INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON HOME EDUCATION: Do We Still Need Schools?

International Perspectives of Home Education discusses home-based education in a wide variety of countries such as the UK, USA, Australia, Israel, Afghanistan, Norway, Germany and more. The volume was edited by Paula Rothermel, a UK academic in the field of home education. She is Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and Elected Associated Fellow of the British Psychological Society (ABPS). She also coordinates the International Network for Research into Home Education, a global community of scholars interested in home education research.

 

Over the next several weeks, all 21 chapters will be reviewed in order. Links will be added as reviews are posted. Here follows a table of contents for the volume:

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HOME SCHOOLING IN CANADA: A Fraser Institute Report

Record: Deani Neven Van Pelt, “Home Schooling in Canada: The Current Picture–2015 Edition.”  Barbara Mitchell Center for Improvement in Education (June 2015).  [Available Here]

Summary: Van Pelt, who has published occasional studies of home education since 2003, is director of the Barbara Mitchell Center for Improvement in Education at theFraser Institute, a libertarian think-tank based in Canada with a long history of advocating market-based policies drawn from libertarian economists like Friedrich Hayek, Edwin G. West, and George Stigler.  This report updates a 2007 update of the widely cited 2001 report the Fraser Institute published called Homeschooling: From the Extreme to the Mainstream.  The 2001 report was written by Patrick Basham, who has since moved on to be a prominent voice at the Cato Institute, another libertarian think-tank based in the United States.

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New Cardus Study of Homeschooling in Canada

This post reviews R. Pennings, et al., “A Rising Tide Lifts all Boats: Measuring Non-Government School Effects in Service of the Canadian Public Good” (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, 2012).  Available for free download here.

Back in 2011 I reviewed the first Cardus Survey, which provided rare randomly sampled data about young adults who had been homeschooled in the United States.  This new study does the same for Canada.  In the first study the Cardus researchers uncovered some fascinating information about adult homeschoolers, some of which proved rather controversial because it was not very flattering toward homeschooling.

This new study’s results are fairly similar.  The study is about much more than homeschooling, but since this is a blog about homeschooling research I will limit my comments to the homeschooling findings.

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A New Study on Academic Achievement of Homeschoolers

This post reviews Sandra Martin-Chang, Odette N. Gould, and Reanne E. Meuse, “The Impact of Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Homeschooled and Traditionally Schooled Children.” Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science 43, no. 3 (July 2011): 195-202.

The authors of this study of 74 children, half homeschooled, half institutionally schooled, conclude that structured homeschooling is best, public schooling next, and unstructured homeschooling worst at producing high levels of academic achievement. 

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Susan Juby on Homeschooled Adolescence

This post continues my exploration of recent children’s lit employing homeschooling themes with a review of the young adult fiction trilogy of Susan Juby, whose comedic heroine is Alice MacLeod, a sarcastic and disaffected teen who was homeschooled until age fifteen.  The books, with their American publication date, are as follows: 

Alice, I Think(HarperTempest, 2003)

Miss Smithers(2004)

Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last (2005) 

 

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