Part I

Chapter 2: Literature Review I:

A review of home-education research

Chapter 1 set out the parameters for home-education in the UK and this chapter, the first of a two chapter literature review, moves to provide an overview of previous home-education research from both the UK and the USA.

2.1 Questionnaire Data on Home-educating Families

Lyman (1998) reported that North American federal government household surveys have begun including questions on homeschooling numbers, thus opening the way for more to be known about homeschoolers generally. In the UK, the 2001 Census, for the first time, asked questions that might reveal data on home-educated children[1]. LEAs in the UK usually send questionnaires to home-educators as and when they hear about them but there is not as yet any systematic collating and sharing of information on home-educators[2]. The information that is available from surveys of home-educators consists in the main, of feedback in the form of qualitative narration (e.g. Muckle 1999), or data relating to North American homeschoolers (e.g. Rudner 1999) although there have been attempts, albeit less recently, to collect quantitative data (e.g. Grant 1983, cited by Webb 1990) in the UK.

2.1.1 North American Questionnaire Surveys of Homeschoolers

Following analysis of 312[3] questionnaires Gustavsen (1981) suggested that moral issues were the main reason to home-educate, followed by character development, a desire to avoid competitiveness and ridicule, the poor quality of education in schools and the desire to enjoy the children at home. Gustavsen found homeschooling families, most typically: consisted of two adults and two children; came from diverse religious backgrounds; lived in rural areas; had access to learning resources; had an annual income between $15 and $20,000; included parents with 1-3 years of college each; included a mother at home; and had a father working either as a professional or in a skilled occupation.

Gladin (1987), based on questionnaire responses from 253 families[4] found that, in general, parents were college trained with above average incomes, the mother was the primary teacher and the family held religious convictions. Parents wanted to control what their children learned and both they and the children were satisfied with the home-education given and received: the homeschooling day averaged 6.06 hours per day. This latter finding accords with the Washington Department of Public Instruction 1985 finding that 56% of home-educators in their survey spent 20-30 hours a week in directed[5] activities: the WDPI further reported that 14% of known home-educators were of Hispanic, Black, Asian or Native American origin (Van Galen and Pitman 1991).

Rakestraw (1987) distributed questionnaires to 60 homeschooling families in Alabama[6]. Her purpose was to compare achievement between groups of homeschooled children, based on gender and family background, and to identify the characteristics of these families. Academically, Rakestraw found little difference between the homeschooled and traditionally schooled children. In terms of characteristics, she found that 98.3% of the main home-educators were female and 71.7% of main educators had some college education with 31.7% having completed 4 years of higher education. Only 3.3% had received no education beyond school[7], 73.3% were not certified to teach. In 96.7% of families the father earned the main income, whilst the mother was the main earner in just 1 family (1.7%). The most frequent wage earning occupations were, Engineer, Business Manager, Salesman and Minister. All the families consisted of 2 heterosexual parents and most were Caucasian (96.7%) with 4-6 children (90%). The largest group of families lived in suburban areas (48.3%), with 13.3% living in urban locations and 8.3% rurally. Rakestraw found that 91% of the families were religiously affiliated[8]. Day-to-day issues were identified: 41.7% of families home-educated in the kitchen, 26.7% used a special classroom area, 11.7% the bedroom and 8.3% the sitting-room; 20% studied up to 2.5 hours daily, 60% up to 4.5 hours and 18.3% up to 6.5 hours although 65% of the sample said that only a very small proportion of the day (up to 2.5 hours) was teacher directed. Just two families stated that they did not follow a daily plan. The families tended to make use of a wide variety of resources[9]. Instructional techniques varied with over 80% referring to field trips, direct instruction, oral work, one-to-one tutoring, household work, informal discussion, silent reading and crafts and hobbies; other methods mentioned were, projects, peer tutoring and learning centres. Evaluation was by observation (90%), grading (76.7%), Scholastic Assessment Tests (SAT®)[10] (71.7%), published tests, unpublished tests, self-evaluation and diagnostic tests. Within 76.7% of families there were no plans for the children to go to school although 65% of parents wanted their children to achieve a college degree. The nine most popular reasons for homeschooling were as follows[11]: it was the parent's responsibility to educate the children; to avoid negative peer influences; to control the instructional materials used; to preserve the child's natural instincts; to provide discipline; to retain religious freedom in education; to ensure a warm and loving environment for the children; an opportunity to instil religious, spiritual and moral values in their children; and to maintain a close relationship with the children whilst young.

