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Naomi Fisher

Feb 4 • 10 tweets • 4 min read

Professionals! Wondering about the proposed home education register and what education should look like at home? One tip, it can be nothing like school and yet highly effective. Here are a few starting points. #homeeducation #selfdirectededucation #evidenceinformededucation

School's Out - I talk to leading researchers on education without school. We think dropping out of school is a disaster - is that really the case? What if we changed the narrative? thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-33/marc…

Many young people at home make choices about their learning - this is self-directed education and is evidence-informed. Here's Peter Gray explaining the necessary conditions for self-directed education shown in his research.

But what about SEND, I hear you say? Surely they need the specialist help available at school? Well, actually it seems that a very high proportion of home ed kids (over 50%) would be identified as SEND at school - and at home things can be very different. self-directed.org/tp/neurodivers…

And what happens to the kids later, if they are allowed to learn in this very different way? Here's Astra Taylor, who was unschooled, telling us what it meant to her.

'It's all anecdotal'! I hear you say - so here's some research. Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison show just how different education can be, outside school. waterstones.com/book/how-child…

@professorgriley

Peter Gray and @professorgriley followed up unschoolers to see what happens to young people who don't go to school and who aren't made to follow a curriculum. self-directed.org/resource/gray-…

Gray and Riley have both written books summarising the research. link.springer.com/book/10.1007/9…
hive.co.uk/Product/Peter-…

And of course there's my own book, which summarised the research on which self-directed education is based, outlines what self-directed education actually is, and how to do it. hachette.co.uk/titles/naomi-f….

Questions welcome, but I'd appreciate it if you read my thread on common myths first, and avoid starting off with 'well it's fine for people like you but it would never work for disadvantaged kids, they have to be made to learn'.

https://twitter.com/naomicfisher/status/1478869422228094989?s=20&t=TDSXQ8Vl8sbRTXJ2wnkNIQ

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More from @naomicfisher

Naomi Fisher

@naomicfisher

Feb 5

'You don't have a clue what it's like'. One of the ways in which people dismiss me is by telling me I'm not a teacher and so I don't understand.'Armchair warrior' they say, implying that I should butt out and let teachers get on with the job in the way that they know is best.1/

Here's why I can't do that, and why we should never accept that 'teachers know best' - or indeed, any other professional. No professionals should be immune to feedback from the outside. For things can look one way from inside a profession, and very different from the outside.2/

I deal with the casualties of the system. The parents desperate for help, whose children are not just refusing to go to school, they are also refusing to get dressed or leave the house - ever. The children who say they want to die because they can see no other way out. 3/

Read 18 tweets

Naomi Fisher

@naomicfisher

Jan 12

Favourite Myths: "Self-Directed Education has been conclusively shown not to work". I'm told this often, usually by male teachers. When I ask more questions or provide evidence to the contrary they stop responding or block me. So let's see if it's an evidence-based claim. 1/

@derryhannam

Apart from places where teachers are bringing autonomy into the system - @derryhannam, or those @RoweGeraldine writes about in her book, or the approach @RethinkingJames & @Rethinking_Kate write about, what about full-on self-directed education? Is there evidence it works?2/

By this I mean places where children and young people retain responsibility for their education.They can choose what they learn. Adults are involved but not coercive.I don't mean neglect, being expected to learn on your own with no support, or minimal guidance.3/

Read 15 tweets

Naomi Fisher

@naomicfisher

Jan 8

I hear stories of people's lives every day. That's my job. But not everyone has this privilege & perhaps you don't know why I keep banging this drum. I'll tell you a few reasons why I won't shut up about neurodiversity and self-directed education. 1/

When I talk to neurodivergent adults, they tell me about the sense of wrongness about themselves which they learnt at school.Why was everything so confusing?Why didn't they fit in?Their conclusion was, because there's something wrong with me.What if that just didn't happen? 2/

When I talk to neurodivergent kids they tell me how hard they find it being at school all day with no space to get away. They tell me they come out of school & almost explode with all the tension they have been holding in.What if we just let them leave before it's too much? 3/

Read 13 tweets

Naomi Fisher

@naomicfisher

Jan 8

Interesting example of how a more self-directed approach to education gets covered in the press - the focus of the article is on curiosity and helping kids find what they love, the title is ‘school with no rules’. 1/
thetimes.co.uk/article/would-…

@Seanfeb1962

There’s a focus on ‘it could never work here!’ rather than finding the examples of how it does work here - @Seanfeb1962, @DerryHannam or @HenryReadhead could have told them how. 2/

This is a state school of 295 students so they can’t go for the argument usually levelled against self-directed education - that it’s just for the privileged bohemians. Instead they’ve gone for ‘it can’t scale up’, with no evidence except for a failed experiment in Knowsley. 3/

Read 10 tweets

Naomi Fisher

@naomicfisher

Jan 5

In 2021 I discovered that very few people know much about self-directed education.Mostly what people 'know' is that it doesn't work & so they don't need to learn any more about it. I venture to disagree, but some myths just keep coming back. Here are some of my favourites.1/

SDE is the same as 'minimal guidance' and has been shown not to be effective. False. Minimal guidance is the control condition for studies on direct instruction. It has nothing at all to do with SDE which often involves a lot of adult involvement and guidance.2/

SDE can't work for complex skills such as reading and mathematics.These skills are 'biologically secondary' and require formal schooling. False. Research by Pattison&Thomas demonstrated how children learn skills such as reading informally when outside school.3/

Read 11 tweets

Naomi Fisher

@naomicfisher

Nov 22, 2021

When children are unhappy at school, their parents often feel intense shame. It's no easier for the young people themselves. When I was a teenager, I refused to go to school. I can still feel the distress of that time in my body. 1/ link.medium.com/J2MQasxeolb

I started a new school and nothing went right there. My peers rejected me and I found the lessons boring and pointless. Soon I started to feel actually ill when I went to school. Heavy, achey, tired. My glands swelled up. 2/

As an adult, I know that my body often responds in this way to an environment which isn't right. I've had all sorts of physical symptoms which tell me when something isn't the right place for me. Prickles under my skin, headaches, a buzzing in my ears. 3/

Read 13 tweets

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