How can the dual identity of “teacher” and “parent” influence the decision to homeschool in Australia?

Drawing from interviews with early childhood, primary, and high school educators who homeschool, authors Rebecca English and Gemma Troughton explore the ways their experience influences their understanding of themselves as both teachers and parents. Canaries in the Coalmine delves into the reasoning behind following an alternative education path, the approaches taken by home educators, and how they navigate the differences from mainstream education. This book also invites readers to consider the wider implications of this movement: what does this choice mean for schools, the community, and the teacher shortage?

This book is ideal reading for students and practitioners of Education, and Sociology, as well as Teachers, Policy Makers, Education Administrators, Home Educators, Parents, and Guardians.

The digital PDF version of this Chapter available Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits adaptation, alteration, reproduction and distribution for non-commercial use without further permission provided the original work is attributed.