[Ebook] Reading How Children Learn at Home FOR A

In his <i>Educating Children at Home</i>, Alan Thomas found that many home educating families chose or gravitated towards an informal style of education, radically different from that found in schools. Such learning, also described as unschooling, natural or autonomous, takes place without most of the features considered essential for learning in school. At home there is no curriculum or sequential teaching, nor are there any lessons, textbooks, requirements for written work, practice exercises, marking or testing. But how can children who learn in this way actually achieve an education on a par with what schools offer?<br /><br />In this new research, Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison seek to explain the efficacy of this alternative pedagogy through the experiences of families who have chosen to educate their children informally. Based on interviews and extended examples of learning at home the authors explore:<br /><br />- the scope for informal learning within children's everyday liv