Mahala Dyer Stewart, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology was homeschooled throughout elementary and middle school in rural Maine, where she grew up. She describes her mom as a pioneer who chose a fairly radical and uncommon approach to educating her children. In spite of being educated at home, Stewart felt connected to her peers in her rural community because she played on the local sports teams, making the transition to public school for grades 9-12 relatively smooth.

The work she read by sociologist, Annette Lareau, who explores how families and social class shape schooling experiences, inspired her to reflect on her childhood schooling experience. As an undergraduate at the University of Maine, Stewart began to wonder what her transition from homeschool to public-school would have been like if she had lived in a more suburban or urban community. She also wanted to understand if and how the decision to homeschool was impacted by class and race across communities. Stewart’s senior thesis began to address this question; she interviewed classmates who were homeschooled to learn about their experiences transitioning to college and to learn what led their families to choose to homeschool. Her research on school choice continued throughout her graduate school years at UMass.

Stewart was selected as one of only two students awarded a $10,000 CRF Dissertation Fellowship in the spring of 2016. The award gave Stewart the flexibility to devote significantly more time to her research. After transcribing, coding and analyzing the 95 interviews she conducted with homeschoolers and conventional schoolers across the U.S., she found that race is a big factor in shaping how families make their schooling choices. Stewart explains, “Among the white families I talked to, across school type, many parents report moving their children into whiter spaces either via homeschooling or selecting a whiter conventional school. However, among black families, across school type, parents report choosing to either homeschool or transfer their children to a different school based on racial discrimination their children experience in schools.”

Stewart found that access to homeschooling resources is also influenced by race. Black and white homeschooling families draw on different sources of support. “Black families are seeking support from extended family because they aren’t finding support from the white homeschooling groups in the region. In contrast white families are less likely to find support from extended family, and instead rely on other homeschoolers,” she explains.

Stewart’s goal is to bring homeschooling into mainstream conversations about school choice. She hopes that her research will be useful to educators and policy makers by offering insights into why families feel compelled to remove their children from the public-school system, and which families are able to make that choice.

Stewart described receiving invaluable support and guidance from many former CRF Faculty Research Scholars including Joya Misra (2004-05 and 2013-14) and Jennifer Lundquist (2006-07) as well Naomi Gerstel (sociology) and Miliann Kang (WGSS). Stewart also participated in the CRF Student Research Scholars Program which helped her to organize her research and to communicate it more effectively to multi-disciplinary audiences. Stewart defended her dissertation in March 2018 and she is currently seeking academic positions where she plans on continuing her research into schooling inequities.