How Children Learn at Home

For the two of us, the interest in home education has arisen from very different sources.  But for us both home education offers the chance to further this interest in unique ways.  Nearly all of our understanding of how children learn emanates from school practices and is tailored to improving these within the framework that school offers.  Home education opens up a whole new landscape on learning where individuals and families find their own ways to learn.  Our aim is not to criticise schools or to advocate home education.  Our interest lies purely in how children learn; what things they are interested in and why, and how they then go about exploring them.  Thinking about these questions is obviously interesting to parents whether they practice home education or not, as they watch their children growing up and learning.  For those families who are involved in home education it can be enlightening and reassuring to hear about the experiences of others.  Theorectically as  well, research into home education is important.  Home education is a very under researched area yet it can provide a startling contrast to school based pedagogy.  Considering how children learn at home can act as a control to some of the conventional wisdom of schooling by making us critical of the assumptions that underpin the now taken for granted models of learning on which most theory is based.