Should educators promote homeschooling? Worldwide growth and learner outcomes

Abstract

The purpose is to briefly summarize forty years of research on the learner outcomes of the modern homeschooling movement and address whether educators should be promoting home education. Studies show that homeschooling (home education) is generally associated with positive learner outcomes. On average, the home educated perform better than their institutional school peers in terms of academic achievement, social, emotional, and psychological development, and success into adulthood (including university). Certain pedagogical and familial elements that are systemic to freely chosen parent-led home-based private education homeschooling are may be the keys to the overall better performance and development of most children – not only the home educated – and into their lives as adults. If this is true, should professional educators be promoting homeschooling rather than criticizing it or trying to inhibit its growth? Are there certain categories of families for whom home education would not be a good idea? Is home education a pedagogical choice and approach about which educators should be skeptical and antagonistic or from which they can learn, be better informed about the needs and successes of students, and support according to the findings of empirical evidence?