{"id":57,"date":"2012-09-10T13:35:33","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T13:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=57"},"modified":"2012-09-17T21:22:42","modified_gmt":"2012-09-17T21:22:42","slug":"student-perspectives-on-home-education-transitions-with-formal-schooling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=57","title":{"rendered":"STUDENT PERSPECTIVES ON HOME EDUCATION TRANSITIONS WITH FORMAL SCHOOLING"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:\u00a0<\/strong> Glenda Jackson, \u201cHome Education Transitions with Formal Schooling: Student Perspectives\u201d in Issues in Educational Research <\/em>17 (2007) (Available fulltext here<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Summary:\u00a0 <\/strong>Jackson<\/a>, director of the Australian Home Education Advisory Service<\/a>, here conducts three case studies of homeschooled students transitioning to and from formal schools.<\/p>\n

Jackson begins her study with a thorough review of the available literature both on homeschooling in Australia and on studies conducted in the United States and Europe on the transition of homeschoolers into other schools.\u00a0 One element lacking in most of these studies is the perspectives of the students doing the transitioning, and that is Jackson\u2019s focus in this piece.<\/p>\n

She interviewed three students: Zara, a fifteen-year-old who began her education in formal schools, homeschooled for four years, and decided on her own to go back to school; Sam, a precocious ten-year-old who had been homeschooling for two years after very negative school experiences; and Robert, an seventeen-year-old who had spent one year homeschooling with the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum while his family traveled.\u00a0 Each student was asked\u00a0for positive and negative evaluations of both approaches, what the transition was like, and what educational professionals might do to help smooth transition.\u00a0 Jackson then summarizes the results:<\/p>\n

Positives about homeschool: <\/em>all three interviewees appreciated the autonomy homeschooling gave them: flexibility, opportunity to pursue their own interests, and freedom from the tedium of textbook information at schools.<\/p>\n

Positives about school<\/em>:\u00a0 Zara liked spending time with friends at recess and lunch but hated class, Sam hated everything, especially how boring and easy school was, and Robert liked school a lot.<\/p>\n

Negatives about homeschool<\/em>: Zara missed her friends, Sam loves everything about homeschool, and Robert hated the by-the-book ACE curriculum and the social isolation he felt as his family traveled for a year.<\/p>\n

Negatives about school<\/em>: Zara didn\u2019t like how her slowness at learning made her a pariah.\u00a0 Sam experienced the exact opposite, as kids teased him for being smart.\u00a0 Robert also chafed against the normed and boring learning schools provide.<\/p>\n

Adjusting to a new learning environment<\/em>: Zara and Robert both transitioned smoothly back to school and were surprised at how they were actually ahead of their peers academically when they returned.\u00a0 Sam took some time adjusting to homeschool but now loves it.<\/p>\n

Advice for Professional Educators<\/em>: The children basically wanted school personnel to understand that homeschooling can be fun and academically nourishing\u2013that it\u2019s a good thing, not something to be feared.<\/p>\n

Jackson concludes by suggesting that her study adds weight to claims that homeschooling is neither academically nor socially restricting, and it demonstrates that homeschoolers engage in a variety of pedagogical styles, from the school-like ACE approach of Robert\u2019s family, to the semi-school-like approach of Zara\u2019s family, to the informal \u201cnatural learning\u201d style of Sam\u2019s family.\u00a0 She advises school professionals to think of homeschooling as a useful option for children who for whatever reason are struggling in traditional schools\u2013it may help them weather an uncomfortable stage in their lives so that they can eventually return to school emotionally healthy and academically stable.<\/p>\n

Appraisal:\u00a0 <\/strong>As a piece of qualitative research this study is a bit thin.\u00a0 Jackson acknowledges at several points that her three-child sample is not really sufficient to make generalizations, and she does not explain why she chose these three children.\u00a0 Increasing her sample size considerably and analyzing the responses she gets to her questions by looking for patterns by child\u2019s age and\u00a0sex,\u00a0parent pedagogical style and educational level, family\u2019s religious orientation and SES, and so on would increase her study\u2019s value.<\/p>\n

But the literature review is excellent, especially for researchers looking for work about countries other than the United States.\u00a0 American homeschooling researchers have to date paid very little attention to the emerging European and Australian literature on some of the same questions Americans are asking.\u00a0 Jackson\u2019s work provides a convenient means of helping researchers unfamiliar with this international literature to catch up.<\/p>\n

Milton Gaither, Messiah College<\/p>\n

Disclaimer:\u00a0<\/strong> 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:\u00a0 Glenda Jackson, \u201cHome Education Transitions with Formal Schooling: Student Perspectives\u201d in Issues in Educational Research 17 (2007) (Available fulltext here) Summary:\u00a0 Jackson, director of the Australian Home Education Advisory Service, here conducts three case studies of homeschooled students transitioning … 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":[10,13,16],"tags":[35,36,37,34,33],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","category-public-schools","category-socialization","tag-accelerated-christian-education","tag-ace","tag-australia","tag-australian-home-education-advisory-service","tag-glenda-jackson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","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=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}