Mayberry (1988) also analysed the reasons that parents opted to home-educate, finding that 65% of the sample returning questionnaires reported that they had been motivated to homeschool by religious values. Academic achievement was the main concern of 22%, social development the concern of 11% and just 2% of respondents were driven by idealistic values. Mayberry found that home-educators could be classified as either religious (65.2%), academically motivated (21.6%), social-relational[12] (11.1%), and new age (2.1%) (Taylor 1993). Mayberry (1991) found the ‘Religious’ and 'New Age' families to have ideology in common, in that both home-educated in order to preserve their way of life.

Mayberry, Knowles, Ray, and Marlow, (1995) distributed questionnaires to legally authorised homeschoolers in three American states, resulting in a 25% response rate. They concluded that the homeschooling movement expansion is a response to increasing criticism of state education, growing through the sophisticated networking that now occurs between home-educating families. Networking, they conclude, can resolve concerns about isolation and to an extent demolish the argument that homeschooled children become socially handicapped. Fifty percent more homeschooling parents than state schooling parents were college graduates and 63% of the mothers were responsible for 90% of the homeschooling. Parents felt that they were more able than schoolteachers in educating their children. Home life was stressful for the mother because of the interruption to normal routine that arose as a result of the children being continually at home and, particularly so if the family followed a time-table or simulated school. Families taking a holistic approach where learning was an extension of normal life were less stressed: physical, academic, psychological and moral development was central to the families’ activities and to these parents’ teaching. Support from family and friends was essential. The majority of parents also wanted access to academic courses in school and to extra curricula activities. Flexi-schooling, described in Meighan (1988a) was an educational model that appealed to many families. Generally, homeschooling families shunned bids by authorities to organise their educational programme. Families were often absorbed with the gathering of resources, preferring to search outside conventional sources.

Ray (1997) (n=5,402) found homeschooling fathers to be most commonly working as accountants, engineers, professors, lawyers and small business owners. Further, Lyman (1998) reported on a Florida Department of Education survey finding that in Florida, 42% of homeschoolers (n=695[13]) said they homeschooled because of school-related concerns.

Rudner (1999) conducted a survey of 11,930 homeschooling North American families. He found that the parents tended to have a more formal education than those in the population generally, i.e. 66.2% of fathers and 56.7% of mothers[14], had a Bachelors degree and above, and that they had significantly higher incomes than the national average. Most of the homeschoolers (97.2%) lived in married couple families and 33.5% of families had more than 4 children (as opposed to the 6.1% national average).

Whilst the US studies provide a context to the current research, their limitations should be noted, namely, many of the samples do not represent homeschoolers at a national level (ie. Mayberry et al. 1995, Rakestraw 1987, Shyers 1992) and studies often rely upon information from organised and legally authorised homeschoolers (ie. Mayberry et al. 1995), often with religious affiliation (eg. Ray 1991, 1997). There is little US research involving secular and ethnic minority families or research focusing on the qualitative experience of parent and child homeschoolers there. The overarching concern to be considered from the US research is the reliance upon data from middle-class white religious America (NcfES 2001).

2.1.2 British Questionnaire Surveys of Home-educators

Following the distribution of her questionnaire through the 'Education Otherwise' newsletter in 1983, Grant received 173 replies from home-educators (Webb 1990). She found that 74.5% of parents had been concerned with the moral and social attitudes prevalent in schools; 36.42% of parents believed that they could educate their children as well as school; 34% were motivated by a desire for an alternative lifestyle, 31.7% of respondents’ children had experienced difficulty in school and 15% were motivated by religious values.

In 1995 Paterson conducted a postal questionnaire survey of Scottish Grampian home-educators, identifying 35 from a possible 50 families in the region and obtaining responses from 28 families. She found that the three main reasons for home-educating were dissatisfaction with school, a belief that the parents were the best placed to provide an education, and religion. Most of the families did not have a set structure or routine to the day and were willing to negotiate with their children over the timing and content of their learning.

Brunton (1996) also undertook a questionnaire study of 20 Scottish families[15] in order to establish their motivation to home-educate and families' attitudes towards the Internet. Parental reasons for home-educating were religious and moral (20%); because the parents had their own 'value system' (20%); because they did not like school (15%); they objected to school's emphasis on technology (10%); and one family home-educated because they came from overseas (5%)[16]. Modern technology was used by 55% of families but disregarded by 25%: 70% said they would or did, use the Internet, whilst 10% said they would not. Asked what they wanted from the Internet, 70% said they valued its accessibility to resources and people, 65% said it was useful for information and 55% wanted access to journals and books through the Internet. Brunton concluded that the Internet alleviated isolation.

