“Behind the closed door”: Educational psychologists’ experiences and views of home-educated children with special educational needs

Salt, Alison 2022. “Behind the closed door”: Educational psychologists’ experiences and views of home-educated children with special educational needs. DEdPsy Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This study considers the experiences and views of educational psychologists (EPs) of those children and young people who have special educational needs and who are being home-educated. The literature review highlights that there is limited research on this area and that there is an increasing population of children becoming home-educated, especially those with special educational needs, given the difficulties presented by a school education. Educational psychologists, nevertheless, have limited experience and knowledge of working with home-educated children. A qualitative method which employed semi-structured interviews conducted with nine educational psychologists with experience of working with home-educated children with special educational needs was utilised. Reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019) was used to consider the data. The findings from these data showed that educational psychologists viewed the home education of children with special educational needs as a ‘last resort’ because there were no other options, as opposed to a positive and deliberate choice of education. The findings also revealed that a number of factors were at play in prompting parents’ decision to home educate, including their child’s special educational needs not being met at school, the lack of inclusive practice in schools, and the impact of changes in educational practice due to government policy such as a movement towards a traded model of educational psychology service and the Special Educational Needs (SEN) Code of Practice (Department for Education (DfE), 2014). Educational psychologists constructed home education as an inferior form of education in terms of what, where and how it happened and compared it to the preferred and established educational setting of the school. The school, as an educational establishment was constructed as the preferred option and natural domain of educational psychologists. The findings from this study have a number of implications for EP practice, including a consideration of how a school-dominated role is impacting the profession, how trading has affected those children with no commissioner (i.e., the ‘unsupported’), and how the failure of schools to address the needs of children with special educational needs leads to their becoming home-educated due to having no other option.

Item Type:	Thesis (DEdPsy)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	1 December 2022
Last Modified:	01 Dec 2022 16:28
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/154602

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