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"I Need to Teach My Own Children": A Constructivist Grounded Theory Study of Home-schooling in Trinidad and Tobago

Research output: ThesisDoctoral Thesis

Published
  • Nneka St Rose
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Publication date10/2022
Number of pages168
QualificationPhD
Awarding Institution
Publisher
  • Lancaster University
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Home-schooling as an alternative form of education has grown exponentially globally. Its growth in developed countries has seen the educational practice carve out a distinct space in political, educational, and academic discourse. In Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), educational discourse does not integrate the home-school rhetoric despite the noted growth and its increasing popularity in the educational landscape. Families are home-schooling with limited interference within a relatively untainted framework. This study utilized a Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) method to better understand this practice in such a small society. It recognized the growth of home-schooling in T&T as an educational experiment, with possibilities to explore education done differently in its current incubator status. The 11 home-schooling parents of this study who were interviewed unveiled a manner of conceptualizing and enacting education that aligned closely with the writings of critical pedagogy: revealing a liberating, transformative education. Their home-school journey demonstrated a cognitive shift from many of the elements of the formal system that critical pedagogical theorists have heavily analyzed, capturing four emergent questions from the data: (a) who is my child? (b) what does he/she need? (c) how can I fulfil that need? (d) what kind of person am I educating?
Keywords: Home-school, pedagogy, education, Constructivist Grounded Theory.