There’s no place like home education : A narrative-based analysis of the personal experiences of work and employment of home educated people

Barrow, Rachael and Thomas, Pete and Greasley, Kay (2024) There’s no place like home education : A narrative-based analysis of the personal experiences of work and employment of home educated people. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

Little research exists on the personal experiences of home educated people in the workplace. This research aims to explore those personal experiences in various work and employment contexts, to develop an understanding of the role home education may have played in shaping these experiences. The study adopts a qualitative narrative-based methodology to capture a range of personal experiences and personal stories of work and employment. A Bourdieusian framework is used to develop a systematic understanding of these experiences, with the narrative accounts demonstrating the interrelatedness and significance of their home education for their subsequent experiences of work and employment. The study recounts varied individual personal experiences but also reveals some shared themes which include: The role of home education in shaping respondents’ sense of ‘self’, othering and judgement, the haunting quality of the home education experience, and the experience of the ‘game’ of work and employment. The study reveals how home educated people experience work and employment in a multitude of ways with some degree of similarity shared in these experiences that they attribute to their home education. It also reveals how home educated people do consider their personal experiences of home education to be significant to how they experience work and employment.