Background
The extant literature on home education often focuses on the outcomes of the home educated student or the reason why families chose home education, but little is focused on the person of the home educating parent. In this dissertation, Gina Reynolds explores the person of the home educating mother, drawing out data to reveal the impacts and influences on this growing, but still under-researched population. Along the way, some unexpected data points emerge as she used intentional and emergent metaphors to elicit robust responses to this qualitative inductive inquiry. Finally, she makes draws some practical conclusion about home educating mothers and makes a practical application for home education support organizations.
Methodology
Reynolds used purposive and snowball recruiting techniques, to obtain a final participant pool of 26 home educating mothers. These participants were broken up into nine online discussion groups, ranging in size from two to four participants each where the following research questions were explored:
(RQ1) What are the non-academic parts of life that the homeschool mom seeks to navigate while homeschooling?
(RQ2) in what ways do these non-academic parts of life either enhance or interfere with your role as teacher?
(RQ3) in what ways do these moms attempt to balance the parts of their life with their role as teacher?
(RQ4) what impact does their balance or lack of balancing the parts of their lives have on themselves and their family’s well-being?
A unique aspect of this study was the use of metaphors to evoke rich descriptions of participants’ lived experiences. The researcher prompted participants with statements such as: Trying to navigate all the things in my life while homeschooling is like _____. This had the intended effect of sparking more robust conversations which may have otherwise only yielded nominal responses, but the extent of this effect even surprised the researcher. Not only did the researcher intentionally interject metaphorical prompts, but the participants provided their own unprompted metaphors with such concepts as juggling items, spinning plates, catching wild animals, keeping train on the tracks, or conducting medical triage to explain the everyday experiences of home education. These research questions, along with the novel metaphorical descriptions, resulted in data emerging that were not originally a focus of the study.
Findings
The researcher analyzed the text data by coding and then identifying themes that emerged to report finding such as the following:
The types of things that participants reported as major aspects of their life other than home education (RQ1) included hobbies and volunteering, health and caregiving, household care, work, relationships, and parenting.
In trying to determine how things in RQ1 enhanced or interfered with their role as teacher RQ2 produced interesting responses. Many of the participants didn’t readily identify with the title of “teacher.” Specific citations revealed that many participants didn’t make a distinction between being a parent and being a teacher. In lieu of “teacher” the researcher sometime used the phrase “the role in educating your children” to prompt responses specific to this aspect of their experience.
When asking about what non-educational aspects of their live worked well with home education (RQ3) another set of themes emerged: freedom, lifestyle, time, and mom extension (“just being a mom”). The theme of freedom was a combination of codes for “fit well” and “flexibility.” Participant quotes demonstrated that their choice to home educate allowed them the freedom to work life around home education and education around life, in essence, becoming a single synergistic dance. As a way of life, it became the means to provided time for both the academic and non-academic aspects of child rearing.
As the question of well-being was analyzed (RQ4), the resultant data revealed significant aspects such as self-efficacy (the participants belief in their ability to achieve desired outcomes), and agency (the opportunity for participants to make decisions regarding this purpose) as critical components of the participants’ experience. It also demonstrated a rejection of idyllic concepts such as the “good mother” (an unrealistic and/or unachievable expectation) in favor of a perpetual learning perspective and a dependence on assistance from others, particularly other, more seasoned, home educating mothers.
Conclusions
The researcher concluded that these participants represented a significant change from the small amount of literature that previously addressed home educating mother, specifically their acceptance of their role as a purpose rather than as a sacrifice because of external circumstances. Additionally, she discussed the tendency of these mothers to eschew any models or expectations, either in the role of mother or that of a home educator. Lastly, she concluded that these participants experience power and freedom in the agency that home education provides for their families.
The researcher’s practical application for home education support organization is that they match the desired flexibility of home education and the positive impact this has on home educating parents, in order to more effectively partner with their members towards the ultimate goal of maximizing the impact of home education.
NHERI Comment
This study shines a light on a heretofore unstudied aspect of home education, and hopefully future research will continue and expand data collection and analysis on this topic with broader and more varied populations.
References
Reynolds, Gina S. (2023). “It’s hard. I love it, and it’s hard!”: Homeschool moms’ navigation of academic and non-academic life. (Doctoral dissertation, Purdue University Graduate School).