Annotated Bibliography: Effects of Homeschool on Students’ Learning and Achievement

Annotated Bibliography

Ray, B. D. (2011). 2.04 million homeschool students in the United States in 2010. National Home Education Research Institute. Retrieved January, 2, 2011.

Ray (2011) used a variety of secondary sources of data like 50 US government departments, 5 nationwide private companies, online surveys, published literature, and many more to estimate the number of home-school students in 2010. The study evaluates estimates from different sources and comes up with a high confidence figure of 2.04 million students who are being home-educated in the United States of American as of Spring 2010.

This source is important to my research in the sense that it provides a number estimate of trend of home-education in the United States. I will use this source in introducing my topic and establishing the significance of selecting home-education as my area for literature review research.

 

Bielick, S. (2008). 1.5 million homeschooled students in the United States in 2007. US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics.

Bielick (2008) reports on the number of homeschool students as using the 2007 findings of National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES). The report not only highlights the latest numbers of homeschool students but also analyzes and points out the increasing trend in the adoption of home-education in United States. In addition, the report provides details on the reasons parents prefer to educate their children at home-schools instead of sending them to regular schools. The study estimated the number of homeschool children to have increased as compared to historical trends. Three major reasons as reported by the concerned parents for selecting home-education for their children were, concerns about school environment, to provide religious and moral instruction, and their dissatisfaction with the existing instruction already available in regular schools.

This source is again important to the introduction of my topic as it signifies the issue of home-education in terms of its large prevalence.

Blok, H. (2004). Performance in home schooling: an argument against compulsory schooling in the Netherlands. International review of Education,50(1), 39-52.

Primary purpose of Blok (2004) is to examine the performance analysis of home-schooled students and their developmental process in comparison with the with regular school students. The study uses literature from relevant bibliographical research databases of social sciences research by searching the alternative key terms like “homeschool”, “homeschooling”, “home education”, and “academic achievement”. In addition, homeschooling websites have also been consulted to find related publications. The study focuses literature published after 1985. To come up with significant findings about the developmental process of homeschool children in comparison with regular school students, the study also included eight studies on development of homeschooled children. The study concludes that homeschool children outperform the regular school students in cognitive domains, but show little difference in terms of socio-emotional development.

The study provides important insights into the performance aspects of the homeschool children and therefore is significant to be included in my literature review.

Parcel, T. L., & Dufur, M. J. (2001). Capital at home and at school: Effects on student achievement. Social Forces, 79(3), 881-911.

This study investigates the effects of family and school capital on academic achievement of homeschooled students in the subjects of mathematics and reading skills. The study uses the primary data from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and Child-Mother Data for 1992 and 1994. Selected sample considered students who studied first to eighth grade in both 1992 and 1994 data, including 2203 students for reading recognition and 2034 students for math achievement. Results of analysis found that family capital has stronger effects on students’ academic achievement.

This source is significant in the sense that it will provide an insight into the effects of parental economic status on students’ academic achievement. The analysis will look for finding the links between economic status of parents and academic achievement of homeschooled children only.

Princiotta, D. and Bielick, S. (2006). Homeschooling in the United States: 2003, (NCES 2006-042) U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics, Washington, DC: 2005.

This report presents the estimated number of homeschool students as well as describes the characteristics homeschooled students and their families/parents. The study analyzes the racial, ethnic, economic, and educational background of parents of homeschool students and compares these characteristics with those of public and private schooled students to find the critical relationships. The study also throws some light on why parents choose home-education for their kids instead of regular schooling. The curricular tools are also investigated in this research.

The report strongly relates to the basic theme of my topic. It will be useful in providing more information on the relationship between socio-economic and educational status of parents and the academic achievement of their homeschooled children. The significance of the study is established by the fact that the data has been extracted from US government department reports.

Davis-Kean, P. E. (2005). The influence of parent education and family income on child achievement: the indirect role of parental expectations and the home environment. Journal of family psychology, 19(2), 294.

