Homeschooling(A Causal Analysis of Homeschooling Motivations and its Impacts)

Homeschooling(A Causal Analysis of Homeschooling Motivations and its Impacts)

 Introduction

Home education, popularly referred to as homeschooling, is an home-based, parent-led educational practice that is currently on the rise across the world. The practice has greatly grown as an alternative to the traditional mainstream education with over 2.5 million homeschooled students in the united states in 2019 (Ray). Although there’s the growing rate of homeschooling, the practice isn’t new in the society. The only difference is the changing perspective to the practice, and a shift from an alternative education practice to a very popular approach. The practice adopts different reasons and motivations for its practice. Parents want a direct involvement in the full growth and development of the children. This paper develops an analysis of the home-education practices to establish the causes and impacts of homeschooling. The paper develops an assessment of homeschooling ideological variations and its impact on the performance of the students.

Freedom of Curriculum Personalization and Customization

One of the major motivations for homeschooling is the parental freedom to customize, personalize and individualize the curriculum of their children. The parent’s ability to customize the learning environment of a child, developing a curriculum approach based on the gifts of a child and a direct relationship between the learner and the educator are considered as the major motivations for home schooling. According to William Jeynes, personalized learning environment has received educational emphasis among modern Information Age educators.

He defines personalized education as adaptation of instruction to each student’s abilities and establishing variations to specific needs of a student. This makes the practice both a need-based and value-based education system, and therefore the high level of homeschooling success.

According to a 2015 research on homeschooling, home-schooled students score between 15 and 30 percentile points above the public-school students in standardized academic achievement tests (Ray). In the social, emotional and psychological (SEP) development performance, home-educated students are performing better than many theoretical assumptions in the public. The same study established SEP measures such as peer interaction, leadership skills community service participation and self-esteem to be very high among the home educated kids. These successes relate develop as an impact of the parent’s ability to alienate negative mainstream educational outcomes and instilling the beneficial approach to the child’s learning. Equally, personalization allows a student to establish a relationship with the educator across all learning approaches hence the success.

Learning Environment and its Impacts in Child Development

Childhood education and learning environments have received a lot of focus in modern education approaches. Educators across the world are developing research studies and surveys to establish measures of environmental impacts in the cognitive, developmental and learning outcomes of students. This factor has equally developed as a major motivation for homeschooling as parents want direct control of their children’s learning environment. In a 2011 survey by the curriculum agency of the Scottish government, effective learning environments and conditions were established to extend beyond the physical architecture. The study established psychosocial and pedagogical elements as crucial influencers of the creative skills and their development in children (Davies et al.). In the homeschooling context, parents find it easier to establish a personalized learning environment for their children than having to rely on the public setting of the same and thus the success of the practice.

Across different surveys and research studies on homeschooling, a personalized environment develops as an impactful factor for homeschooled students’ psychosocial health. In a comprehensive survey by Kunzman and Gaither, homeschooled students established a huge rate of outperforming their peers in leadership, college adaptability and the general transition into the colleges. However, the same study established that transition to college can affect home-schooled students’ adaptation to institutionalization, writing research papers and secular argumentation. In this regard, the study established that lack of strict or institutional policies in homeschooling can affect the students’ adaptation to college strict schedules such as deadlines and inflexibility.

The element of a strict education system (dissatisfaction with school-based academic instruction) develops as an issue of concern to many educationists and how strict educational approaches can affect a child’s development. Lipmann’s 2013 article on The Wall Street Journal challenged the American education system for its leniency in creation of a strict environment for learners. She narrates how a strict teacher annoyed them as children but years later, his students idolized him as adults. In her view, a little pain and being strict is better than nice, and strict teachers establish a foundation for children to cope stress in their later lives. Strictness is one element many believe lacks in homeschooling and limited environmental exposure fails to prepare the children for future uncertainties in life. This element has equally steered major legislations in the recent past in an attempt to regulate and manage homeschooling. In states and districts where home education is considered as private education, public schools are required by the law to provide educational services to homeschooled students such as access to library for exposure beyond the limitations of the home educational environments.

Freedom to Establish Religious Perspectives

The parent’s freedom to control and instill specific religious perspectives and sociocultural ideologies develops as one of the major demographic motivations for homeschooling. Demographic factors play a critical role in the homeschooling practice. Opinions on homeschooling develop differently among the people of different demographic classifications. In a 2017 survey, researchers established religious conservatives to exist largely as a subset of homeschoolers in the United States (Kunzman). Many conservative religions develop a relationship of religious instruction with the aspect of morality and believe the diversification of religious ideologies presents a spiritually unstable environment for their kids. Through homeschooling, parents holding such ideological beliefs establish freedom over the religious foundations and their development in their children. Equally, a section of parents prefer growth and development of their children in a neutral religious environment to explore the diversity and make decisions on their own. Homeschooling in general therefore allows parents to educate their children within their preferred religious ideology rather than the surrounding educational system’s approach to spirituality and religion.

Religious fundamentalism on the other hand can pose significant challenges to children restricted to a specific belief. As the children grow, they encounter many situations in the society and develop questions of their beliefs and only establish a specific perspective to the issue. Restriction to the surrounding sociocultural beliefs can harm rather than build a child’s religious perspectives. Exposure to a diversified perspective of viewing things can shape a child’s view of the world and their own freedom to explore diversity and develop own beliefs.

Conclusion

Homeschooling as examined across different perspectives develops as a very effective system of education, both academically and psychologically. The approach to education however revolves along many demographic and ideological perspectives, and may not work for every child. Based on various scholarly articles in the paper, the system is very effective for gifted kids and children living with special needs hence the need for personalized approaches to education. The fact however is that homeschooling may be effective to some children and fail to achieve equal efficiency on others. Parents should examine the system and their children’s qualities to equip their decisions on the system. Generally however, homeschooling is very advantageous to many kids. Within the current information age technology advancements and the changing homeschooling opinions in the society, more parents are likely to adopt the practice.

 

 

Works Cited

Davies, Dan, et al. “Creative learning environments in education—A systematic literature review.” Thinking skills and creativity 8 (2013): 80-91.

Jeynes, William H. “Homeschooling: The ultimate personalized environment.” Handbook on (2016): 99.

Kunzman, Robert, and Milton Gaither. “Homeschooling: A comprehensive survey of the research.” Other Education 2.1 (2013): 4-59.

Kunzman, Robert. “Homeschooling and religious fundamentalism.” International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education 3.1 (2017): 17-28.

Lipman, Joanne. “Why tough teachers get good results.” Wall Street Journal 27 (2013).

Ray, Brian D. “RESEARCH FACTS ON HOMESCHOOLING.” (2016).