Parallel Session Proceedings »
4.4.1 Homeschooling the Gifted: Experiences from Australian and Chilean Contexts
Homeschooling for gifted students has become an option for families in the last two decades (Jolly & Matthews, 2017a) even though the homeschooling movement emerged in many parts of the world in the ’70s, as parents started to educate their children at home (Gaither, 2017; Isenberg, 2007; Kunzman & Gaither, 2013). However, research on gifted homeschoolers is still in the early stages of development and is almost non-existent (Jolly & Matthews, 2017a, 2017b; Kula, 2018; Winstanley, 2009). In the case of Australia and Chile, there’s no research reported on this topic. Home education in Australia is a legal alternative to traditional school education (Allan & Jackson, 2010; Harding, 2011; Jackson & Allan, 2010), but without national regulation. In Chile, there are no legal obstacles to home education, but the existing supervision is minimal (Aliaga, 2017; Cabo, 2012; García, Barrera, & Alejandro, 2017). In relation to gifted students, every education department of each state and territory in Australia has a policy, but it’s a non-mandatory approach and schools can decide if they implement special programs (Walsh & Jolly, 2018). In Chile, there’s no policy and no school programs except for very few private enrichment initiatives (Conejeros, Cáceres, & Riveros, 2012). This research sought to analyze and compare the decisional process carried out by the families of gifted students and understand the effect of the homeschooling practice on their lives. Through a qualitative methodology focused on 20 case studies (10 from each country), 40 in-depth student and parental interviews were conducted, and through an emerging coding process, the categories that reflect the central contents of the stories were raised. From the results, reasons to homeschool are related with push factors like incomprehension from schools to the needs of gifted students, bad experiences with teachers or peers at schools, lack of academic challenge, and, in some cases, negative parental school experiences that are transferred to their children. In many cases, the families felt they didn’t have another option and withdrawal from the school system was a healing process both emotionally and cognitively. In the case of Australia, due to the giftedness of the student, some parents felt a double-failing, in the sense that the school system fails, but they also felt insecure about failing to provide an adequate education for their children too. Differences were observed in the two countries regarding the conceptions of giftedness they managed.