"WHO HOMESCHOOLS?" TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING HOW HOMESCHOOLING FAMILIES IN SINGAPORE AND JAPAN CONSTRUCT THEMSELVES

Abstract

Homeschooling is a socially noteworthy trend, particularly in countries where homeschooling is novel like Singapore and Japan, as homeschooling represents an alternative form of parenting. In this study, via an analysis of interviews with homeschooling parents in Japan and Singapore and ethnographic observation of their homeschooling sessions and daily life, I illuminate the homeschooling identity projected by parents¿ self-conscious verbal accounts of homeschooling. Homeschooling parents narrated themselves as good parents despite performing a version of parenting deviating from dominant practice by re-indexicalizing key concepts associated with school and parenting through vivid, emotionally involved narratives. These narratives showed that while homeschooling practices were socially divergent, its core values or emotional nature was the same as mainstream parenting practice ¿ parents loving on their children ¿ thus de-stigmatizing homeschooling. Additionally, the narrative identity projected by parents differed between the interviews, casual conversation and other situations of production, highlighting the strong influence the interactional frame has on narratives. Thus, eliciting similar discourse from the same speaker while varying the interactors and interactional frame can be revealing of other nuanced aspects of that identity. Discourse itself appeared to be the main resource for maintaining and displaying membership in homeschooling culture. Homeschoolers spent much time rehearsing their homeschooling rhetoric and their children performed narratives forwarding the same themes as parents in the interviews. Overall, interview data shed light on the various discursive devices used to establish a moral self and permitted reflexivity on the use of interviews as a mode of data production.