Why do Conservative Catholics and Muslims Homeschool?

This post reviews Jeff Humason, “Homeschoolers on Homeschooling: In Their Own Words” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toledo, 2012) [available here]

Humason, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toledo with experience both as a public school teacher/administrator and as a Catholic homeschooling father of six (one of whom attends a public school), here presents the results of a series of interviews he conducted with several homeschooling parents to ascertain why they do what they do.

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Homeschooling in Turkey

This post briefly reviews Elife Doğan Kılıç and Özgür Önen, “Homeschooling in Turkey” in US-China Education Review B 1 (2012): 113-123. [Available here]

Kılıç, an education professor at Sinop University in Turkey, and Önen, an education professor at Akif Ersoy University also in Turkey, here present the results of a survey of 20 Turkish teachers as to the viability of homeschooling in the Turkish context.

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British Researchers on Reading to Children

This post reviews Clare Kelly, Eve Gregory, and Ann Williams, “Home to School to Home: Syncretised Literacies in Lingustic Minority Communities” in Ofelia Garcia and Colin Baker, eds., Bilingual Education: An Introductory Reader (Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2007).

This essay is one of several chapters in a comprehensive reader on bilingual education.  The researchers compare and contrast the way home cultures in monolingual native British and polylingual immigrant families impart literacy to their children. 

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Loh-Ludher on Homeschooled Malaysian Women

This post reviews Lee Lee Loh-Ludher, “The Socioeconomic Context of Home-Based Learning by Women in Malaysia” in Distance Education 28, no. 2 (August 2007): 179-193.

Loh-Ludher, founder of the University for Education and Development in Battambang, Cambodia, here describes the challenges faced by poor women in Malaysia and the hope that home-based tutoring holds out for them. 

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Neil MacFarquhar on Muslim Homeschooling

A recent New York Times piece  by Neil MacFarquhar titled “Resolute or Fearful, Many Muslims Turn to Homeschooling,” while not exactly educational research, does offer some hard-to-come-by data on homeschooling among Muslims.  It also raises important questions for the broader homeschooling movement.  Until more substantive research on homeschooling among American Muslims is produced, we will have to make do with journalism.

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