A Group of Home Educating Mothers in Turkey: Their Reasons, Pedagogic Approaches and Use of Digital Resources

Abstract

Introduction and background. Home education is not regulated in Turkey; it is a relatively new concept, gaining popularity in recent years among parents who are not satisfied with the national education system. I came across the term home education on Turkish parents’ blogs and I found a discussion group in an online social network site. For this study, a sample of home educating mothers were recruited from this discussion group, and interviewed to examine the current situation of home education in Turkey. Aims and research questions. This research investigates home educating mothers’ values and beliefs, pedagogic approaches and environments, and their use of digital resources for home education. The research questions that emerged from preliminary observations and the literature review were: (i) to establish whether/how a sample of home-educating mothers in Turkey differ in crucial respects in their values and beliefs. (ii) To explore and examine which pedagogic approaches and environments a sample of home-educating mothers in Turkey adopt for their children’s education. (iii) To explore and examine the pedagogic use of digital resources to meet the educational needs of a sample of Turkish home-educating mothers’ children. Design, methodology and methods. A cross sectional, descriptive and explanatory design was used. The data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 44 home educating mothers in Turkey. Symbolic interactionism was the theoretical framework adopted and thematic analysis was used to analyse the interview data with the help of a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software package- Nvivo. Results. In this sample, home educating families in Turkey were found to be small families with children mainly at preschool and primary school level. These home educating mothers were found to have strong views about an ideal education and how the current education system was failing to meet their expectations. They indicated that they were aware of alternatives for educating their children, including home education, but they tended to send their children to school when they reached secondary school age. This may have been due to the unregulated situation of home education in Turkey. The decision to home educate was taken mostly by mothers and most teaching at home was done by mothers. Their approaches to home education were varied but fell into four groups which they described as flexi-schooling, homeschooling, deschooling and unschooling. However, not only did these groups overlap, but as the parents became more experienced in home education, they could move in each direction along a continuum from less structured to more structured teaching approaches. While all mothers in this study used digital resources for their own personal development as parents, only about one quarter employed digital resources as a tool in their children’s home education. Discussion. The discussion considers how the Results contribute to the literature reviewed in earlier chapters and identifies priorities for future research.