MariaD’s blog

What is interesting for me, as an educator, are the many educational innovations developed and (by now) perfected within homeschool communities. How does “post-school” educational system look like? Here is a partial list of educational practices that are quite widespread, accepted and well developed:

(by CommLab )

- Rapid prototyping of everything, short cycles of evaluation and change, and correspondingly short educational experiences are the norm. Families have moved from “package deal” of whole set curricula (”this is what you do for middle school”) to hand-picking books, teachers, and methods for each child for each 2-4 months of each subject. A kid can stay with a program that works for years, or drop one that does not in a few weeks. This leads to increased quality of programs.

(by Oakland Community College)

- High value is placed on engagement, love for subjects and personal relevance of activities both for activity leaders and for all participants. It is expected that participants and especially leaders of activities CARE. Children are much more likely to be learning topics and subjects that are meaningful for them personally, in ways they personally find engaging. Much discussion happens, and much know-how is accumulated about ways of finding and developing meaningful activities for particular subject areas.

- Deconstruction of “age” and shift to ability levels and styles is frequent among homeschoolers. One often sees age spreads of 3-6 years within each homeschool group activity. Grouping by age is rare and loose (e.g. “teens and tweens” rather than “fourteen year olds”). Correspondingly, friendships and informal communities form across ages, based on common interests and activities.

(by iTunes U)

- Barter economies, gift economies, network economies, coops and other innovative (or age-old) alternative forms of education financing are widespread. Homeschoolers value and often use open and free software and open educational resources, as well as the culture of exchange and communal use of resources. Interestingly, the largest benefits of homeschooling as far as standardized tests and college admissions go happen in the poorest families with lowest-educated parents.

(by Turno)

- Co-production models of learning, where learners and teachers are curriculum co-creators, project learning, unit studies and other active learning models are prevalent among homeschoolers.

- Homeschoolers often form “nakama” groups, small, local tight friend and family groups getting together to achieve their goals, and tied personally as well as educationally. High value is placed on friendships, and day-to-day educational decisions come from these personal ties.

- There are active, robust local communities and global support networks for homeschooling families, for anything from finding an appropriate math program for highly gifted ADHD Asperger kid who likes computers, to helping a family through tough economic times. Homeschoolers are some of the most socially networked demographics, which include lightning-fast spread of politically relevant news, such as proposed laws.

I think of homeschoolers as a distributed think tank and early adopters of education practices of the future.

My comment to USA Today article at http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-05-28-homeschooling_N.htm