HOME-SCHOOL INTERFACE: Religious and Moral Formation in Ireland

Record: Merike Darmody, Maureen Lyons & Emer Smyth, “The home-school interface in religious and moral formation: the Irish case.” British Journal of Religious Education, 38, No. 3 (2016): 249-263. [Abstract]

Summary: Darmody and Smyth are researchers at the Economic and Social Research Institute, and Lyons is a research manager in the School of Social Justice at University College Dublin. In this article they investigate the roles that parents and school staff take in children’s faith and moral development and possible tensions that arise between parents and schools over issues relating to religious and secular beliefs in the context of the predominantly Roman Catholic Irish primary education system.

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DISTURBING THE DATA: Gender and Family Size Matters with Evangelical Homeschooling

Record: Melissa Sherfinski and Melissa Chesanko, “Disturbing the Data: Looking into Gender and Family Size Matters with US Evangelical Homeschoolers” in Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 7, no. 14 (2014): 1-18. [Abstract Here]

Summary: Sherfinski is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction/Literacy Studies at West Virginia University. Chesanko is a doctoral student in the same department. In this qualitative study, the authors examine gender matters in Evangelical homeschooling families of various sizes.

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CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION: A New Biography of Rousas Rushdoony

Record: Michael J. McVicar, Christian Reconstruction: R. J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015)

Summary:  McVicar, who teaches in the Religion department at Florida State, here provides us with a  book-length biography of one of the most important early U.S. homeschooling leaders.  Rushdoony is not always put in the same tier of standout leaders as John Holt and Raymond and Dorothy Moore, but I argued in my 2008 history of the movement that he should be.  McVicar’s lively and detailed account of the life, ideas, and influence of Rushdoony confirms me in my original belief and offers a wealth of new information not only about Rushdoony and homeschooling but about his broader significance for post-WWII American education, politics, and law.

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BUILDING GOD’S KINGDOM: Christian Reconstruction’s Influence on Homeschooling and More

Record: Julie J. Ingersoll, Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015) [Available Here]

Summary: Ingersoll is in a unique position to write a book like this.  As a young woman she was married to one of the sons of prominent Reconstructionist Bob Thoburn and was very active in several Religious Right organizations.  She and Mark Thoburn divorced in the early 1990s and Julie spent most of that decade earning a Ph.D. in Religious Studies, eventually becoming a professor at the University of North Florida.  Her dissertation was published in 2003 as Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles. This is her second book.

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HOMESCHOOLING AND YOUNG ADULT OUTCOMES: Evidence from Cardus 2011 and 2014

Record: David Sikkink and Sara Skiles, “Homeschooling and Young Adult Outcomes: Evidence from the 2011 and 2014 Cardus Education Survey” (2015): 1-16. [Available Here]

Summary: Cardus Religious Schools Initiative released their first survey in 2011 (review available here). They later released their second study in 2014 (review available here). These studies provide rare randomly sampled data about young adults who had been homeschooled in the United States. In this article David Sikkink and Sara Skiles analyze data from both studies to draw conclusions about the outcomes of homeschoolers in areas like the development of moral and religious values, family relationships, educational outcomes, and civic life.

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HARO 2014 INSTALLMENT FIVE: Religion

Record: Coalition for Responsible Home Education, “A Complex Picture: Results of the 2014 Survey of Adult Alumni of the Modern Christian Homeschool Movement, Installment Five” Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (1 April 2015). [Available Here]

Summary: This post reviews the fifth installment of HARO’s survey of homeschool alumni. For the other installments in the series please click on the following links:

1. Installment 1: Background and Summary
2. Installment 2: Demographics
3. Installment 3: Academics and Non-Academics
4. Installment 4: Food and Health
5. Installment 5: Religion

The fifth installment of HARO’s survey investigates the respondents’ religious denomination and the role that religion played in the teaching of science, politics, and economics.

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THE CHANGING CONVERSATION AROUND HOMESCHOOLING: More Data and Less Ideology

Record: Mary Rice Hasson, “The Changing Conversations around Homeschooling: An Argument for More Data and Less Ideology” in The University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy (2012*): 1-23. [First Page]

Summary: Hasson is a fellow at the Catholic Studies Program of the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. As the title suggests, she argues that policymakers should focus on the data and research behind homeschooling rather than ideological rhetoric.

Much of the article deals with how homeschooling has changed in the past 30 years.

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HOMESCHOOLED ADOLESCENTS: Drugs, Delinquency, and Grade Level

Record: Sharon Green-Hennessy, “Homeschooled Adolescents in the United States: Developmental Outcomes” in Journal of Adolescence 37, no. 4 (June 2014): 441-449 [Abstract here]

Summary:  Green-Hennessy is a psychology professor at Loyola Maryland.  After beginning with a very strong lit review, she describes the methodology of the data set she’ll be using in this study, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH).  It is a yearly, nationally representative survey of U.S. household residents age 12 and over.  Subjects are interviewed by trained professionals and paid $30 for their trouble, which results in very high response rates (between 69 and 77% during the years Green-Hennessy uses).  Green-Hennessy combined the data on children aged 12 to 17 for the years 2002-2011, which gave her 182,351 subjects overall.  The demographics of this massive sample reflects the nation at large quite well.  Since one of the questions asked on the survey was type of schooling, Green-Hennessy was able to use this data to determine to what degree homeschooling prevents or exacerbates behaviors known to put adolescents at risk for drug use.

Of the 182,351 adolescents surveyed by NSDUH between 2002 and 2011, only 1094, or .6% reported being homeschooled. 

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AFRICAN AMERICAN HOMESCHOOLERS: Religion and Race as Motivators

Record: Ama Mazama and Garvey Lundy, “African American Homeschoolers: The Force of Faith and the Reality of Race in the Homeschooling Experience” in Religion and Education (forthcoming).  [First page here]

Summary: In previous articles Mazama (of Temple University) and Lundy (of Montgomery County Community College) have drawn on what is to date the largest and most geographically diverse sample of African American homeschoolers ever collected to probe parental motivation.  In a 2012 article they first articulated what has become a standard theme of their work, the idea that African American homeschoolers are motivated largely by what they call “racial protectionism,” a desire to protect their children from the racism they often face in conventional schools.  In a 2013 piece they refined their concept, calling it “educational protectionism,” and giving it both a curricular and a pedagogical dimension.

In this article they draw on this same data to add yet another dimension to their account of parental motivation.  Here they focus particularly on religion. 

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Michael Apple on Gender, Religion, and Homeschooling

Record:

Michael W. Apple, “Gender, Religion, and the Work of Homeschooling” in Zehavit Gross, Lynn Davies, and Al-Khansaa Diab, eds., Gender, Religion and Education in a Chaotic Postmodern World (Springer, 2013). Abstract Here.

Summary:

Apple, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is one of the nation’s best-known education scholars and a long-time observer and critic of conservative educational efforts.  Readers of his 2006 book Educating the Right Way will find the contents of this new chapter very familiar.

Apple begins with a basic orientation to the homeschooling movement, noting its left-wing origins but stressing its dramatic growth among conservative Christians in the 1980s and 90s.  His preferred term for these conservative Christian movement activists is “authoritarian populists,” a phrase that acknowledges both the grass-roots nature of the movement and its long-term goal of restoring the vision of Godly and Patriarchal authority it embodies in the home to the broader American culture.

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