For parents looking to see their children develop into the self-reliant, critical thinkers John Taylor Gatto described in his essay, "Against School," and other works, a combination of unschooling and the Charlotte Mason method would have the best chance of overall success. Research shows any method of homeschooling produces standardized test…

The purpose of this thesis was to create a lesson design to train parent/educators in the art of preparing lessons incorporating biblical reasoning throughout all subjects. It is an introductory seminar and not intended to provide complete training in this area. A sample group of parent educators were made available to pilot the program. Among…

Public school advocates have argued that homeschooling "costs" the school system money through lost per-pupil taxpayer funding whenever a child is homeschooled rather than public schooled. In fact, home school students benefit school districts in the long run by relieving them of the far greater total costs of educating them. In Nevada,…

The purpose of this study was to gain an in depth knowledge of the day to day activities of home school families in order to better understand the instructional approaches, curriculum decisions, and challenges. Four themes were addressed: motivations, operations, resources, and challenges. Findings about motivations to home school included: (a)…

ACT college test publisher provided scores. On average, non-homeschoolers performed better than homeschoolers, by about two items, out of sixty items, on the ACT mathematics test that was analyzed. This result may be due to the different teaching/learning media used in teaching each of the two groups, to different teacher/student interaction, or…

Despite the fact that 1.5 to 2.1 million children are home-schooled, there is limited research on the impact of home-schooling on children's social skills. This study compares 53 home-schooled, 49 private-schooled, and 48 public-schooled children between the ages of 8 and 12 on social skills, as measured by the Parent and Student Forms of the…

Home-schooling is growing in popularity. However, although it is legal for children to be educated at home, there are difficulties associated with defining what constitutes home-education, and who falls within the category of the "home-educated". (Contains 6 endnotes.) [This article has been published as: Rothermel, P. and Fiddy, A. (2001) "The…

Should school be a place where children go because they want to go? Yes. Should school be a place where children only go if they want to? Yes. This paper questions the way that we educate our children, taking evidence, not from a school based perspective, but from research (Rothermel 1999a) into those families who choose not to use the system…

This article defines and describes teaching strategies used in homeschooling. It reviews several research and other literature sources from the homeschool community. It finds four themes from relevant research that inform the practices and seven major strategies used in the home-based education. Recommendations are made to parents who choose…

Although an established alternative form of American education, the concept of home schooling is just beginning to surface in China. Few Chinese have knowledge of home schooling yet alone consider this form of education. However, graduate students studying in the field of education are aware of this unusual alternative to traditional schooling,…

In the recently released National Household Education Survey 2001 homeschooled families were surveyed again both in terms of their demographic characteristics and the reasons for homeschooling. Using this new data source, two research questions that have not been studied before with a nationally representative data set are investigated: 1. Do…

Homeschooling is a growing phenomenon worldwide and especially across the United States. It is not fully understood yet as to what comprises the myriad of ethnological components in this educational choice by parents. To build upon existing theory, this study looked at the following ethnological factors; regional location of a family's home within…

This article presents guidelines formulated by Learning By Grace, Inc., one of the nation's leading providers of online resources for homeschoolers, and is intended to help home educators navigate the multitude of available choices so that they will be better equipped to select the provider that offers the curriculum and services most suited to…

This qualitative study provides a phenomenological perspective and comparative analysis of character education within the Christian school and home education milieu. The study is based on semi-structured interviews of fifty-two individuals (N = 52) representative of a sampling of Christian educators from four private, evangelical Christian Schools…

This submission presents sixteen issues of Fast Facts from the Library Research Service covering topics regarding academic, public, school and special libraries in Colorado, the Mountain West and Southwest Regions. The following are Fast Facts titles from 2006 (1) Colorado Public Library Performance Rankings (2004 Data); (2) How Librarians Help…