Homeschooling Research Studies, References, Academic Scholarship, and Bibliographies
NHERI and Dr. Brian Ray have been following, compiling, and disseminating all research on homeschooling and parent-led education since about 1984. They also conduct homeschooling research. The following two bibliographies are essential resources to any person exploring or studying homeschooling research or conducting homeschool research (or home school research).
Home Centered Learning Annotated Bibliography
Access, explore, sort, and export over 1,800 homeschooling research references, and more. These are organized by author, topic, keywords, date, type of publication, and more. Of great help to researchers and scholars, most of the entries are carefully annotated. Brian D. Ray, Ph.D. has been compiling and annotating these references for over 27 years. This is a remarkably comprehensive, in-depth, and unique bibliography.
Bibliography of Research on Homeschooling – International
Quickly find select key international academic and research references and resources on homeschooling research or scholarship (also called home education or home-based education around the world) in countries in addition to the United States.
Research Reference Database
| Author | Year | Title | URL | Format | Peer | Annotation | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Klenk, Jack. | 2010 | Who should decide how children are educated? Washington, DC: Family Research Council. | report | ?In opposition to the idea that parents have rights to guide their child?s upbringing stands the philosophy that children belong to the state? [18]. ?Public education in the U.S. has become highly professionalized and unionized. This change has led to a dramatic shift in power from parents and the public to public school employees. John Dewey and his fellow Progressives put in place lasting organizational reforms with the goal of shifting power from local politicians to educational professionals. This shift also reduced the influence that parents had over the education of their children.? [p. 19]. ?Can parents regain authority over their children?s education? Despite the barriers, some parents are recovering a degree of their lost authority. Here are some positive developments: ?? [p. 21]. ?Homeschooling is perhaps the ultimate in parental involvement. Parents who homeschool do not just choose schools for their children, they also do the teaching ? usually in cooperation with other homeschooling parents ? in their own homes. The rapid growth in the number of children whose parents make that commitment is one of the most significant developments in American education in recent years? [p. 24]. Writes positively toward vouchers to be used in any school. ?People of good will who are concerned about the condition of families and the state of education need to think creatively and act courageously to empower parents to become more actively involved in the education of their children. If they start with a determination to put parents first, [p. 26 ends] they can take a fresh look at old assumptions and structures, and seek to modify the system accordingly. The current educational system, created in the early nineteenth century, is overdue for a modernization that will make it more flexible, less bureaucratic, and more family-friendly. To be authentically public, it must serve all parents without discrimination, parents from the whole public, not just those whose children attend one category of schools? [p. 27]. | family, school choice, public schools, private schools, home education, homeschooling, policy, vouchers, charter schools | ||
| Ray, Brian D. | 2010 | Academic achievement and demographic traits of homeschool students: A nationwide study. Academic Leadership Journal, 8(1). | Link | journal | yes | This nationwide cross-sectional, descriptive study examines the educational history, demographic features, and academic achievement of home-educated students and the basic demographics of their families, and to assess the relationships between the students? academic achievement and selected student and family variables. Data on 11,739 homeschooling students and their families are analyzed. Students score, on average, at the 84th to 89th percentile on all subtests, which is 34 to 39 percentile points above the public school average. Very few independent variables explain much variance in test scores. There is no relationship between the degree of state regulation (control) of homeschooling and student achievement. Peer-reviewed journal. | homeschooling, research, academic achievement, demographics, state control, state regulation, law, peer-reviewed journal |
| Alexander, Sarah | 2007 | Revolutionary parenting [a book review]. | Link | blog | ?Only 5 out of 100 parents polled at a Christian Educators' Conference read to their kids. A review of Revolutionary Parenting by George Barna. A month ago at a Christian educators? conference, the speaker took a poll. He wanted to know how many parents read the Bible to their children at least once over the past week. The results were alarming. Only 5 out of the 100 parents in the room responded affirmatively. ?.. So, how does one become a revolutionary parent? Barna [George Barna, author of Revolutionary Parenting] has researched hundreds of families who have produced spiritual champions. ?.. In your parenting, be intentional. Set goals for your family and their spiritual growth. ?.. When Barna asked ?young adults what they felt were the most significant mistakes that America?s parents have made, the second highest-ranked mistake was not spending enough time with their children.? This is yet another plug for spending quality time and reading the Bible with your children. Also, God commands it: You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. ?.. Another observation is that fathers have a deep yearning and sense that they need to provide a life of luxury for their child. The studies that Barna did indicate that children from this generation were not as upset by lack of things as they are by the lack of attention from their parent.? | ||
