Product Description

In his "Educating Children at Home", Alan Thomas found that many home educating families chose or gravitated towards an informal style of education, radically different from that found in schools. Such learning, also described as unschooling, natural or autonomous, takes place without most of the features considered essential for learning in school. At home there is no curriculum or sequential teaching, nor are there any lessons, textbooks, requirements for written work, practice exercises, marking or testing. But how can children who learn in this way actually achieve an education on a par with what schools offer? In this new research, Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison seek to explain the efficacy of this alternative pedagogy through the experiences of families who have chosen to educate their children informally.Based on interviews and extended examples of learning at home the authors explore: the scope for informal learning within children's everyday lives; the informal acquisition of literacy and numeracy; the role of parents and others in informal learning; and, how children proactively develop their own learning agendas. Their investigation provides not only an insight into the powerful and effective nature of informal learning but also presents some fundamental challenges to many of the assumptions underpinning educational theory. This book will be of interest to education practitioners, researchers and all parents, whether their children are in or out of school, offering as it does fascinating insights into the nature of children's learning.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39333 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 156 pages

About the Author
Dr Alan Thomas is Visiting Fellow at the University of London, Institute of Education. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. Harriet Pattison is a Research Associate at the University of London, Institute of Education. Her three children are home educated.

Customer Reviews

Self-directed learning
This approachable and accessible book covers most aspects of informal and self-directed learning at home.

The authors interviewed 26, mostly British, home-schooling families, and their outcomes go some way towards rebutting conventional arguments that education cannot exist beyond the structure of schools, curricula, and testing.

Sections on the acquisition of literacy and numeracy are particularly well researched. The children concerned learn almost by accident through their everyday experiences, when they feel like it and are ready for it. Some of them receive input from their parents, while others learn with complete autonomy.

The families and the authors describe how the majority of the children observed are actively engaged in their own learning and, therefore, establish their own learning agendas guided by what suits them best. The removal of competition, restrictive curricula and the time-wasting built into the school day create the space for children to develop their self-motivation and thereby enable them to learn more efficiently.

As a retired teacher with thirty years experience, I find that this book provides me with evidence of the value of home schooling and throws out a powerful challenge to the skeptics.

Excellent- well researched & highly informative
This is a very interesting book about the theory of how children learn in the home environment by comparison to school. Based predominantly on academic research it is a very through and well referenced piece of work which makes the content that much more useful. If you're fed up with books that peddle 'dribble theories' which have no scientific backing, then this book is for you. It's very well grounded in solid academic research.

In terms of content, it can be a bit repetative if you're reading it as leisure reading, but as it seeks to be an authoratative piece of work i don't think it is excessively over done.

The style if very accessable, and its easy for a reader to relate it to their own experiences both as a child and as a carer/parent, demonstrating how people (adults and children) learn outside the formal classroom.

I would recommend this book to anyone who's contemplating homeschooling, and to anyone who's involved in the business of education (whether of children or adults) as it gives a new perspective on teaching.

By Georgie, HOBART, Australia (Home Educator, Teacher, Childcare Professional)
My one criticism of this book is the incomplete title. I would like to see it re-named 'How children learn at home and anywhere else they happen to find themselves.' This book, a celebration and confirmation of the quality of informal learning, is relevant to children everywhere and at all ages and stages.

This book should be required reading for every adult who has any degree of relationship, authority or decision-making role in relation to children's learning opportunities - every parent, every grandparent, aunt or uncle, every childcare professional, every Guide or Scout or other children's club leader, every home educator, every school teacher.

What a win for children if every relevant adult read and took notice of the fascinating but - in our highly-structured society - inconvenient truth imbedded between the covers of this book.

We would all be deafened by the huge collective sigh of relief which would eminate from the Western World's children as they found themselves freed up to get on with what they've all been programmed to do since birth or earlier - largely independently extracting all the learning they need from the culture and environment into which they have been born, each picking out his or her unique path towards adulthood.