In 2000 and 2013, The Peabody Journal of Education published issues about homeschooling, providing a platform to deliberate on what was in 2000 a burgeoning movement in the United States and has now become a population estimated by the National Center on Education Statistics (NCES) to number between 3% to 4% of the school-age population (Snyder, de Brey, & Dillow, 2018).
There are also indications that home education is a growing global phenomenon. The recent Wiley Handbook of Home Education devoted an entire section to homeschooling practice worldwide (Gaither, 2017). Moreover, in the past 6 years three global conferences have been held on the subject, the most recent of which was held in Russia with over 1,000 participants. The conference included a research track yielding dozens of papers, several of which are included in this issue. Holding a conference about home education in Russia is itself an intriguing occurrence worthy of consideration in the context of geopolitical happenings. Since then, a new organization called the Global Home Education Exchange Counsel has formed (www. ghex. world) with a mission that includes supporting more and diverse research on home education. In the 2000 and 2013 issues on homeschooling in this journal, supporters and critics alike drew upon political philosophy and legal thought to make normative arguments about the legitimacy of homeschooling or to debate how homeschooling and the policy environments under which the practice was regulated and exercised could benefit or harm not only individual students but also collective aspects of civic life. Researchers reviewed the literature to evaluate claims of the efficacy of homeschooling on academic achievement, postsecondary preparation, and socialization. The issue also explored the impact of home education on the education profession and education research. Debates continue over topics such as how much state oversight over homeschooling is desired, whether homeschooled students are prepared for civic life, the extent to which homeschooling can be considered a human right, and the effects of homeschooling on academic outcomes. Discussions on these topics pervade academic papers, conferences, and the popular media. Despite the persistence of these perennial issues, much has changed. Homeschooling research and practice have evolved recently.