Home Education: The Power of Trust

Authors

  • Leslie Safran Independent scholar

Keywords:

trust, home education, learning, self-motivation, children, parents

Abstract

Research into the effects of long term home educating on the parents suggests that a common educational approach involves parents trusting their children to learn on their own and also trusting their children’s competence to contribute to the design of their educational programme. This involves sharing control of educating decisions with the children, expecting a degree of competence in their ability to decide, maintaining confidence in them and being willing to take some risks. Together, children and parents negotiate the meaning of education for themselves in an active creation of an educational style that suits them, changing the style in accord with their development. If the outcome is successful, further trust is elicited from the parents. Such a relationship with learning encourages children to be self-motivated, active in determining what interests them and at ease with the practice of acting on their decisions. The style of education which typically emerges will be examined in detail. Trusting children to make decisions about their education furthers a relationship to learning that both serves the child, encouraging self-determination, and, as an unexpected consequence, serves the parents who can develop the tools and the appetite for life-long learning.

 

Author Biography

Leslie Safran, Independent scholar

Leslie Safran is an international author and lecturer on home education and children’s rights.

She is a mother of two young adults who have never been to school. She received her PhD thesis in June 2008 which centres on how the experience of home education can affect the parents. She founded in 1993 and continues to run The Otherwise Club, a community centre for families choosing to educate their children out of school, in NW London. She organises an annual home education conference at Hes Fes (see hesfes.co.uk ), oversees a small independent home education magazine, Choice in Education and runs an annual Home Education Fair in central London in September. She also speaks widely about home education and The Otherwise Club.

References

Ball, S. J. (1991). Power, conflict, micropolitics and all that! In G. Walford (Ed), Doing educational research. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Basham, P. (2001). Home schooling: From the extreme to the mainstream. Public Policy Sources, A Fraser Institute Occasional Paper, 51.

Dennison, G. (1970). The lives of children: The story of the first street school. New York: Random House Inc.

Ely, M. (1991). Doing qualitative research: Circles within circles. London: Falmer Press.

Goodman, P. (1960). Growing up absurd: Problems of youth in the organized system. New York: Random House Inc.

Holt, J. (1969). How children fail. Harmonsworth; Middlesex: Penguin Books.

Holt, J. (1970a). How children learn. Harmonsworth. Middlesex: Penguin Books.

Holt, J. (1970b). What did I do Monday? New York: E. P. Dutton and Co.

Holt, J. (1972). The underachieving school. London: Pitman Publishing.

Holt, J. (1981). Teach your own. Liss, Hants: Lighthouse Books.

Holt, J. (1989). Learning all the time. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.

Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling society. London: Calder and Boyars Ltd.

Jeffs, T. & Smith, M. K. (2005). Informal education: Conversation, democracy and learning. Nottingham: Educational Heretics Press.

Lines, P. (2000). Homeschooling comes of age. The Public Interest, 140, 74-85.

Neill, A. S. (1961). Summerhill. Middlesex: Penguin.

Neill, A. S. (1966). Freedom not license! New York: Hart Publishing Co.

Neill, A. S. (1967). Talking of Summerhill. London: Gollancz.

Perryman, J. (2007). Inspection and performativity: Life after special measures. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Goldsmiths University of London, UK.

Petrie, A. (1998). Home education and the law. Education and the Law, 10(2-3), 123-134.

Petrie, A. J., Windrass, G., & Thomas, A. (1999). The prevalence of home education in England: A feasibility study. (Tech, Rep.) UK: Department for Education and Employment.

Postman N. & Weingartner C. (1971). Teaching as a subversive activity. Aylesbury: Hazell Watson & Vinney Ltd.

Safran, L. (2008). Exploring identity change and communities of practice among long term home educating parents. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Open University, UK.

Thomas, A. (1994). Conversational learning. Oxford Review of Education, 20(1), 131-142.

Thomas, A. (1998). Educating children at home. London: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.

Downloads

Published

2012-10-13

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2012)

Section

Invited papers

License


Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License of their choice (usually CCBY 3.0 unported, but determined at the proofing stage by consultation with the Editor - readers looking for copyright permissions are required to do this on a case by case basis) that allows others to share the work in some way with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. We appreciate authors placing a link to the Other Education site wherever they choose to offer a PDF download to the original OE article.