Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
After-hours assignments must be meaningful
HOMEWORK doesn’t need to be written down to be effective, says educational linguist Elizabeth Henning.
“It slows down thinking,” quips the founding director of the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Education Practice Research, on the Soweto campus.
She explains how in rural areas in southern Malawi, where children walk long distances to and from school, their maths homework is based on observations on their daily journeys, performed in short plays the following day. “Now, that’s homework. If kids travel to school by taxi, my goodness there’s so much maths and that can be homework.”
Homework has to be meaningful for children. “If we argue that homework is good because we train young children, the main question is, what are we training them in? If we are training them to spell correctly, follow procedures in maths and learn the facts of science, then that is not wrong.
“But the real homework that is worthwhile is if they learn to identify problems and suggest to teachers, ‘we’d like to know more about the moon, why Cape Town is without water and why people in Protea, Soweto, are fighting with each other’.”
Teachers are under huge pressure to finish the curriculum. “They give homework because what’s done in class couldn’t be completed. There’s no time. Tomorrow they must pack in another topic.
“If homework is related to schoolwork, then school days should be made longer. The truth is our parents don’t have time, whether they’re privileged or not.”
Professor Tintswalo Manyike, the acting chair of the department of language education, arts and culture at Unisa’s College of Education, says for homework to be effective, schools need to have homework policies that don’t overwhelm children.
“Homework can only be effective if it’s well planned, wherein all foundation phase teachers agree on the dates in which various subject teachers provide homework to learners.
“I strongly believe that the essential of homework is that parents become actively involved in the education of their children. In this way the importance of reading and writing is inculcated at a very young age. Various scholars are not in agreement as to the effectiveness of homework during the foundation phase, as some argue that it does not improve learners’ academic performance.
“Other researchers are of the opinion that homework does improve learner performance if it is well-planned.
“An important question with regard to homework provision should be what the teachers hope to achieve through the given homework.” – Sheree Bega