| Kingston, Skylar T., & Medlin, Richard G. | 2006 | Empathy, altruism, and moral development in home schooled children. Home School Researcher, 16(4), 1-10. | journal | yes | Subjects matched on some factors but not most. ?Eighty children from grades 3 through 5 and their parents participated in this study. The home school group consisted of 13 boys and 17 girls with an average age of 9.9 years. There were 8 third graders, 10 fourth graders, and 12 fifth graders in this group. None had ever attended a public school. The public school group consisted of 20 boys and 30 girls with an average age of 9.7 years. There were 15 third graders, 24 fourth graders, and 11 fifth graders in this group. None of these children had ever been home schooled. There was no attempt to match home school and public school participants??it was recognized that there would be differences between the two groups that could influence the results of this study. For example, all the home schooled children were Caucasian, whereas only 83% of the public school children were. All but one of the home schooling families were Protestant, while in the public school group, 34% were Protestant, 43% were Catholic, and 23% had either another religious affiliation or none at all. However, the modal income level for both home schooling and public school families was the same??$50,000-75,000 per year??and a chi-square analysis revealed no systematic difference between the groups in the proportion of families at each income level? [retrieved 3/30/2011from http://www.nheri.org/Volume-16-Issue-4/Empathy-Altruism-and-Moral-Development.html]. ?Homeschooling parents were more concerned with teaching their children their values and religious beliefs, and more convinced that their children?s education reinforced this endeavor, than public school parents. They were also more confident that their children had embraced the values encompassed in their education. The two groups of parents did not differ, however, concerning whether they wanted their children to decide for themselves what values to believe in. Compared to public school parents, home schooling parents reported slightly more prosocial behavior in their children. In general, the attitudes toward religion and values expressed by home schooling parents were positively related to children?s prosocial behavior? [retrieved 3/30/2011 online]. Peer-reviewed. | home education, homeschooling, research, empathy, altruism, moral development, socialization, peer-reviewed | |
| Knafle, June D., & Wescott, Alice Legenza. | 2005 | Home School Researcher, 16(2), 1-12. | journal | yes | ?Some findings were expected and in accord with other studies, such as the intense nature of phonics instruction, which continued until mastery, often beyond the grade levels of public school phonics instruction. Failure was not an option for graduates or their mothers in this area. Also in accord with other studies was the extensive amount of oral reading by graduates and their families, in many instances into high school grades, another clear difference from public school instruction. The home school mothers were single-minded in their instruction in these two areas especially. Spelling was often given extensive instruction time, and grammar was given varying amounts of time and materials, depending upon individual differences of the graduates. Vocabulary was generally not taught separately, but rather integrated into unit studies, a major difference from public schools. Another major difference from public schools was the unstructured nature of comprehension instruction. Writing was a frequent activity for most of these graduates. Literature was almost exclusively classic and traditional; the fiction read by the graduates was usually not current, probably reflecting conservative and/or Christian traditions. Graduates and their mothers spoke about their many unit studies and special literacy projects, about their extensive involvement in co-ops, and about how the mothers handled reading problems. The mothers? commitment to their children?s literacy success was clearly evident throughout the interviews. Finally, almost all the graduates said they would home school their own children at least through elementary grades? [p. 11]. | research, home education, literacy instruction, reading, phonics | |
| Arizona Families for Home Education | 1993 | Arizona home educators say NO to public resources. Arizona Home Education Journal, p. 1-4 | journal | Reports on doctoral dissertation research by Phillip Adams who started his study with the premise that "...home educators would desire to use public facilities in large numbers, if only public officials presented these facilities in a better light and were more responsive to the possible relationship. The survey's data, as presented to Journal readers...convinced him otherwise because his conclusion accepts that the vast majority of the home education community would not support the broad and cooperative program he had envisioned" (p. 1). Presents reasons for home educating, data that few home educators use public school facilities, and data showing that most home educators are unwilling to submit to accountabilites to the state. | resources, public resources, accountability, needs, rationale, reasons, cooperation | ||
| Klicka, Christopher J. | 1992 | The Right Choice: The Incredible Failure of Public Education and the Rising Hope of Home Schooling. Gresham, Oregon: Noble Publishing Associates. | book | Strong Christian apologetic for home education (homeschooling). | philosophy, public schools, Christian, religion, law, achievement, research | ||
| Allie-Carson, Jayn | 1990 | Structure and interaction patterns of home school families. Home School Researcher, 6(3), 11-18 | journal | yes | ?In general, the majority of families in this study did tend to congregate in the upper right quadrant of the Circumplex Model. However, a closer examination appears to indicate that these families continue to stay in the upper right quadrant and to have higher scores for both cohesion and adaptability than is true for the general population of families with school age children in more conventional school settings. [paragraph] Although these families tended to be highly adaptive, they appear to have been able to achieve a kind of dynamic equilibrium between stability and change. For example, most of these families had been home schooling for more than one or two years. [paragraph] The presence of this kind of equilibrium suggests that there are stabilizing forces within home school family systems which allow most of these families to accommodate higher levels of both adaptability and cohesion than the population of families whose children are more conventionally schooled? [p. 17] | home education, family structure and relationships, parents, socialization | |
| Knowles, J. Gary. | 1988 | Parents? rationales and teaching methods for home schooling: The role of biography. Education and Urban Society, 21(1), 69-84. | journal | yes | (Uses biography to explore why parents decide to home school their children. The four groups of rationales are related to (1) family environments of the home school parents, (2) parents? schooling and other learning experiences, (3) contemporary problems children experienced in schools [e.g., irreligious tone and lack of morality in schools and society at large, a type of safety], and (4) parents who believed they could provide a superior learning climate. | homeschooling, home education, research, reasons, rationales, barriers |