Dix (1998) used a questionnaire survey to compare schooled and home-educated teenage girls[17]. She found that whilst 'fitting in' was an issue for home-educated teenagers whose behaviour was in some ways similar to schooled teenagers, there was no evidence that they minded being 'different', some even relishing that difference. She also cited possible evidence that the cost of home-education in terms of the loss of one income impinged upon the children's dress style, with the home-educated children being more likely to purchase their clothes in second-hand shops than fashion shops[18]. It was conceivable however, that the home-educated children's standards of dress resulted from their 'different' values and or, from their lack of exposure to school-based social pressures.

Muckle (1997) collated information from 20 members of 'EO'[19] who returned questionnaires during 1996/7. Rather than analyse the data, Muckle chose to organise and present it as a compilation of responses from children and their parents. Her research therefore provided an unusual insight into the experiences of these families. Muckle found that, together, the comments illustrated the diversity amongst home-educators, concluding:

'The experiences vary and sometimes contradict each other, just like life.'

Muckle (1999)

2.2 Interviews with Home-educating Families

In recent years, there have been a number of UK studies involving interviews with home-educators (Blacker 1981; Webb 1990, 1999; Lowden 1993; Page 1997; Thomas 1997 and 1998) besides a number of overseas studies, for example, Taylor (1993) and Knowles (1991).

Blacker (1981) represents one of the earliest studies of home-education in the UK and remains one of the most comprehensive. Blacker interviewed 16 families[20] to ascertain whether Kitto’s[21] categorisation of home-educators into one of three groups, ‘Competitors’, ‘Rebels’ or ‘Compensators’, would be supported. Kitto had proposed that ‘competitors’ were competing with the system, ‘rebels’ rebelling against it and ‘compensators’ trying to make amends after a problem in school. As a result of the interviews, Blacker concluded that members could indeed be classified into these three categories:

· ‘Competitors’ were formally qualified, well read parents, who were competing with school to give their children a better education; often, such parents had made the decision to home-educate before the birth of the children, believing that learning begins at birth; the child centred curriculum was balanced and private tutors incorporated as necessary, together with participation in events attended by other similar minded families.

· ‘Compensators’ agreed with the philosophy of school but had taken one of their children out of school for a specific reason and were attempting to make up for the school’s failure with their child: seven of the ten ‘Compensators’ in Blacker’s study intended returning their children to school and each of these families considered that their situation was unique.

· ‘Rebels’ were those parents who had chosen an ‘alternative’ life style, they were concerned for their individual freedom and rejected social institutions; they believed education should be autonomous and that a parent’s role in education was to facilitate learning: such notions were a source of friction with the local education authority.

Blacker classified five families as ‘Competitors’ and one family as ‘Rebels’. Despite a sample size that prevented in-depth exploration of families within these categories, Blacker’s research revealed an unusual insight into home-educators' motives during the 1980’s. Contrasted with later studies, (i.e. Webb 1990; Knowles 1991; Knowles and Muchmore 1995; Lowden 1993) Blacker’s categories appear over simplistic: it may be that home-educators' motivations have become more complex in the 1990s or that contemporary researchers have far wider access to a larger and more diverse cross-section of home-educators than was the case for Blacker 20 years ago, as can be inferred from the work of Thomas (1998).

On the theme of classification, Webb in 1988 (Petrie1992)[22] concluded that Blacker’s categorisation of UK home-educators was inappropriate. However, Webb’s (1990) case studies appear to classify their reasons for home-educating into categories broadly sympathetic to Blacker’s.

In 1991 Van Galen (Van Galen and Pitman 1991) divided North American homeschoolers into two groups, ‘ideologues’ and ‘pedagogues’:

· ‘Ideologues’ object to what is taught in schools and seek to strengthen intra-family relationships: they hold traditional, conservative and specific values, following a philosophy of Christian fundamentalism. The reasons that ‘Ideologues’ turn to home-education may be as a quest for an alternative to school, for health reasons, academic difficulties or because they disagree with the curriculum taught in school. These reasons then shift, however, as they meet with other homeschooling families and absorb a shared philosophy, coming to believe they are following God’s will by accepting an imposed responsibility for their children.

