Reimagining home-based learning through comparisons of alternative schooling methods

Abstract

Moving forward into a post-pandemic world, we can reimagine institutional education systems by reflecting on the lived experiences of emergency home-based learning and exploring the alternative narratives of traditional homeschooling. Having worked in the educational sector of Ontario during the pandemic, I observed families transitioning their homes into blended learning spaces for emergency home-based learning and the challenges that came with this change. Parents found themselves trying to explain teaching materials with no previous training while teachers tried to enforce traditional classroom expectations in households where many children had no remote learning structures in place (Fontenelle-Tereshchuk, 2020; Orelien-Hernandez et al., 2021). In contrast, the growing homeschooling alternative, a blend of home and educational space, had established relational systems to support this kind of community-based pedagogy. This alleviated many of the challenges of multimodal learning and had shown promise in increasing student academic scores, creating alternatives to socioeconomic barriers found in institutional education, and fostering racial protectionism (Mazama & Lundy, 2012; Statistics Canada, 2021a; Van Pelt, 2015).  My paper introduces the preliminary questions and discussion of my proposed study for my master’s thesis using place-based pedagogy (Corbett, 2009; Ellsworth, 2005; Gruenewald, 2003; Illich, 1971) to open a conversation around homeschooling as a resource for post-pandemic pedagogical design and development.