Dawns Project Proposal

Section 1

Problem Statement:

Historically, Adventist homeschoolers have not received support from the local church and
conference for their decision to homeschool. This has created a rift that could have been a
bridge. With the decline in Adventist education enrollment, both schools and families will
benefit from finding ways to collaborate. There is a need to create a bridge to include
homeschooling as a part of our educational ministry to our young people. How that bridge is
built may come in different methods, but all would bring a better working harmony with the
homeschooling community as well as keep the families connected to the church as part of the
churchs ministry.

Goal of Project:

Determine what services Adventist homeschooling families would find useful from the local
church school and conference. Determine if there is sufficient interest in collaboration from
principals, superintendents and the NAD.

Design a new platform that would allow Adventist families a new method for participating in
Adventist education at the local school level.

Section 2

Literature review:

Research on homeschooling in general is sparse and very little has been done in the area of
Adventist homeschooling. In a search on Google Scholar I found only four documents that
referred to Adventist homeschooling as it relates specifically to Adventist education.
Additionally, there were several studies that spoke to the issue of collaboration in general of
homeschools and brick and mortar schools that could show useful.
Two existing studies that mentioned homeschooling are by LaBorde (2007) and DeVost (2010).
LaBorde seeks the answer to the reason Adventists choose schools other than Adventist. DeVost
asks the question what Adventists consider important in choosing schools. But neither speak to
the question of how our church schools could work with and support homeschooling families.

Two recent studies have marginally suggested exploration of collaboration possibilities. The first
one, Strengthening Adventist Education (Thayer & Coria-Navia, 2016) gave twenty-seven
recommendations covering seven thematic areas to strengthen Adventist education. Although
collaboration was not mentioned to in the recommendations, it was mentioned in several of the
strategies not included in the recommendations later voted by the NAD. They are as follows:

Educational Leaders Strategy #9: Have a system-wide strategic plan for providing some
Adventist Education for all SDA school age children not in an Adventist school (p. 43).

Focus group suggested that homeschooling parents would not be interested in this because the
basic assumption is that most families not participating in Adventist education prefer other
schools. The group also suggest this should be covered through technology.

Educational Leaders Strategy #34: Develop materials that can be used by Adventist
children not in Adventist schools (e.g., homeschools and other private/parochial/public
schools) (p. 46).

Focus group responses to this strategy were clearly biased that there is no evidence that the
materials would not be used and thus are a waste of resources.

The second study was conducted by the North American Division Education Taskforce
(NADET) with their final recommendations presented to the NAD Year-end meeting in October
2016. There were no specific recommendation made with connection to homeschooling, but
Recommendation #7 suggested that the Church grow the distance learning in order to provide
multiple strategies to ensure that all Adventist students, both within our schools and those that
make other educational choices, have access to relevant denominational educational
materials (North American Division, 2016, p. 20). This statement recognizes the need to reach a
broader swath of Adventist families (p. 20).

Another study that could prove useful to the concept of collaboration was done by Yeager
(1999). In this study he surveyed 500 public school superintendents, 500 private school
administrators, and 500 homeschooling families. Of these three groups he received back 46.2%
from the private school administrators, 56% from the public school superintendents and 32.8 %
from the homeschooling families. It was from this data set that he drew his conclusions.
 Potential bibliography:

