{"id":4210,"date":"2019-10-05T18:35:54","date_gmt":"2019-10-05T18:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=4210"},"modified":"2019-10-05T18:35:54","modified_gmt":"2019-10-05T18:35:54","slug":"stem-and-homeschooling-parents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=4210","title":{"rendered":"STEM and Homeschooling Parents"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:\u00a0<\/strong>Courtney Gann and Dan Carpenter, “STEM Educational Activities and the Role of the Parent in the Home Education of High School Students” in\u00a0Educational Review<\/em> 71, no. 2 (2019): 166-181. [Abstract Here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Summary:\u00a0<\/strong>Gann is a former doctoral student at Texas Tech University, and Carpenter was previously her adviser at Texas Tech but now is an Associate Professor<\/a> of STEAM Education at Concordia University.\u00a0 Here they present the second article they have published together on the topic of STEM education and homeschooling.<\/p>\n

This article is based upon the same study they conducted for their first article<\/a>.\u00a0 It begins with a solid literature review that is entirely different than the equally compelling review presented in the first piece.\u00a0 This time there is less emphasis on the overall homeschooling phenomenon and more on scholarship specific to the practices of parent-educators.\u00a0 Special attention is paid to findings that homeschooling parents use an eclectic mix of practices and styles,\u00a0use community resources like libraries and cooperatives at high rates,\u00a0and serve more as facilitators than actual teachers for their high school children.<\/p>\n

The study itself is described next, and it is exactly what Gann and Carpenter described last time: two phases–first a quantitative survey of 29 families, then a set of home visits, observations, and interviews of 10 of those families, all of whom had high school students and all of whom attended the same co-op, which Gann, a former chemistry teacher<\/a>, also attended for two years.<\/p>\n

Using the three main themes of the lit review (eclectic pedagogy, community resources, and facilitator role), Gann and Carpenter present their findings under the following headings:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Eclectic<\/strong>: STEM homeschooling parents used a variety of curricular activities to teach the content.\u00a0 Students had a primary means of content delivery, be it an online class, a tutor, or self-study.\u00a0 This was supplemented for some with lab work, for others with videos or manipulatives.\u00a0 Additionally, some STEM students were enrolled in team activities (science clubs, 4-H, summer camps, etc.) or went on field trips with their families.<\/li>\n
  2. Community:<\/strong> The co-op itself is obviously a vital community resource for this group of homeschoolers.\u00a0 Parents also took advantage of local tutors with expertise in STEM fields\u00a0 and of local library resources.<\/li>\n
  3. Parent Role:<\/strong> STEM parents tended to serve more as facilitators helping smooth their high-school aged child’s path of self-directed study than as actual didactic teachers of the subject mater.\u00a0 They also counselled their child, offering guidance and encouragement when needed.\u00a0 Some parents served as the actual teacher of STEM-related courses offered by the cooperative.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    After a discussion that basically just restates the findings, the authors conclude with some implications.\u00a0 First, they suggest that their subjects presented here might serve as models other homeschoolers might want to take inspiration from, most notably with the robust co-op offering rigorous STEM courses and enrichment opportunities (like a robotics team).\u00a0 Second, they acknowledge the limitations of studying only one close-knit group of homeschoolers all from the same co-op, counseling against generalizing from these findings and calling for more research on other samples of both older and younger students.<\/p>\n

    Appraisal<\/strong>:<\/strong> Readers familiar with Gann and Carpenter’s first article<\/a> published in 2018 will likely be a bit disappointed in that this new article really offers no new scholarship.\u00a0 The findings are more or less (actually, a little less) the same as those of the earlier piece, and those findings don’t really add much to our knowledge of what homeschoolers are doing.\u00a0 In my review of the last article I chided the authors for not divulging the demographics of their sample, speculating that it was likely richer, whiter, and better educated than the homeschooling average.\u00a0 I also noted that much previous research has found a small but consistent “math gap<\/a>” in achievement between homeschooled children and their demographically equals in institutional schools.<\/p>\n

    What I enjoyed the most in this second article from Gann and Carpenter was in fact the literature review.\u00a0 It discusses several sources, some published but some not, that I had not previously encountered related to homeschoolers and STEM.\u00a0 Future researchers interested in the topic would do well to attend carefully to the bibliography cited here.<\/p>\n

    Milton Gaither, Messiah College<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Record:\u00a0Courtney Gann and Dan Carpenter, “STEM Educational Activities and the Role of the Parent in the Home Education of High School Students” in\u00a0Educational Review 71, no. 2 (2019): 166-181. [Abstract Here] Summary:\u00a0Gann is a former doctoral student at Texas Tech … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[1871,1822,1821,1831,1819,1823],"class_list":["post-4210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curriculum","category-pedagogy","tag-concordia-university","tag-courtney-gann","tag-dan-carpenter","tag-educational-review","tag-stem","tag-texas-tech-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4210","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=4210"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4213,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4210\/revisions\/4213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}