Unschooling in Italy: Navigating Idealisations, Constraints, and Decolonising Promises

In our contribution, we will raise some questions for a potential research agenda on unschooling, with reference to the extent to which unschooling can be a viable decolonising practice, as opposed to a culture of education in which schooling is interpreted as a coercive, oppressive, market-oriented, uncritical act. We will ground our discussion upon some insights of a recent mixed-methods study conducted in Italy, shedding light on the prevalence of unschooling within the realm of home education (HE). While unschooling functions as an influential aspirational benchmark within Italian communities, HE parents included in the survey study (n=91) predominantly described their approach as "semi-structured", with regard to instructional scheduling and design (Chinazzi & Fensham-Smith, forthcoming). Qualitative data further suggest that, despite the widespread influence of unschooling principles (notably associated with John Holt), the actual practices of these families are often the result of a compromise between their pedagogical ideals and situational considerations. Their decision-making processes are influenced by intrapersonal, interpersonal, and pragmatic factors that tend to compel them towards a relatively more structured and formalised approach. Recurrent rationales include the perceived difficulty in navigating the paradigmatic shift that this approach would entail and concerns about adequately preparing children for assessments, facilitating their transition to formal educational settings, and integrating them into broader societal contexts. These insights illuminate potential constraints, as perceived and reported by home-educating parents and their positioning, to the implementation of the unschooling approach. However, the theoretical and empirical scholarship on these topics is still in its infancy; many questions remain unanswered regarding the conceptualisation and practice of unschooling (in Italy and beyond). Relevant questions to be addressed further research could be, particularly through the lens of critical unschooling theory: Are parental compromises towards a more structured teaching style the result of an ingrained “colonised” mindset? If this is the case, what reflections does this generate on the broader culture of education within which these families are embedded? Despite the self-identification of parents’ teaching styles, could the implementation of “semi-structured” (Neuman & Guterman, 2017) or “relax unschooling” (Riley, 2020) practices be interpreted as expressions of critical unschooling? How do the policies and the administrative praxis concerning home education in Italy (“istruzione parentale”) impact the implementation of a critical unschooling theory agenda? While unschooling may seem like a novel concept, its principles actually share common grounds with ideas put forth by renowned philosophers, albeit under different terminologies (Riley, 2020). On the opposite, the idealisation of unschooling by some HE parents as a desirable but unattainable option may inadvertently promote a perception of it as “strictly unregulated or oppositional”, rather than recognising its potential as an “engaged, liberating, community-responsive, and decolonising” practice (Romero, 2018, p. 68).