Learning Freely Network

From 'Open Education' blog

Professor Robert Milardo arrived at the University of Maine in Orono in the summer of 1982 after teaching for a couple of years at the University of Southern California. Calling northern Maine a great place to live and his role the perfect job, one with a fair balance of teaching and research [...]

ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2010) — Parents take heed: children and young adults are more likely to pursue sports, music or other pastimes when given an opportunity to nurture their own passion. According to a three-part study led by Geneviève Mageau, a psychology professor at the Université de Montréal, parental control can predict whether a child [...]

Research

ScienceDaily (Jan. 21, 2010) — Those who value excellence and hard work generally do better than others on specific tasks when they are reminded of those values. But when a task is presented as fun, researchers report, the same individuals often will do worse than those who say they are less motivated to achieve.

The study [...]

LONDON (Reuters) – They've never known a world without the Internet, but they still prefer to meet their friends offline.

A new survey of eight to 14-year-old Europeans by U.S. entertainment, film and theme park company Walt Disney Co showed that the children of Generation X are web-savvy, videogame-playing environmentalists who love their parents.
The survey of [...]

Please share your stories about about freedom and learning.
Peter Gray
Published on January 6, 2010
Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology at Boston College, is a
specialist in developmental and evolutionary psychology and author of an
introductory textbook, Psychology.

Dear readers,
As you know if you have been following it for awhile, this blog is primarily about self-education, especially [...]

More than 70 MPs have handed in petitions from opponents of plans for the compulsory registration of families who educate their children at home.

The law is that children should receive a "suitable education" for their age and aptitude.
Commons petitions from more than 120 constituencies were presented – a record on one subject in one day.
They [...]

ScienceDaily (Dec. 10, 2009) — Children who bully at school are likely to also bully their siblings at home.

This is the finding of a study published online in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.
Dr Ersilia Menesini and colleagues at the Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Italy, designed the study to investigate whether the age and [...]

Study funded by
Canadian Centre for Home Education 2009

 
 
 
Abstract

First-generation Canadian graduates of home-based education, who were involved in the 1994
study of their homeschooling experiences, were invited to respond to a survey addressing their economic, educational, occupational, social, civic, life satisfaction, and lifestyle characteristics. Their views on their experience with home education were also collected. Where possible, [...]

It is hard to say exactly what the direct effect on homeschooling the current push for more school data will have but the organizational power and money behind the effort says all parents should watch closely. An article published by Education Week gives us a look into the workings and thinking of eductional research:

New Head [...]

Curiosity plays a big part in preschoolers' lives. A new study that explored why young children ask so many "why" questions concludes that children are motivated by a desire for explanation.

The study, by researchers at the University of Michigan, appears in the November/December 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.
The researchers carried out two studies [...]