Depoliticising educational choice: Homeschooling and virtual universities in Italy

The aim of this exploratory research is to investigate into the processes of societal depoliticisation of education happening in Italy in order to shed light on its implications for educational choice both in policy and practice sphere. Two educational options will be addressed: ‘out of school’ practices (OOSP), as a non-formal pre-primary/primary/secondary educational option; and Italian Virtual Universities (IVUs), as a formal higher lifelong educational option. A mixed-methods strategy was used to grasp their nuances. With respect to the OOSP case study, we carried out a document analysis on international regulatory sources (HSLDA, 2016) and we explored the practice at a proximal level (Giancola, Viteritti, 2014) through 12 interviews with home-schooling parents and privileged witnesses (filmmakers, spokesman for associations). The IVUs case study was tackled through document analysis (materials by institutions and associations) and statistical analyses on data by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR).