Teaching Methods
Home School Marketplace - Homeschool Teaching Approaches
Unschooling
Unschooling assumes that children are natural learners and gives them resources to do so.
On the one hand, the Unschooling
Approach is defined by
John Holt, a 20th century American educator who
concluded that children have an innate desire to learn and a
curiosity that drives them to learn what they need to know
when they need to know it. Holt believed that both desire
and curiosity are destroyed by the usual methods of
teaching.
In his book
Teach Your Own, Holt wrote: “What children need is not
new and better curricula but access to more and more of the
real world; plenty of time and space to think over their
experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning out
of them; and advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it
easier for them to get where they want to go (not where we
think they ought to go), and to find out what they want to
find out.”
On the other hand, unschooling refers to
any less structured learning approach that allows children
to pursue their own interests with parental support and
guidance. The child is surrounded by a rich environment of
books, learning resources, and adults who model a lifestyle
of learning and are willing to interact with him. Formal
academics are pursued when the need arises. Christians who
favor less structured schooling, but with definite goals,
prefer to be called “relaxed home educators,” not
unschoolers.
Some questions to ask yourself before trying the
Unschooling Approach:
1. Am I comfortable with few pre-set goals and little
structure?
2. Do my children have strong interests in particular areas?
3. Does my family have a lot of natural curiosity and love
learning?
Strengths of the Unschooling
Approach:
Takes little planning
Captures the child’s “teachable moments”
Children have access to the real world, plenty of time and
space to figure things out on their own
Children are less likely to become academically frustrated
or “burned out”
Children can delve into a subject as deeply or as
shallowly as they desire
Provides a discipleship model of learning
Creates self-learners with a love of learning
Weaknesses of the Unschooling
Approach:
May neglect some subjects
Hard to assess level of learning
Lacks the security of a clearly laid out program
Is extremely child-centered
Difficult to explain to others
May be overly optimistic about what children will
accomplish on their own
See Resources for each of the Home School teaching approaches
Other Resources:
Homeschooling Your Special Needs Child by Isabel ShawHomeschooling and Its Many Faces
Approaches to Homeschooling from HomeTaught
The
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