Rouse, W. B. (1993). Catalysts for change: Concepts and principles for enabling innovation.
New York: Wiley.
Friend, M. P., & Cook, L. (2007). Interactions: Collaboration skills for school professionals (5th
ed.). Boston: Pearson A and B.
Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1999). Learning together and alone: Cooperative,
competitive, and individualistic learning (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Senge, P. M., Cambron-McCabe, N., Lucas, T., Smith, B., Dutton, J., & Kleiner, A. (2012).
Schools that learn: A fifth discipline fieldbook for educators, parents, and everyone who
cares about education [Kindle version]. (pp. 584). Retrieved from amazon.com
Schechter, C. (2008). Organizational learning mechanisms: The meaning, measure, and
implications for school improvement. Educational Administrative Quarterly, 44(2),
155-186.
Paul, R. (2013). The School Revolution: A New Answer for Our Broken Education System, 17,
Dalaimo, D. M. (1996). Community home education: A case study of a public school-
based home schooling program. Educational Research Quarterly, 19(4), 3-22.
Lines, P. M. (2000). When home schoolers go to school: A partnership between families and
schools. Peabody Journal of Education, 75(1&2), 159-186.
Lukasik, L. M. (1996). The latest home education challenge: The relationship between home
schools and public schools. North Carolina Law Review, 74, 1913-1977
Prather, J. (2000). Part-time public school attendance and the freedom of religion: Yoders
impact upon Swanson. Journal of Law and Education, 29, 553-559.
Thompson, T. W. (2000). Home schooling and shared enrollment: Do Nebraska public schools
have an obligation to provide part-time instruction? Nebraska Law Review, 79, 840-854.
Waggoner, C. (2005). A hybrid way of learning: Taught at home and taught at school. Rural
Educator, 26(3), 31-34.
Wilson, D. C. (2001). Home field disadvantage: The negative impact of allowing home-
schoolers to participate in mainstream sports. Virginia Journal of Sports and the Law, 3,
1-32.
Yeager, E. T. (1999). A study of cooperation between home schools and public and private
schools. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
 Section 3

Methodology:

Phase 1
I will search out what has already been done in the area of Adventist homeschooling numbers
and reasons for homeschooling. I will attempt to find creative ways to get answers to the
following questions:

1. How many Adventists homeschool?

2. Reasons for homeschooling?
3. What curriculum do they use?
4. What service would homeschoolers appreciate from our local schools?
5. Would they be interested in a hybrid plan of some sorts?

Phase 2
Using the results from the research above, I will begin the task of figuring out how to implement
what we have learned into practical objectives for our schools, conferences and division. The
church organization has expressed a desire to provide some Adventist education for all SDA
school-age children not in Adventist schools (Thayer & Coria-Navia, 2016, p. 43) as well as to
develop a cultural transformation of how a church relates to its children and youth (North
American Division, 2016, p. 29). I hope to provide new suggestions of how we as a church can
break down the barriers to community that have been developed over the years toward Adventist
homeschoolers and to help the Church find ways to provide support and resources to parents
who home school their children(North American Division, 2016, p. 32).

Potential Innovation Project Team

Because sustainable change must come from a shared vision from the stakeholders (Senge et al.,
2012, p. 342), I plan to include a cross-segment group of people that can provide input given
their expertise. This is not an inclusive list of people, but a sampling of people I would like to
have on my innovative project team.

Potential list of members:

Bill Keresoma, Northern California Conference Superintendent

Berit von Pohle, Pacific Union Conference Director of Education

 Beverly Benson, Pacific Union Conference Registrar, Retired

Shelly Peterson, Co-founder of a homeschooling co-op and current parent of student at

Chisholm Trail Academy.

Anneris Coria-Navia, Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning

Excellence (CTALE)
Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction

Teacher

Homeschooling Parent

Principal

Student

Pastor

School Board Chair

Section 4

Deliverables

1. Project report (observation, results, and impact)

2. Reflection Paper

3. Artifacts
 References

DeVost, R. (2010). What Adventist parents consider important in choosing schools for their
children

LaBorde, I. C. (2007). Reasons Seventh-Day Adventist parents gave for not sending their
children to Seventh-Day Adventist elementary and secondary Schools. (Doctor of
Philosophy Dissertation), Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI. Retrieved from
http://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations

North American Division. (2016). NAD education taskforce final report. Retrieved from http://
adventisteducation.org/downloads/pdf/Final%20Draft%20NADET%202016.pdf

Senge, P. M., Cambron-McCabe, N., Lucas, T., Smith, B., Dutton, J., & Kleiner, A. (2012).
Schools that learn: A fifth discipline fieldbook for educators, parents, and everyone who
cares about education [Kindle version]. (pp. 584). Retrieved from amazon.com

Thayer, J., & Coria-Navia, A. (2016). Strengthing Adventist education report. Retrieved from
http://circle.adventist.org/browse/resource.phtml?leaf=27873

Yeager, E. T. (1999). A study of cooperation between home schools and public and private
schools, K-12. Texas A&M University-Commerce.