Date of Award
8-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Teaching and Learning
Committee Chair/Advisor
Anna Henson Hall
Committee Member
Sandra Mammano Linder
Committee Member
Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens
Committee Member
Jill Shelnut
Abstract
Early Childhood Education (ECE) is a period of growth and development for young children as they begin their educational journey. The need for a high-quality early childhood learning experience is necessary for the child’s holistic development, without which children may grow up with learning challenges that could negatively impact their adult life. Each child's early learning experience must begin with a good and deliberate reading foundation. Therefore, understanding the best methods of instilling strong reading skills in children from an early age sets the foundation for lifelong learning and success.
Homeschooling is the practice of educating, instructing, and tutoring children of all ages in the home environment based on the parents' decisions. This form of education has continued to grow and become an established alternative to the traditional educational system. Over the years, there has been a surge in the adoption of homeschooling as a form of education for a variety of reasons. Despite the increased adoption of home education by families worldwide, there seems to be very limited research on this topic. In this study, I refer to the insufficient literature that explains the processes, methods, and experiences of home education, especially regarding early childhood education and reading. There are also limited theories that adequately explain the phenomenon of home education.
This study expands the literature by providing a comprehensive, data-rich study and a theoretical framework that explains the educational processes homeschooling parents use in deciding which reading curriculum best suits their child and what instructional practices to adopt in teaching their young children to read. This study used a constructivist grounded theory approach to explore the lived experiences of homeschooling parents in South Carolina, particularly their decision-making processes concerning curriculum selection and instructional strategies for the reading development of their children of ages 4-8 years or PreK-3 grade levels.
Interview transcriptions, elicitation artifacts, and memos were collected from 21 homeschooling parents across South Carolina. These were all females representing diverse backgrounds in age, race, education level, and homeschooling experience. The findings from this study formed eleven themes that were categorized into three major areas, capturing the three research questions: reading definition, curricular decisions, and pedagogical practices. The first two themes, aspirations for the child and the skills focus, aligned with research question one, which examined how parents defined reading as reflecting their goals for their children. The next five themes are related to research question two, addressing how parents make curricular choices. The final four themes pertained to research question three, focusing on teaching methods and instructional strategies.
From the analysis of the data, four theoretical frameworks were developed with the first three: Reading goals, curricular decisions, and pedagogical practices, responding to the three research questions, while the fourth framework, The homeschool reading cycle, connected the three initial frameworks. These frameworks were found grounded in the data to explain in detail the processes involved in deciding on reading curriculum and instructional practices for homeschoolers. The study found that most parents adopted a structured approach to both their curriculum and scheduling, while smaller groups were structured in only one or neither.
Recommended Citation
Osho, Lauretta O., "How Do Homeschool Parents in South Carolina Select Curriculum and Make Pedagogical Choices to Support Their Children’s Early Reading Development?" (2025). All Dissertations. 3967.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/3967
Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1567-5276