{"id":284,"date":"2012-10-18T15:45:35","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T15:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=284"},"modified":"2014-02-12T19:38:13","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T19:38:13","slug":"the-home-education-of-children-with-special-needs-a-british-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=284","title":{"rendered":"THE HOME-EDUCATION OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS: A British Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:<\/strong> Sarah Parsons and Ann Lewis, \u201cThe Home-Education of Children with Special Needs or Disabilities in the UK: Views of Parents from an Online Survey\u201d in International Journal of Inclusive Education<\/em> 14, no. 1 (February 2010): 67-86.<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong> Parsons<\/a>, research fellow at the University of Birmingham, and Lewis<\/a>, a professor at the same institution, came to this project after an earlier study of parents of children with disabilities kept running into anomalies.\u00a0 Parsons and Lewis kept finding parents who didn\u2019t fit their survey categories because they had pulled their kids out of schools.\u00a0 7% of the sample of their earlier study had done this, which was a surprise to Parsons and Lewis.\u00a0 They were further surprised at how many of these parents expressed frustration that their choices and views weren\u2019t being taken into consideration in the original study.\u00a0 As Parsons and Lewis put it, \u201cour interest (and conscience) pricked, we were determined to find out more about these \u2018invisible\u2019 families.\u201d (p. 68)\u00a0 So they created an online survey for homeschooling families with special needs kids and got 27 British parents to fill it out.\u00a0 Here is what they found:<\/p>\n

Demographically, the respondents were nearly all female and white.\u00a0 Educational level of the mothers ranged widely.\u00a0 Interestingly, only about half self-identified as Christian.\u00a0 Their children\u2019s special needs ranged widely, though the most frequently cited disability was Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD).\u00a0 The majority of these families pulled their child out of school because of a felt sense that the child\u2019s unique needs were not being adequately addressed.\u00a0 Two-thirds of them were not ideologically committed to homeschooling (and many had other children still in school), but turned to it out of frustration with institutional schooling, what the authors call the \u201cpush factor.\u201d\u00a0 As one mother put it, \u201cWe are not choosing home education as an alternative lifestyle choice, but have been left with no other acceptable option.\u201d (p. 77)<\/p>\n

What is pushing these parents away?\u00a0 The most frequently cited reason was child unhappiness, stress, or depression at school, followed closely by bullying.\u00a0 Significantly, NO respondents cited a desire to impart moral or religious beliefs to their children.<\/p>\n

Why did they choose homeschooling?\u00a0 Mostly for the flexibility and freedom for children to learn at their own pace.<\/p>\n

Drawbacks?\u00a0 All but three respondents mentioned cons to their choice, ranging from the cost for materials to loss of free time and increased strain on the mother.\u00a0 A couple mentioned social disapproval of their decision from outsiders.<\/p>\n

What do they do?\u00a0 Most say they began with a fairly rigid school-at-home approach but have gradually relaxed methodology.\u00a0 Though a few were on the extremes of high and low levels of structure, most respondents congregated in the middle.\u00a0 Most claimed they weren\u2019t following the British National Curriculum, but when they described their activities, the same basic subjects were covered by nearly everyone.<\/p>\n

After summarizing their results, Parsons and Lewis ask what their data means for public policy toward children with special needs.\u00a0 They note that, despite the popularity of inclusion models among policy makers, parents in many studies have expressed more satisfaction with educational models that are tailored to their child\u2019s particular disability rather than having their child mainstreamed in regular classrooms.\u00a0 This is especially the case for children with ASD.\u00a0 The authors remind us that the majority of these parents did not \u201cchoose\u201d homeschooling but felt that it was thrust upon them because of the lack of better options.\u00a0 Would better options bring these families back?\u00a0 Perhaps.\u00a0 But what would that look like?<\/p>\n

One of the hot topics in British education evidently is \u201cpersonalization\u201d\u2013the move toward a more \u201clearner-centred curriculum that can be delivered flexibly and is based on individual needs and targets.\u201d (p.83).\u00a0 As promising as that sounds, Parsons and Lewis note that to date children with special needs have not been given much attention under this new paradigm.\u00a0 But raising academic standards has.\u00a0 The authors conclude that the goal of personalization should focus more on student needs than on pre-ordained academic outcomes.<\/p>\n

Appraisal: <\/strong>Though the sample size is small and not at all controlled, the points made by these homeschooling special educators echo points made by others writing about the homeschooling of special needs kids.\u00a0 Most notable are the recurring theme that for children with special needs, the \u201cpush factors\u201d of negative school experiences seem to best explain the move toward homeschooling, and that these families are often not like the typical conservative Christian homeschool stereotype.<\/p>\n

It is also notable that these researchers were able to get published in a reputable journal using a very simple methodology, a small sample, and fairly cursory data.\u00a0 This topic of homeschooling and special education is crying out for more rigorous attention.<\/p>\n

Milton Gaither, Messiah College, author of Homeschool: An American History<\/a>\"\"<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/strong>:\u00a0 The views expressed in reviews are not the official views of ICHER or of its members.\u00a0 For more information about ICHER\u2019s Reviews, please see the \u00ab\u00a0About these Reviews \u00bb Section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Record: Sarah Parsons and Ann Lewis, \u201cThe Home-Education of Children with Special Needs or Disabilities in the UK: Views of Parents from an Online Survey\u201d in International Journal of Inclusive Education 14, no. 1 (February 2010): 67-86. Summary: Parsons, research … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10,17],"tags":[228,233,232,234,141,185,229,235,227,231,230],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","category-special-needs","tag-ann-lewis","tag-asd","tag-autistic-spectrum-disorder","tag-british-national-curriculum","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-international-journal-of-inclusive-education","tag-personalization","tag-sarah-parsons","tag-special-education","tag-university-of-birmingham"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1156,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/1156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}