期刊名称：Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning
印刷版ISSN：1916-8128
出版年度：2019
卷号：13
期号：26
页码：1-33
出版社：Nipissing University
摘要：Increasing numbers of Australian parents, like me, are choosing to home educate. US
estimates suggest, within home educated populations, 5 per cent of home education cohorts
(Riley, 2018) follow an unschooling, or self-directed education (SDE), approach. In the past,
these parents registered with the government department; however, policy changes made in
Queensland in May 2018 make registration almost impossible for unschoolers and
discriminate against families whose registration was based on a philosophy such as SDE. In
this paper, I use Fairclough’s (2003) Critical Discourse Analysis as a tool to interrogate how
changes to the Queensland Education Act (2006) in May 2018 privilege a curriculum centric
approach to education by requiring families to report on their child’s ‘progress’ in relation to
schooled children’s levels. I argue these changes privilege the needs of bureaucrats who are
invested in presenting a ‘school’ view of education. Fairclough (2003) would describe this
policy change as a change to the social order that privileges the discourse of education over
the real education occurring in families that choose to follow an SDE philosophy. By
undertaking a Faircloughian Discourse Analysis, the paper analyses the policy shifts in
Queensland’s Education Act in regard to home educators. The concluding section of the
paper suggests these changes may affect registration rates among SDE families or
unschoolers which has both practical and philosophical effects. Practically, the changes
affect family support and benefits payments because registration is required to access
government support payments. Philosophically, there are wider cultural and social impacts
by legitimating government overreach and further entrenching school models of education.
