Rethinking Education Models: Homeschooling Stories from Asia

Dr Trevor LEE Tsz Lok

Associate Professor, Department of Education Policy and Leadership, EdUHK

Mass school closures during COVID-19 have triggered a rethink about the role of schools and families in education. Instead of making a choice, millions of children were forced to learn at home. This kind of home-based learning during the pandemic was involuntary, improvised, and contingent. In contrast, there have been a growing number of families who have chosen homeschooling as an educational alternative to mainstream schools, often because they feel mainstream schools are not sufficiently child-centric.

Homeschooling as an educational choice is not a new topic. However, it is not necessarily a binary concept that excludes, confronts, or replaces mainstream school education. Homeschooling can be rather a "hybrid" education model, offering a reimagining of what, how, why, and with whom students learn.

Dr Trevor Lee, Assistant Professor from the Department of Education Policy and Leadership, investigated the views and experiences of Chinese homeschooling families in two Chinese cities – Taipei and Hong Kong. The team interviewed 31 families in Taipei and Hong Kong to understand their homeschooling experiences in terms of practices and resources, goals and expectations, values and philosophy on education, and obstacles.

The main reason parents adopt homeschooling is their disappointment with the school-centric tradition in Chinese education. A mother said, “the school system is getting more and more distorted, destroying our children’s learning motivation or ability, and taking their freedom away.” To address the negative experiences in mainstream schools and disagreements in values regarding education, interviewed parents had a common goal: to provide as child-centric education as possible. Parents prefer to keep intervention minimal so that children can enjoy flexibility and freedom to develop their own learning styles, pace, and curriculum.

In the Chinese context, family hierarchy is emphasized under the philosophy of filial piety. Homeschooling gives a new definition to the parent-child relationship. Interviewed parents described the ideal parent-child relationship as an “invisible kite string”. Homeschooling parents often play multiple roles, such as teacher and friend, learning companions in educational activities, and facilitators.

Homeschooling families use multiple educational resources to offer a well-rounded education in a child-centered learning environment. Learning activities can occur both indoors and outdoors. Different from pre-packaged school curriculum, homeschooled children can enjoy immersive and engaging educational experiences within a wide range of subject areas that are often linked to their everyday lives, according to their own interests and pace of learning.

In some Chinese cities, at least in Hong Kong, homeschooling is not legally regulated and lacks support from society. Encouragingly, lessons learned from Chinese homeschooling families offer hope and imagination for mainstream schooling. Despite its relatively small scale, homeschooling in Chinese cities explores ways in which non-traditional education models benefit students. New perspectives bring about positive changes in temporal, spatial, relational, and resource-related aspects of future education.

On one hand, the study provides the opportunity to reassess the types of education desired for the future. On the other hand, it stimulates innovative ideas benefiting current public and private school models of education.

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