ARE HOMESCHOOLERS PREPARED FOR COLLEGE CALCULUS?: Math Achievement

Record: Christian P. Wilkens, Carol H. Wade, Gerhard Sonnert and Philip M. Sadler, “Are Homeschoolers Prepared for College Calculus?” in Journal of School Choice, 9, no. 1 (2015): 30-48. [Abstract]

Summary: Christian P. Wilkens and Carol H. Wade teach in the Department of Education and Human Development, College at Brockport. Gerhard Sonnert and Philip M. Sadler teach in the Science Education Department, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University. As the title implies, the authors investigate the preparation and success of homeschooled students in college calculus. 

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GROWN UNSCHOOLERS’ EVALUATIONS OF UNSCHOOLING: Report II

Record: Peter Gray and Gina Riley, “Grown Unschoolers’ Evaluations of Their Unschooling Experiences: Report II on a Survey of 75 Unschooled Adults” in Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning 4, no. 2 (2015): 8-32. [Abstract]

Summary: Gray is a professor of psychology at Boston College, and Riley is an educational psychologist who teaches courses at Hunter College and Mercy College. This post will review the second report of their two part series about unschoolers’ evaluations of their unschooling experiences. In Report I they performed a literature review, discussed their methodology, and described some general findings about their sample’s unschooling experiences. In Report II they address the participants’ experiences with higher education and careers.

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IS ALL PREPARATION EQUAL: Homeschoolers at Community Colleges

Record: Molly H. Duggan, “Is All College Preparation Equal? Pre-Community College Experiences of Home-Schooled, Private-Schooled, and Public-Schooled Students” in Community College Journal of Research and Practice 34, no. 1 (2010): 25-38. [Preview Here]

Summary: Duggan, who has written several other articles about various aspects of homeschooling and the community college experience, here adds to her growing body of work on the topic by reporting the results of a survey she conducted that sought to compare the pre-college preparation of homeschoolers to that of conventionally-schooled students attending the same community college.

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HOMESCHOOLED STUDENTS IN COLLEGE: A Longitudinal Follow-Up

Record: Mary Beth Bolle-Brummond and Roger D. Wessel, “Homeschooled Students in College: Background Influences, College Integration, and Environmental Pull Factors” in Journal of Research in Education 22, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 223-249 [Available here]

Summary: The article before us today is a longitudinal follow up to a 2007 article published by the same authors plus T. M Mulvihill in the Journal of College Student Development.   The earlier article had found that homeschooled students experienced transition to college in ways that were not very different than what conventionally-schooled students experienced.  The original study drew on data from 2005.

The authors returned to the same students in 2010 to track their progress.  They wanted to know if homeschooling had produced any kind of difference in subsequent college experience from their peers. 

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THE TRANSMISSION OF VALUES: Do Homeschooled Christian Kids Keep the Faith as Adults?

Record: Braden Ryan Hoelzle, “The Transmission of Values and the Transition into Adulthood Within the Context of Home Education” in Journal of Research on Christian Education 22, no. 3 (2013), pp. 244-263.

Summary:  Hoelzle, a doctoral student in education at Southern Methodist University, here presents the results of a qualitative study of four young adults, all of whom had been homeschooled for eight or more years.  His goal was to assess the success of the strategy of using homeschooling to pass on parental religious and moral values.

Hoelzle reveals at the outset that he himself is an evangelical Christian who is hoping to use homeschooling as a way to transmit his values to his own children.  But so far the scholarship on this question is very thin.  He mentions Brian Ray’s oft-cited but methodologically weak 2004 survey of young adults who had been homeschooled, finding its generalizations too generic.  He wants to know in a deeper, richer way just what homeschooled children think about the religious convictions of their parents once they leave.

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HOMESCHOOLED AT A CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY: A Comparison with Public and Private Schoolers

Record: Marc Snyder, “An Evaluative Study of the Academic Achievement of Homeschooled Students Versus Traditionally Schooled Students Attending a Catholic University” in Catholic Education (March 2013): 288-308. [Available Here]

Summary: Snyder, who has spent many years teaching in the Catholic school system, here summarizes in a single article the results of his doctoral dissertation, which I have previously summarized here.

Snyder begins with a brief lit review and historical introduction to homeschooling, both of which are solid.  He then lays out his five research questions, all of which seek to compare home educated college students with those who attended private schools and public schools:

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WHY WE NEED HOMESCHOOLING: Perry Glanzer Critiques Democratic Education

Record: Perry L. Glanzer, “Saving Democratic Education from Itself: Why We Need Homeschooling” in Peabody Journal of Education 88, no. 3 (2013): 342-354.

Summary: Glanzer, an education professor at Baylor University, here argues that homeschooling provides a helpful corrective to reductive definitions of education fostered by some advocates of public schooling.

His fundamental point is that many public school advocates have raised the concept of education for political citizenship to such a high level that it has become something like an established religion. 

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Brian Ray’s Philosophical Argument for Homeschooling

Record: Brian D. Ray, “Homeschooling Associated with Beneficial Learner and Societal Outcomes but Educators Do Not Promote It” in Peabody Journal of Education 88, no. 3 (2013): 324-341.

Summary:

Ray is without question the most influential researcher in homeschooling given his many decades of work as the head of the high profile National Home Education Research Institute, a research/advocacy organization that has produced a steady stream of reports demonstrating the academic and social benefits of homeschooling, most of them funded by the Home School Legal Defense Association.  Ray has also for decades worked the homeschooling lecture circuit and has appeared as a pro-homeschooling expert witness in dozens of court cases.  In this article he moves beyond his usual empirical arguments to make more philosophical arguments in favor of homeschooling and against its critics.

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Higher Education and Homeschooling Redux: Jones and Gloeckner Ten Years Later

Record: Gene W. Gloeckner and Paul Jones, “Reflections on a Decade of Changes in Homeschooling and the Homeschooled into Higher Education,” Peabody Journal of Education 88, no. 3 (2013): 309-323.

Summary:  Gloeckner, an education professor at Colorado State University, and Jones, interim president of Georgia College and State University, here revisit the two questions they first addressed in two widely cited 2004 pieces about homeschooling and higher education, both published in the special issue dedicated to that theme by the Journal of College Admission.  The questions concerned 1. the success of homeschooled students in college when compared with students from conventional schools, and 2. the perception of admissions officers about homeschooled applicants.

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HOMESCHOOLING AND SOCIALIZATION REVISITED

Record: Richard G. Medlin, “Homeschooling and the Question of Socialization Revisited,” in Peabody Journal of Education 88, no. 3 (2013): 284-297.

Summary:

Medlin, a psychology professor at Stetson University, here continues a line of inquiry he began in one of the landmark articles of the original 2000 Peabody Journal homeschooling special issue.  Since that article he has published several pieces in the journal Home School Researcher, all of which find very positive results for homeschoolers’ social and academic development.  In this piece his goal is to review research on homeschooler socialization that has appeared since his 2000 article.

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