Learning from Empowered Home-Educating Families

Abstract

Home-educating families are unique in that the parents are particularly empowered and involved in their children's learning, thus offering an interesting lens through which to examine parent involvement. Questionnaire data from eleven families, as well as in-depth data from an ethnographic study of home-educating families in Oregon, describe families' use of museums, as well as their ideas about the characteristics of successful learning environments. Findings suggest that home-educating families use museums to augment on-going projects, engage in community service, and as starting points for new learning efforts. They value connecting with people, institutions, and real artifacts in order to contextualize and deepen their learning. Recommendations for how museums can meaningfully connect both home-educating and schooled families with the resources of the museum are presented.