Apologies to all those who read my daughters’ first attempts at blogging! Here’s some more from How Children Learn at Home, by Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison.
Thomas and Pattison look at a study by Desforges and Abouchaar on how parenting influences academic achievement. They found that
Home background is crucial to educational achievement in school… “good parenting” is uniquely influential on children’s achievement even when all other factors, such as socio-economic status, are taken out of the equation.
“Good parenting” in this case meaning
- provision of a secure and stable environment
- intellectual stimulation
- parent-child discussion
- good models of constructive social and educational values
- high aspirations relating to personal fulfillment and good citizenship
By the nature of the task which they have undertaken, home-educating families are almost guaranteed to fulfil the greater part of Desforges and Abouchaar’s “good parenting” ideals. In fact the interviews showed parents providing these factors in abundance. In this sense, what home educating parents do with their children is not so much a radical departure but simply an extension of what is considered to be good parenting anyway… Remarkably it seems that parenting, rather than teaching, is sufficient to enable children to learn. (pp70-71)
Which is nice!