· ‘Pedagogues’ have educational reasons for homeschooling: school teaching is viewed as inept and the parents want to foster a broader interest in learning. ‘Pedagogues’ hold teaching skills and read up on education and child developmental issues: they tend to see homeschooling as symbolic of independence and as way to avoid the inefficient, non-professional bureaucracy of society. Although their reasons for home-educating may be similar to the ‘ideologues’, some ‘pedagogues’ may never have experienced difficulties with institutionalised schooling, believing that children learn in unique and natural ways, and that they are ‘claiming’ responsibility for their children as opposed to the ‘ideologues’ idea of ‘accepting’ it. ‘Pedagogues’ publicly proclaim their competence at educating their children without interference from institutions.

‘Ideologues’ follow structured learning routines whereas ‘pedagogues’ follow a child-led curriculum, using household resources in self directed, individual learning. ‘Pedagogues’ take a light-hearted view of opposition to their decision to home-educate and feel less need for support groups. The opposite is true of ‘Ideologues’. Van Galen’s ‘pedagogues’ and ‘ideologues’ equate loosely with Blacker’s ‘competitors’ and ‘compensators’, albeit without the religious intent, and therefore can be raised in support of her theory of home-educator 'types'. Conceivably ‘rebel’ home-educators do not exist in the United States, but it is more likely there were no such families in Van Galen’s study. The categorisation of home-educators is questionable; sample characteristics may vary, but within and between national cultures there may be many more ‘types’, with new ones emerging, or there may be no such clearly definable types at all.

Webb (1990) focused on home-educated children above 14 years of age, conducting twenty interviews with twenty families, each interview lasting two hours. Most of Webb's sample self-selected in response to a request in the ‘EO’ newsletter. Webb expected to find families motivated to home-educate by the writings of Ivan Illich, John Holt, Freire, Ian Lister and Roland Meighan, and that ideological values along with a quest for an alternative life style, lay behind decisions to home-educate. These expectations were probably based on the influences that had subsequently led her to partially home-educate her own child and also upon Grant's questionnaire returns in 1983 (Webb 1990 p.35). Webb pondered the profound influence which she believed Holt to have had on contemporary home-educators; however, only two of her study’s twenty families appear to have mentioned Holt at all, leading Webb to hypothesise that the other eighteen families were perhaps, ‘untypical of home-educators generally’. Her support for this theory is taken from a ‘casual reading' of the 'EO' literature, citing particularly the ‘Aims'[23] of 'EO'. Van Galen and Pitman (1991) describe networks, such as 'EO', as self perpetuating bodies with primary motives displaced by group attributes[24]. Displacement of parent’s initial reasoning as the group influence is absorbed, is possibly one reason why Holt appears to have been a major motivating influence on home-educators: whilst most members of ‘EO’ may have heard of John Holt, only a very few would name him as an initial motivation or even have heard of him before joining ‘EO’. Perhaps there are parents turning to home-education who initially had no philosophy beyond feeling that their children, for whatever reason, would benefit by not being at school.

Writing in 1990, Webb made scant reference to the religious groups who may account for such a large proportion of home-educators today[25]. She found little to suggest that parents used their children’s educational curriculum to promote their own ideals, suggesting, however, that this might be the case with the ‘American fundamentalist-style parent, home-educating for religious reasons, who is becoming evident in the UK’.

Webb (1990) found that the two main reasons for home-education amongst her sample were an interest in alternative education and school based problems; a number of home-educated children in her study had suffered psychologically from previous attendance at several schools, sometimes being labelled as ‘maladjusted’. Meighan (1995) supported Webb in this observation. Yet other children, those who had spent part or all of their education outside school, felt they were victims of ostracism by their schooled peers. Many of the parents in Webb’s study would have preferred an alternative school such as Steiner, had such a school been accessible to them. Some parents saw home-educating as a compensation for their not being able to pay for private school education. Although not stated, Webb inferred that the parents who home-educated because they wanted total responsibility for their children and to spend as much time as possible with them, were in the minority. Webb discovered, that eleven of her twenty families had at least one parent who was a teacher: she held that amongst the home-educators who did not join ‘E.O.’ there would be even more, the teachers having less need to join a support group. Webb conjectured that children learning at home experienced true involvement in directing their learning and concluded that more people would home-educate if they knew this to be a legitimate option.

