The Kids Are Alright: Part 2
A Review of a study by Jillene Seiver and Elisa Pope
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After roughly 40 years into the modern homeschool movement in the United States, scholars, friends of homeschool families, and the general public still ask the question, What about socialization?
Scholars Seiver and Pope (2022) addressed this question by examining the extracurricular activities, information about leadership, and political participation during K-12 and young adulthood of adults who were home educated, public schooled, and private schooled while growing up. Their work expands on the base of studies that address the topic of the social, emotional, and psychological development of students who are home educated (e.g., Ray, 2017).
Methods
The researchers recruited respondents via online college and university class postings in the Puget Sound area, homeschool group chat boards in Washington State, and via social media. They collected data from 18-25 year olds who reported the type of schooling they predominantly experienced during the elementary years, the middle school years, and the high school years. The scholars determined their schooling type by their most common response across the three age brackets; 52 were homeschooled, 51 were public schooled, and nine were private schooled.
The average age of the participants was about 21.1. More females than males participated. The participants reported the type of schooling they predominantly experienced during different ages of their grade 1-12 school years.
The Big Five Inventory was used to evaluate personality traits. Data were collected on any activity in which the adults participated for at least one year. The activities were divided into categories such as Volunteer (e.g., church service projects, project/community service), Scholastic Extras (e.g., debate, science club), Performance/Fine Arts (e.g., art group, choir, drama production/class), Sports Teams, and Other Clubs (scouting, church youth group). Respondents were asked about leadership involvement, and Civic Engagement was measured with yes/no options for prompts such as had voted in a local, state, or national election, had volunteered in a candidate’s campaign, and had participated in a political protest.
The researchers included many demographic controls in their analyses.
Findings
Considering the Big Five traits, the scholars found “… no significant difference in extraversion as a function of schooling type …” The formerly homeschooled were more agreeable than the public schooled, but no different from the privately schooled. There was no significant difference in terms of conscientiousness and neuroticism between the schooling types. The formerly homeschooled and privately schooled adults were significantly higher in “degree of openness to experience” than the formerly public schooled.
There was no significant difference by schooling type regarding volunteerism, scholastic activities, artistic activities, sports, and leadership activities.
Formerly homeschooled adults reported significantly more club activities than the publicly schooled, but not significantly more than the privately schooled. The homeschooled had the highest rate of political participation, and significantly more than the privately schooled but not significantly more than the publicly schooled.
Conclusions
Seiver and Pope remarked that “[t]he consistent findings that formerly homeschooled young adults are more open to experience than their traditionally-educated peers may help to explain Cheng’s (2014) finding that formerly homeschooled students at a Christian college displayed greater political tolerance than their traditional-school peers.” They also noted that despite the fact that the formerly homeschooled had higher rates of volunteerism during their K-12 years than those in institutional schooling, “… there was no difference between groups in young adulthood” and this outcome contradicts the findings from Seiver and Pope (2021), and the different finding is difficult to explain.
The scholars’ concluding thoughts in noted that young adults who had been homeschooled “… were more civically engaged, as measured by being registered to vote, voting in the last election, attending a town hall meeting, campaigning for a candidate, and/or participating in a political protest, than their privately schooled peers, and equally as engaged as their publicly schooled peers.”
Seiver and Pope’s final thought follows:
“To discover that formerly homeschooled young adults are more engaged in the types of activities that Eccles, et al. (2003) characterized as “prosocial” implies that these young adults have been adequately socialized so that they can fit in within their social milieu.”
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References
Ray, Brian D. (2017). A systematic review of the empirical research on selected aspects of homeschooling as a school choice. Journal of School Choice: International Research and Reform, 11(4), 604-621, https://www.nheri.org/a-systematic-review-of-the-empirical-research-on-selected-aspects-of-homeschooling-as-a-school-choice/
Seiver, Jillene Grover; & Pope, Elisa A. (2022). The kids are alright II: Social engagement in young adulthood as a function of k-12 schooling type, personality traits, and parental education level. Home School Researcher, 37(2), 1-9, https://www.nheri.org/the-kids-are-alright-ii-social-engagement-in-young-adulthood-as-a-function-of-k-12-schooling-type-personality-traits-and-parental-education-level/