Doctoral Dissertation Research: Getting Saved from the Public School: Conservative Protestant Identities and Alternative Education

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9633738 Smith What explains the explosive growth of home schooling and Christian schooling among conservative Protestants in America? This Doctoral Dissertation Improvement research proposes to investigate the relationship between religious identities and educational choices with data that are representative of religious conservatives throughout the nation. It will explore how the symbolic boundaries of family, faith and schools are constructed by conservative Protestants, and how these cultural constructions interact with changing social conditions, including the social mobility of conservative Protestants and the increasing differentiation of the educational field, to determine schooling decisions. NSF support will fund the creation of a nationally-representative dataset of conservative Protestant schoolers, which will include information from 71 personal and 240 telephone interviews. This dataset will provide data to address questions such as: (1) which conservative Protestants from what social positions are attracted to alternative education?, (2) what are the motives behind the decision to leave the public schools?, (3) what role does religious identities and traditions play in parents' rationales for leaving the public school?, and (4) what impact does broader social and cultural forces (e.g., "cultural war" and privatization of religion) have on the involvement of conservative Protestants in alternative education. **** ??