HOME SCHOOLING AS A SOCIAL MOVEMENT: IDENTIFYING THE DETERMINANTS OF HOMESCHOOLERS' PERCEPTIONS*

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to estimate the extent to which home schooling parents perceive themselves as social movement participants and to identify the factors contributing to such beliefs. The impact of collective action frames, feelings of efficacy, social network ties, and home schooling motivations are considered. Regression models are employed in an analysis of original survey data from an organized group of Southern California homeschoolers. Home schooling motivations are most salient in determining whether one interprets their activities as part of a larger movement. Social network tie indicators are largely unimportant in the models. The findings highlight the important role of organizational affiliation and integration. Homeschoolers without affiliations and those who are less integrated into their support organizations are not likely to feel as if they are part of a larger movement. Organizational integration—specifically attitudinal affinity—also appears to make home schooling parents become more narrowly focused upon their own children rather than the welfare of all children. Implications for future home schooling and social movement research are discussed.

Acknowledgments

This article was presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Atlanta, GA. While the charter school where this research was conducted will remain anonymous, we would like to thank the administration for their cooperation and the parent/teachers who shared their experiences and opinions with us. Also, thanks to Ziad Munson for comments on an earlier draft of this article. This research was supported by the University of California-Riverside School Improvement Research Group.

Notes

¹There have also been claims that some white parents explicitly choose home schooling because of their racism against students of color (see Ray 1999).

²Aberle's (1966) “alterative” movements are often misquoted as “alternative” (see Locher 2002 and Steward, Shriver, and Chasteen 2002).

³California was second only to Minnesota in adopting charter legislation. As of 1999, 36 states and the District of Columbia have charter laws supporting nearly 1,500 schools and over 250,000 students nationwide (RPP International 2000).

⁴One reviewer suggested that we examine the perceptions of the children who are home schooled too. While we agree that it would be interesting to test for the association between children's and parents' attitudes, we never intended to do so and therefore lack the necessary data to conduct such an analysis.

⁵We are not aware of any response bias and many of those not participating did not decline to complete the survey. Some parents missed their scheduled monthly meeting, others were not asked to complete the survey by academic advisors who ran out of time for their conferences, and a few had technical difficulties with the computer data collection program.

N = 235.

⁶While this literature was designed to differentiate social movement participants from nonparticipants, the assumption made here is that the dynamics determining perceptions of social movement participation will be similar.

N = 235.

⁷Eight of the items had two missing values, three items had three, two items had four, two items had five, and one item had six missing values. All were recoded with the whole number nearest the mean.

N = 235.

⁸Dummy variables for the income categories and “decline to state” option were also constructed and tested in the models. The results of the analyses did not differ, so nothing is lost by recoding the “decline to state” people into the mean category.

⁹Surprisingly, 23 (9.8%) respondents left this item blank. It was assumed that these people were not employed and skipped the question instead of selecting “no paid job.” Thus, they were recoded as “0” in the dummy variable (which is also the mode value).

***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05, ⁺p < .07; two-tailed tests; N = 235.

¹⁰McAdam (1986) argues that network ties initially push people into low-risk activism and “each succeeding foray into safe forms of activism increases the recruit's…commitment to an activist identity, as well as his receptivity to more costly forms of participation” (1986, p.70). In the case of home schooling, it may be that network ties are important for getting parents into low-risk activism (such as contacting school officials and speaking at public board meetings) that eventually influences their decision to home school (the high-risk activity).

N = 235.