David Kean (2005) is another primary source examining the impact of socioeconomic status, parents’ educational qualifications, and income on the students’ academic achievement. Data of 868 students almost equally representing both males and females, aged 8-12 years was used to carry out this analysis. Sample included 49% non-Hispanic European American and 47% African American. The author found that the socioeconomic factors were related indirectly to children’s academic achievement through parents’ beliefs and behaviors. However, these relationships were different by racial group. Parents’ years of schooling also was found to be an important socioeconomic factor to take into consideration in both policy and research when looking at school-age children.

This source will also help include valuable insights into my literature review and will help clarify the relationships of my study variables.

Collom, E. (2005). The ins and outs of homeschooling the determinants of parental motivations and student achievement. Education and Urban Society,37(3), 307-335.

Collom (2005) analyzed original survey data from organized group of homeschool respondents to investigate two major aspects of homeschooling or home-education. Firstly the study analyzed the collected data to determine the factors which motivate parents to opt for homeschooling their children instead of sending them to regular schools. Secondly, the factors that determine the academic achievement of homeschoolers were identified. Regression analysis was used on the collected data for the stated purposes. The study found the role of parental educational achievement in the academic achievement of their homeschooled children as highly and consistently significant. Race and class were not found to be very significant predictors of academic performance. Major concerns working as motivation towards homeschooling were academic and pedagogical concerns.

The study is directly related to my research topic and will be used as a base to make conclusions in my study.

Arai, A. B. (2000). Reasons for home schooling in Canada. Canadian Journal of Education/Revue canadienne de l’education, 204-217.

This article collected data through qualitative interviews with 23 families who preferred homeschooling their children instead of sending them to regular schools in Ontario and British Columbia, Canada, to find the motivations behind it. The author carried out comparative analysis of this data with past researches carried out in different jurisdictions, especially in the United States of America. The research resulted in very different reasons for choosing the home-education in Canada as compared to the other counter parts. The research then discusses the possible explanations for the difference in reasons.

This article is important as it provides a differential aspect of homeschooling motivations in the context of Canada and provides another view on the findings of previously annotated sources.

Ray, B. D. (2006). Research facts on homeschooling. National Home Education Research Institute, July, 10.

Ray has a series of research efforts on homeschooling and various aspects of this format of schooling. In this article Ray (2006) summarizes the results of many of his research endeavors. In this article, Ray states different facts and trends related to homeschooling, reasons for home education, aspects of academic performance in homeschooling, social, emotional, and psychological development in homeschools, and future success prospects of homeschoolers.

This is a very important source to provide many in one research efforts as it is a summary of several significant research efforts of Ray.

 

Rudner, L. M. (1999). The Scholastic Achievement of Home School Students. ERIC/AE Digest.

Rudner (1999) summarizes the demographic characteristics and academic achievement results for more than 20,000 homeschoolers. This is the largest study of home schooling conducted so far and released in Spring 1999. This study highlights key findings of the study and concludes based on the analysis and findings. The study reports exceptionally high achievement scores on high school achievement tests, by homeschool students as compared to regular school students. Moreover, students who were homeschooled for their entire life show higher scholastic achievement test scores than others.

This source verifies the findings of other researchers discussed above regarding the better academic achievement of homeschoolers as compared to the regular school student. Hence this source will provide a significant role in the literature review.

Cogan, M. F. (2010). Exploring Academic Outcomes of Homeschooled Students. Journal of College Admission, 208, 18-25.

Cogan (2010) presents an exploratory examination of academic outcomes of homeschooled students in a doctoral higher education institution. Their analysis reveals that homeschool students show good GPAs and graduation rates compared to regular school students. However, binary logistic regression of the same data, with the same control variables, does not show a significant difference between homeschoolers and regular school students.

This study is another aspect of the issue. The study adds a unique dimension in to the investigation by exploring the long term effects of homeschooling on the academic achievement of the students. Therefore, this source is of utmost importance in my review of literature.