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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GROWN UNSCHOOLERS’ EVALUATIONS OF UNSCHOOLING: Report I

Record: Peter Gray and Gina Riley, “Grown Unschoolers’ Evaluations of Their Unschooling Experiences: Report I 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 first report of their two part series about unschoolers’ evaluations of their unschooling experiences. In Report I they review previous research on unschooling, describe their methodology, and present the unschoolers’ experiences and evaluations of these experiences. In Report II they address the participants’ experiences with higher education and careers. This study is largely a response to their 2013 survey of unschooling parents.

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SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES: A Review of the Literature

Record: Joseph Murphy, “The Social and Educational Outcomes of Homeschooling” in Sociological Spectrum 34, no. 3 (April 2014), 244-272. [Abstract Here]

Summary: Murphy, a professor at Vanderbilt University and author of the excellent book-length review of homeschooling scholarship Homeschooling in America, here again summarizes much of the literature on homeschooling, attending especially to studies of the outcomes of homeschooling on the children who experience it.

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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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