During Teagan's progression through her MAT degree in teaching, she was required to complete some kind of capstone project for the completion and award of her degree. She decided to complete a creative project, using empirical research to prove the necessity of good writing curricula for home schoolers and creating some curricula materials to fill that need. This website and the materials on the "Writing Units" page are the results.
In the United States, the number of homeschoolers is on the rise. Even though this group of students has been proven to be largely high achievers, home schoolers have not been explicitly assessed in the realm of writing. Considering the fact that in the U.S. , high-school writing scores are mostly operating at "basic" levels, it would be plausible to infer that writing is an area of difficulty for home educators as well. At least one study by Duggan in 2010, showed that homeschooled students who made it to the college professed less of a confidence in their writing skills compared to private schooled students. As homeschooled students in this study were the most likely to attribute their academic success to their previous education experiences, this implies that homeschooled students did not receive writing instruction that made them confident in their writing skills. This creative project then aims to discern where homeschool writing curricula is lacking and what supplements and materials would best support home educators as they aim to support their students in writing. The following research questions were used to guide Teagan's research in the pursuit of this project:
1. What are the shortcomings in offered homeschool, high school writing curricula?
2. How can genre pedagogies be used to create instructional writing materials to teach homeschoolers and high-schoolers to write well?
3. How can genre-based writing curriculum for homeschoolers be successfully integrated in the homeschool environment to create authentic writing situations?
In 2016, researcher Thomas did a survey of over 1200 homeschool families to determine popular teaching methods and curricula use for home educators. He found that over the years, home educators have not only become more versatile in their use of curricula, using everything from bookstores to libraries, but also that there is a rise in the use of online resources and the use of the internet in general.
Genre pedagogies refer to a specific technique of teaching writing that believes that writing occurs as a response to a certain situation. These situations have created repeated texts which are collected into a category or "genre." Genre pedagogies then, work to identify and write texts based on why the text is written, who it's written for, and how it should be written. Writing methods that take a genre approach have been found to be authentic and accessible to all writers.
With these elements in mind, Teagan determined that the best way to support home educators with their instruction of writing was to provide usable writing units based on genre pedagogies, and further lessons and instructions to help home educators create their own writing assignments using genre pedagogy techniques. These materials include a Writing Situation Unit, a Proposed Solution Unit, and a Informative Project Unit. To help the most home educators possible, these materials are posted online for easy access. They are found under the "Writing Units" page of this website.
You can find more resources about homeschoolers, genre pedagogies, and writing below.
Badger, R., and White, G. (2000). A process genre approach to teaching writing. English Language Teaching, 54(2). Retrieved from: https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article-abstract/54/2/153/413641
Cai, Y., Reeve, J., and Robinson, D. (2002). Schooling and teaching style: Comparing the motivating styles of home school and public school teachers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94 (2), 372-380. DOI: 10.1037//0022-0663.94.2.372
Devitt, A. J. (2000). Integrating rhetorical and literary theories of genre. College English, 62(6), 696-718. Retrieved from: https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.mnsu.edu/stable/379009
Duggan, M. H. (2010). Is all college preparation equal? Pre-community college experiences of home-schooled, private-schooled, and public-schooled students. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 34(1-2), 25-38. doi.org/10.1080/10668920903388131
Gilliland, B. (2015). Reading, writing, and learning English in an American high school classroom. Reading in a Foreign Language, 27(2), 272-293. Retrieved from http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/
Hanna, L. G. (2012). Homeschooling education: Longitudinal study of methods, materials, and curricula. Education and Urban Society, 44(5), 609-631. doi: 10.1177/0013124511404886
Lirola, M. M. (2015). The use of genre theory for improving writing proficiency skills in explanations. Ikala, Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura, 20(2), 189-204. DOI: 10.17533/udea.ikala.v20n2a04
Martin-Chang, S., Gould, O. N., & Meuse, R. E. (2011). The impact of schooling on academic achievement: Evidence from homeschooled and traditionally schooled students. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 43(3), 195-202. DOI: 10.1037/a0022697
Ray, B. (2010). Academic achievement and demographic traits of homeschool students: A nationwide study. Academic Leadership: The Online Journal, 8(1). Retrieved from https://scholars.fhsu.edu/alj/vol8/iss1/7/
Redford, J., Battle, D., Bielick, S., & Grady, S. (2017). Homeschooling in the United States: 2012 (NCES Report 2016-096.REV). Retrieved from National Center for Education Statistics: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016096rev.pdf
Reid, M. J., and Moore III, J. L. (2008). College readiness and academic preparation for postsecondary education: Oral histories of first-generation urban college students. Urban Education, 34(2), 240-261. Doi: 10.1177/0042085907312346
Thomas, J. (2016). Instruction motivations: What can we learn from homeschooling families? Qualitative Report, 21(11), 2073-2086. Retrieved from https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol21/iss11/10