Friday 7 May 2010

Research on home education

Once again, somebody commenting here has suggested that I look at the research on home education, research which apparently shows autonomous education to be a wise and good course of action for parents who wish to educate their own children. There are three problems with research in this country on autonomous home education. These are that the research is confusing and contradictory, that it involves ridiculously small numbers and that those conducting the research are usually very biased in favour of home education. Let's look a little at these points.

The work of two people invariably comes up when this subject is discussed; Alan Thomas and Paula Rothermel. Indeed, I have yet to read anything about autonomous home education in this country which fails to mention one or both of these two researchers. This should at once set alarm bells ringing. If we look at, say for example, the acquisition of literacy in schools; hundreds of different names will crop up. The same goes for any aspect of education; there are always hundreds, if not thousands of people's work to look at. Not so with autonomous home education; it is Rothermel or Thomas and that is pretty much it.

Why do I say that much of the research on the subject of autonomous home education is confusing and contradictory? To take one example, the standard view among many home educators is that children who learn in this way may read later than children at school, but it does not matter, because when they do start they soon catch up. This is a point of view which Alan Thomas shares. Paula Rothermel though, when conducting research among much the same families at the same time, discovered that over 90% of the home educated children were actually fantastically early readers. On the tests used, one would have expected 16% of the six year olds to be in the top band, whereas 94% were on that level! Both beliefs cannot be correct. If many home educated children start reading a little later than children at school, then clearly 94% of them cannot also start reading fluently very early. More research needed there, I fancy.

That the numbers involved in this sort of research are ludicrously small is self evident. Thomas examined a hundred or so home educated children. Rothermel's literacy tests were with a sample of thirty five. Research on the academic achievements of schooled children runs into millions every year from all over the country.

I remarked a few days ago that many home educating parents seemed reluctant to become involved in objective testing of their children's abilities. The only people with whom they will work are researchers who are enthusiastic about home education and who assure parents that they think that it is a good thing. This means that such researchers often abandon all objectivity and become friends with the families. The results of work under these conditions is automatically suspect. Whenever the possibility presents itself that home educated children might be examined or their educational attainment tested by anybody who is not a dedicated supporter of the home education movement, parents refuse to have anything to do with it. Witness the reaction to the DCSF's proposed longitudinal study recently.

It would be nice to see some large scale research by objective or even sceptical workers looking at home education in general and autonomous home education in particular. It could well show, as many parents claim, that this is a brilliant scheme. However, until this happens, the rest of us will have to suspend judgement. One thing is for sure, it would be fatal to rely upon the anecdotal evidence from parents themselves. All parents tend to have grossly exaggerated and wildly optimistic views and opinions about their children's abilities. I would be the worst possible person to ask about my own daughter's achievements!

13 comments:

  1. It would be nice to see some large scale research by objective or even sceptical workers looking at home education in general and autonomous home education in particular.

    Why do we want to do that who cares if it works or not!

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  2. Well, I imagine that those who are using vulnerable children as guinea pigs might have at least a passing interest in whether they are screwing up their children's education? Perhaps not, you may be right; maybe nobody does care if it works or not.

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  3. I am right no one really cares if a child is geting an education or not! or if it works or not! if you care take in a load of these children and teach them yourself? i said that to our counclior he went red! and he would not take in any vulnerable children into his fancy house!

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  4. How large a scale can it be. Using the Government method of estimating (i.e. plucking numbers out of the air), assume 20,000 known home educated children, of whom 10,000 are home educated. A 1% sample size is only 100, which may be larger than the sizes used in research to date, but in percentage terms is still a lot larger than is often found in other samples. After all, they manage to do election polling with about a thousand people out of an electorate of getting on for 40 million. They even got the exit poll right this year...

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  5. How about every single child of seven, say? This is the sampling method currently used in schools. The problem could be that we know absolutely nothing about the educational attainment of most home educated children, whereas we know an awful lot about nearly all schooled children. I'm not at all sure that a 1% sample would be big enough...

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  6. whats the point of it all Simon when f all will happen to the research? Governments dont care if children dont get an education they only care about the top 20% who go to private school! its a complete waste of time. simon says whereas we know an awful lot about nearly all schooled children. do we? and who the hell cares anyway? peopel just pretend to care! a bit like you do!

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  7. "Well, I imagine that those who are using vulnerable children as guinea pigs might have at least a passing interest in whether they are screwing up their children's education? Perhaps not, you may be right; maybe nobody does care if it works or not."

    What about research into structured home education? Just because it sort of works in schools doesn't mean that it will work in the same way at home when carried out by amateurs.

    I don't need research to know what works for my children and I'm sure you can say the same even though we have different approaches. I can see what and how much they are learning. I have conversations with them and their school going friends and know how they compare and am very happy with our choices. I have had discussions with college teachers and know that they are very happy with the results too. I don't need 'experts' to tell me if I am screwing up my children's education, I know I'm not. Don't you?

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  8. "The same goes for any aspect of education; there are always hundreds, if not thousands of people's work to look at. Not so with autonomous home education; it is Rothermel or Thomas and that is pretty much it."

    Alan Thomas was interested in informal learning so that is what he set out to study. Paula Rothermel's interest was wider. She included any home educators who responded and did not exclude those following a more structured approach. Neither specifically studied autonomous education which is usually a mixture of informal and structured learning, depending on the child.

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  9. Paula Rothermel sent out five thousand questionnaires in 1997 and 1998. All except for a few hundred were distributed via Education Otherwise. This at once had the effect of skewing her research in a certain direction. In any case, the point which I was making was not how these two names came to dominate the discussion on autonomous education, but the fact that they did.

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  10. I've not been aware of a link between Rothermel and autonomous education, only home education as a whole. If anything I would suspect her research is skewed towards those following a structured approach, either through the parents or child's preference, certainly that was true of the working class families in her study as I remember her remarking on this. Thomas has, I think, demonstrated that informal education can and does work as have various other researchers unconnected with home education.

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