variables on some of the unschoolers studied by other researchers. My wild guess would be that the results of such studies would lead us to conclude that Guterman and Neuman didn’t find actual unschoolers but rather structured homeschoolers that just weren’t as dedicated to it. I just don’t see avoidant attachment and attachment-style parenting as being compatible findings.
Milton Gaither
Messiah College