Considerable evidence demonstrates the importance of the cognitive home environment in supporting children's language, cognition, and school readiness more broadly. This is particularly important for ...children from low-income backgrounds, as cognitive stimulation is a key area of resilience that mediates the impact of poverty on child development. Researchers and clinicians have therefore highlighted the need to quantify cognitive stimulation; however existing methodological approaches frequently utilize home visits and/or labor-intensive observations and coding. Here, we examined the reliability and validity of the StimQ.sub.2, a parent-report measure of the cognitive home environment that can be delivered efficiently and at low cost. StimQ.sub.2 improves upon earlier versions of the instrument by removing outdated items, assessing additional domains of cognitive stimulation and providing new scoring systems. Findings suggest that the StimQ.sub.2 is a reliable and valid measure of the cognitive home environment for children from infancy through the preschool period.
Internationally, there has been a dramatic evolution in the numbers of parents choosing to home-school their children for some, or all, of their schooling. Research to date has mainly focussed on the ...characteristics and motivations of parents who home-school. Little is known about the practice and implementation of home-schooling, especially for learners with disability or additional learning needs. Where research exists, it is generally qualitative, location specific, and small in scale. To address this gap, this paper investigates research regarding previously identified reactive and proactive motivations, legal requirements, and implementation processes within home-schooling family demographics. These are then utilised to develop the Parents' Perceptions of Home-Schooling scale (PPHS), which seeks to clarify both motivations as well as implementation and practical issues associated with choosing to home-school. Discussion focuses on the design of the PPHS scale and an initial study with 21 home-schooling parents. Being created for distribution across geolocational, distinct, and international and national contexts, the PPHS will provide scope to gather large-scale quantitative data with a view to improving the supports available to home-schooling families and enhancing learner outcomes.
In Spring 2020, schools in many countries had to close in response to the COVID-19 virus pandemic and move to remote teaching. This paper explores the views of pupils, parents/carers and teachers of ...‘home-school’ in one Norwegian municipality, gathered through parallel online surveys in April 2020 during the peak of the COVID-19 lockdown period. It finds that adaptation happened very quickly and that home-school was well received by pupils and parents. There was more creative learning, better progress, more useful feedback and greater student independence. School leaders reported that they wanted to implement changes based on the experience of remote learning enforced by the lockdown, so that the crisis has become an opportunity for grassroots innovation.
Parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) took part in an online survey that explored their experiences of home‐schooling during the coronavirus pandemic. Two hundred ...and thirty‐eight parents from the UK responded to 49 questions about the resources and support they had received, their management and feelings surrounding home‐schooling. Chi‐square analyses were used to establish whether parents' experiences differed as a result of socio‐economic status (SES) or the nature of their child's SEND. Results indicated that parents were dissatisfied with the resources and support they had received for their child's educational and psychological needs. Parents felt inadequate and unprepared and believed that non‐attendance at school had and would have a detrimental effect on their child's education and mental health. Parents also described the negative impact of home‐schooling on their and their family's well‐being. Finally, SES and SEND‐type were not associated with parents' experiences of home‐schooling.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been highly disruptive, with the closure of schools causing sudden shifts for students, educators and parents/caregivers to remote learning from home (home-schooling). ...Limited research has focused on home-schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic, with most research to date being descriptive in nature. The aim of the current study was to comprehensively quantify the psychosocial impacts of home-schooling on parents and other caregivers, and identify factors associated with better outcomes.
A nationally representative sample of 1,296 Australian adults was recruited at the beginning of Australian COVID-19 restrictions in late-March 2020, and followed up every two weeks. Data for the current study were drawn from waves two and three. Surveys assessed psychosocial outcomes of psychological distress, work and social impairment, and wellbeing, as well as a range of home-schooling factors.
Parents and caregivers who were home-schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic experienced significantly higher levels of psychological distress and work/social impairment compared to those who were not home-schooling or had no school-aged children. A current mental health diagnosis or lower levels of perceived support from their child's school negatively affected levels of psychological distress, work and social impairment, and wellbeing in parents and caregivers involved in home-schooling.
The mental health impacts of home-schooling were high and may rise as periods of home-schooling increase in frequency and duration. Recognising and acknowledging the challenges of home-schooling is important, and should be included in psychosocial assessments of wellbeing during periods of school closure. Emotional and instrumental support is needed for those involved in home-schooling, as perceived levels of support is associated with improved outcomes. Proactive planning by schools to support parents may promote better outcomes and improved home-schooling experiences for students.
In spring 2020, governments around the globe shut down schools to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus. We argue that low-achieving students may be particularly affected by the lack of ...educator support during school closures. We collect detailed time-use information on students before and during the school closures in a survey of 1099 parents in Germany. We find that while students on average reduced their daily learning time of 7.4 h by about half, the reduction was significantly larger for low-achievers (4.1 h) than for high-achievers (3.7 h). Low-achievers disproportionately replaced learning time with detrimental activities such as TV or computer games rather than with activities more conducive to child development. The learning gap was not compensated by parents or schools who provided less support for low-achieving students.
Kingdom of children Stevens, Mitchell L
2001, 2001., 20090209, 2009, 2001-01-01, Volume:
37
eBook, Book
More than one million American children are schooled by their parents. As their ranks grow, home schoolers are making headlines by winning national spelling bees and excelling at elite universities. ...The few studies conducted suggest that homeschooled children are academically successful and remarkably well socialized. Yet we still know little about this alternative to one of society’s most fundamental institutions. Beyond a vague notion of children reading around the kitchen table, we don’t know what home schooling looks like from the inside. Sociologist Mitchell Stevens goes behind the scenes of the homeschool movement and into the homes and meetings of home schoolers. What he finds are two very different kinds of home education--one rooted in the liberal alternative school movement of the 1960s and 1970s and one stemming from the Christian day school movement of the same era. Stevens explains how this dual history shapes the meaning and practice of home schooling today. In the process, he introduces us to an unlikely mix of parents (including fundamentalist Protestants, pagans, naturalists, and educational radicals) and notes the core values on which they agree: the sanctity of childhood and the primacy of family in the face of a highly competitive, bureaucratized society.
The Wiley Handbook of Home Education is a comprehensive collection of the latest scholarship in all aspects of home education in the United States and abroad. * Presents the latest findings on ...academic achievement of home-schooled children, issues of socialization, and legal argumentation about home-schooling and government regulation * A truly global perspective on home education, this handbook includes the disparate work of scholars outside of the U.S. * Typically understudied topics are addressed, such as the emotional lives of home educating mothers and the impact of home education on young adults * Writing is accessible to students, scholars, educators, and anyone interested in home schooling issues
The purpose of this paper is to review recent literature on parental perspectives of the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on the home‐schooling of children with special educational needs and ...disabilities, as well as to consider implications for their education and well‐being. Eleven papers were reviewed, published between 2020 and 2021, selected according to a systematic protocol from three widely used online databases. Analysis of the reviewed papers found that transitioning to home‐schooling during the pandemic had negative consequences for most of the children, as well as for their parents, though a small but significant number reported positive consequences. Three key areas of concern were identified in the analysis: balancing home‐schooling with parent work activities; parent relationships with schools and support services and agencies and home‐schooling effects on the well‐being and mental health of parents and children.
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