USE YOUR FREEDOM OF CHOICE: Australian Unschoolers and Attachment Parenting

Record: Rebecca English, “Use Your Freedom of Choice: Reasons for Choosing Homeschool in Australia” in Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning 9, no. 17 (2015): 1-18. [Avaliable Here]

Summary: English, a Lecturer in Education at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, here presents a portion of a larger qualitative study of a group of attachment parenting mothers in Queensland, all of whom are part of the same unschooling support group.  English reveals in the article that she herself is a practitioner of attachment parenting and contributes articles for a movement magazine.  She also publishes journalistic articles on this and related topics online, and maintains her own blog on the same themes.

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Transition to ICHER Reviews Section Complete

A few minutes ago I published my latest review of some homeschooling literature at the International Center for Home Education Research Reviews Section.  I’ve finally gotten the technology right so that readers who are following my facebook page will automatically receive an update whenever I post a new review.

This may be the final post I make to this particular blog.  If you have somehow stumbled upon this site and would like to read my more recent reviews, this link will take you to the reviews section of ICHER.  Thanks to everyone for many wonderful years of blogging and interacting with readers!

Milton Gaither

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The International Center for Home Education Research goes live!

Just a quick note here to alert readers to the new website for ICHER, the International Center for Home Education Research.  It is a brand new organization several homeschool researchers from around the world have been working on for some time now.  The website has a lot of very helpful information, including up-to-date summaries of homeschooling regulations in the United States and many other countries and the most comprehensive bibliography of homeschool research available anywhere, all for free.

It also has a blog.  I’m the moderator of the blog.  As you’ll see, the tone on the ICHER blog is a bit less personal than the one I’ve cultivated here.  But the content is very similar.  In fact I’m beginning the ICHER blog by re-publishing in edited form the most important blog posts on homeschool research I’ve done over the years.  I’m starting back in 2008 and working toward the present, so if you’re relatively new to this blog you might enjoy reading the posts on ICHER to see what you missed.  If you’ve been with me since 2008 you might enjoy, as I have, revisiting some of these earlier posts to refresh yourself on the content.

I plan in the future to continue both this blog and the ICHER blog.  On weeks where I do a review of a serious piece of homeschooling research I’ll likely only briefly mention it here and provide a link to the ICHER blog post.  But when I want to review less scholarly things like children’s books, movies, memoirs, and the like, I’ll continue to write them up here.  I might also on occasion make more personal comments on research here that I wouldn’t make on the more professional blog at ICHER.  Anyway, I encourage anyone who’s enjoyed my posts on this blog to check out the resources available on the new ICHER website, to like the organization on Facebook if you feel so inclined, and to follow it on Twitter at ICHER@ICHERtweet.  Thanks!

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New Cardus Comment on Homeschooling

A few months ago I reviewed the very important results of the Cardus Education Survey as they related to homeschooling.  The findings weren’t pretty.  Homeschoolers in the survey didn’t do well academically, failed at marriage, have checked out of politics, and feel that their lives are adrift.

Yesterday Jedd and Rachel Medefind posted on the Cardus site an interesting editorial that builds on these findings. 

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Last post of the year

In a moment I’m going to post the last of my entries for this calendar year.  I’ve got a busy January coming up as well, so it may be February before I’m back.  But when I do come back there will eventually be a major post that updates one from a few years ago, giving the complete data available from all of the states about homeschooling enrollment rates.  Stay tuned!

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Three Types of Homeschoolers

This post reviews Ruth Morton, “Home Education: Constructions of Choice” in International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education 3, no. 1 (October 2010) Available Here.

Morton, a doctoral student at the University of Warwick whose dissertation is a qualitative study of homeschooling motivations and practice in the United Kingdom, here gives us a taste of what the dissertation will contain, describing how there are three basic motivational types of homeschoolers.

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Guest blogger Anthony Garcia on Lessons Homeschoolers can Learn from some Research

Recently a reader named Anthony Garcia, who writes for the website Online Graduate Programs, contacted me and asked if he could review some studies that deal with homeschool burnout.  I said sure.  His reviews stress the practical lessons homeschoolers might draw from the research rather then research findings and methodology like I normally do, and they’re not really about burnout, but here goes:

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A Young Troubadour Encounters Homeschooling

This post reviews Philip Brand, The Neighbor’s Kid: A Cross-Country Journey in Search of What Education Means to Americans (Capital Research Center, 2010).

Brand, a young staffer at the Capital Research Center, a conservative non-profit best known for its opposition to labor unions and environmentalists, here recounts his experiences during the 2008-2009 school year when he and his brother took a road trip that led them across the entire United States four times.  In route he visited dozens of different kinds of schools, including several homeschools.

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Does Homeschooling Undermine the Public Interest in Children?

This post reviews J. C. Blokhuis, “Whose Custody is it Anyway?: ‘Homeschooling’ from a Parens Patriae Perspective,” in Theory and Research in Education, 8, no. 2 (August 2010): 199-222.  [Abstract available here]

Blokhuis, Assistant Professor of Education at Renison University College at the University of Waterloo in Canada, here presents a bracing challenge to the common claim that parents have a Constitutional right to raise their children as they see fit.  He does this by explaining how the common law doctrine parens patriae limits their custodial authority.  He hones in especially on how this doctrine limits homeschooling rights. 

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Three Lawyers Praise Homeschooling

This post reviews Tanya K. Dumas, Sean Gates, and Deborah R. Schwarzer, “Evidence for Homeschooling: Constitutional Analysis in Light of Social Science Research” in Widener Law Review, 16, no. 1 (September 2010): 63-87. [Abstract available here]

The authors here are all lawyers who homeschool their children.  Schwarzer particularly is well-known in California as a member of the Board of Directors of the Gifted Homeschoolers Forum and especially through her work with the Homeschool Association of California’s efforts to overturn the In re Rachel L. decision that caused such consternation back in 2008.

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