Homeschool Geographies: A Case Study of Educational Infrastructure in Virginia

Open Access
- Author:
- Avery-Grubel, Amy S
- Graduate Program:
- Geography
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- None
- Committee Members:
- Roger Michael Downs, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Roger Michael Downs, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor - Keywords:
- space-time mapping
homeschool infrastructure
educational restructur-ing
school choice
homeschooling
educational geography
Social Network Analysis - Abstract:
- Homeschooling in the United States has grown over the last four decades from a small grassroots movement to an infrastructure supporting over 1.5 million students in 2007. By removing children from traditional school spaces homeschooling represents an implicit rejection of the traditional school infrastructure. Furthermore, as the ultimate form of privatized education, homeschooling is an important component of contemporary educational restructuring. While literature exploring geographies of education has de-scribed the socio-spatial processes, which are implicated in the resegregation of American schools, as being facilitated by school-choice reform, the spatial implications of homeschooling have remained largely unexplored. Homeschool literature claims that homeschoolers fall into one of three motivation-related groups—ideologues, pedagogues, and ‗mainstream‘ homeschoolers—and that, depending on their motivation for home-schooling, parents will choose to use different specialized resources. Therefore, this study describes the infrastructure of homeschooling, as expressed in the spatio-temporal and social-resource networks of homeschoolers in three Virginia school districts. By explor-ing the differences between the homeschool infrastructure and the traditional school infrastructure, as well as among the motivation-related groups of homeschoolers, this thesis underscores the implications of homeschooling as it relates to school-choice reform and to the social and spatial restructuring of American education.