Home education: then and now

Davies, Richard orcid iconORCID: 0000-0002-7910-8959 (2015) Home education: then and now. Oxford Review of Education, 41 (4). pp. 534-548. ISSN 0305-4985

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2015.1048119

Abstract

Elective Home Education is a legal, minority approach to the compulsory education of children. I review the potential contribution of the historical analysis of ‘domestic pedagogies’, presented in this Special Issue, for home education practice in the UK. By drawing on narratives of a period at the cusp of the perceived normalcy of ‘schooling’, I consider an alternative discourse to articulate the purpose of, and approaches to, education. In particular, I focus on the family not only as the site for educational practices, but also as critical for our understanding of what constitutes a ‘suitable education’. Along the way, I show how distinctions, common in home education practice, illuminate the historical debates on ‘domestic education’. I conclude by suggesting we cannot disassociate discussions of a suitable home education from the family within which such an education occurs.


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