Parents’ motives for home education: The influence of methodological design and social context

• Main Author: Thomas SPIEGLER
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kura Publishing 2010-10-01
• Series: International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education
• Subjects: home education; home schooling; parents’ motives; reasons
• Online Access: http://www.iejee.com/3_1_2010/57_70.pdf

Parents’ motives for home education are one of the most researched topics within home education research. The focus of this article is on the question of the degree to which the results regarding these motives are influenced and shaped by the applied methods and thesocial context. The empirical basis is a meta-analysis of twelve research examples from the last two decades. It is concluded that the diversity within the results can partly be traced back to fundamental differences in the methodological design, to the absence of detailed theoretical modelling and remarkable differences of the survey instruments and that the role of the social environment and the process of the construction of motives in a certain socialcontext deserve more attention.