A Heuristic Model to Guide the Study of Homeschoolers' Academic Competence.

Studies exploring homeschooling typically focus on comparing homeschoolers to conventionally schooled peers on a range of academic outcomes. Largely absent from the literature are within-group studies designed to identify experiences that facilitate (or hinder) homeschoolers' academic outcomes. The aim of this paper is to describe a heuristic model outlining ways the home environment, instructional practices, parent characteristics, child characteristics, and the broader context might relate to homeschoolers' academic competence. The heuristic model is attentive to the possibility that these relations might vary as a function of child characteristics. In addition, the potential for transactional and mediated relations is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]