How Children Learn at Home

In Educating Children at Home, 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?

Dr Alan Thomas is Visiting Fellow at the University of London Institute of Education. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society Harriet Pattison is Research Associate at the University of London Institute of Education