Lowden (1993) studied the scope and implications of home-based education and included interviews with twenty-two families from England and Wales, all ‘EO’ members who had publicised themselves in some way. Eight of the selection were teachers and Lowden perceived them as interesting cases for further study, having made a different choice for their children to that made for children in their daily working life. From the interviews conducted and from his own previous research, Lowden believed that most families made their decision to home-educate when their child was around five years of age rather than at birth or from philosophical reasoning. He found generally that parents home-educated as a response to difficulties their child was facing at school, although an important concern was a dissatisfaction with the values of schools and the loss of control over their child’s educational experiences. He further surmised from a reading of ‘EO’ literature, that 20% of the children in home-educating families in England and Wales have special educational needs. Lowden concluded with a suggestion that home-educating families might be categorised as either Ideologues or Pedagogues, categories broadly similar to those of Van Galen (Van Galen and Pitman (1991); although discussing Kitto's three classifications, Lowden considered families to be transient, moving between those categories.

Taylor (1993)[26] spent over 100 hours studying three Christian households in the USA, finding that whilst traditional academic outcomes could be replicated in the home, the introduction of such objectives inhibited some of the finer qualities of home-based learning. She surmised that school-style 'testing' introduced a philosophy at variance with Christian family values and that the tasks set in schools carried little merit in the home. Taylor further determined that family life organised around 'school' at home was at the cost of richer, more productive pursuits. Despite finding varying degrees of school replication in the four homes visited, Taylor concluded that above all, there was a 'family closeness' unchallenged by the demands of school and peer pressure, and the opportunity for families to access 'rich educational experiences'. Page (1997) interviewed twenty Christian families, the majority Catholics, exploring mothers' and fathers' reactions to home-education and the effect on the children of the individual attention received. He perceived the children to be academically competent and found the families to be close, with far more involvement from fathers than might ordinarily be the case had the children been at school.

Thomas (1997, 1998)[27] described an investigation of children’s informal learning processes. The research used home-education as a vehicle upon which to base theories of children’s informal learning that could not be so well tested with schoolchildren. Thomas challenged the view that school age children need to be taught in order to learn. One hundred interviews with home-educating parents in Australia and the UK were conducted with parents describing how they taught their children and how the children learned. Thomas found that over time, most home-educating families adopted less formal learning patterns than those originally initiated. He attributed this change to a manoeuvre by the children, possibly without conscious intent, to orchestrate a learning programme to suit their needs: just as the parents of young babies respond to signals from their infant, home-educating parents were seen to take cues from their children beyond school age and in more advanced learning situations, avoiding the necessity for formal teaching. Thomas hypothesised that on entering school, children lost the art of informal learning, at least to the degree experienced by children who had not been at school. The type of learning that occurred naturally was very different from that of school; the children at home were able to freely follow streams of thought that linked in with everyday life and although this learning style was slow and not always apparent, links were gradually made that showed themselves at a later date. Thomas observed that even in formal home learning, topics of interest were allowed to surface and be discussed that did not necessarily relate to the lesson being addressed at that time. In this way children developed a motivation for independent learning. Thomas did not deny that schoolchildren also learn in this way, but that children might not need to undergo the style of learning normally associated with schools. Thomas concluded that intellectual development, particularly during early years, might happen naturally and incidentally without formal learning and moreover, if such an education was not better than school learning, it was at least equal to it.

Thomas' findings appeared to expound the scaffolding and social constructivist theories of Bruner and Vygotsky. Thomas believed that the natural learning he observed was not happening in isolation but was the result of interactions, some level of intervention being necessary, at least to facilitate the learning that enabled developmental unfolding and maturation. This viewpoint is echoed, for example, in Thomas (1998 pp 71, 129).

Webb (1999) interviewed twenty adults who had formerly been home-educated, with the aim of establishing how such children had developed. None of the young adults was unemployed, three having graduated from Oxford University. Only about 30% of the sample contemplated home-education for their own children; a finding that contrasts with that of Knowles (1991) who found that the 10[28] adults he interviewed (all themselves homeschooled as children), who had become parents (n=7[29]) had all chosen to homeschool their own children. The grandchildren of one participant were currently being homeschooled, creating a third generation of homeschoolers. Webb, however, explained that many of her sample believed that their parents had made 'sacrifices' that they in turn, would not wish to make. The sample were positive about their home-education, believing themselves to have benefited from the experience. Socially, Webb found, as did Knowles (1991), that the home-educated were at ease with a broad cross-section of the community; she described their social skills as 'often very exceptional', finding too, that the home-grown home-educated sample were independent thinkers.

2.3 Summary of the US and UK research on home-educators

The above research suggests home-educators to be a very diverse section of the community and one that is, perhaps, difficult to segregate into 'types'. Earlier attempts to identify classes of home-educators (e.g. Blacker 1981) have been supported, indirectly, by Van Galen (Van Galen and Pitman 1991) and Lowden (1993), despite some criticism (e.g. Webb 1988).

Literature Review I Endnotes