Bringing home schoolwork — a heated issue over the decades
Homework comes with a great deal of cultural baggage. The schooling you experienced personally as a child will more than likely dictate your expectations about what homework assignments should be being brought home by children today. The problem, however, is that the type, amount and purpose of homework varies extensively across the globe. From those who would wish for a very limited amount or even no homework, to others who want multiple hours of regimented practice each night. In today’s competitive world, these beliefs about what will be the best thing for own children’s success are only amplified. Translated into an international school setting, the teachers and school leaders have the impossible task of trying to satisfy both ends of the homework wish list and everything in-between.
So, what does the research say about homework? How much is good for our children? Unfortunately, the academics and the scientific studies also fail to agree on things:
The conclusions of more than a dozen reviews of the homework literature conducted between 1960 and 1989 varied greatly. Their assessments ranged from homework having positive effects, no effects, or complex effects to the suggestion that the research was too sparse or poorly conducted to allow trustworthy conclusions.
The research into homework does point to some common themes and interesting questions: > For young primary children, homework is of little or no value and students are regularly given too much > There is some evidence to suggest that secondary students, and mainly those above Grade 10, benefit academically from homework, however, this is one of a number of factors that can affect achievement in the span of a student’s school life and the effects of homework are quite small. Practicing something at home can bring benefits, but you need to be doing it right to begin with. Homework that lacks a clear purpose or rationale can lead to resentment and ‘students not liking school’. Enjoyment of school, particularly at the secondary level, is linked to academic achievement. Student involvement in the setting of homework is important “when students are treated with respect, when the assignments are worth doing, most kids will relish the challenge” Students are notoriously bad at reporting how much time they actually spend on homework, and for younger students, with overzealous parents, there is the age-old teacher question of who really did the homework? When I think back to the different homework tasks that I
In an international school setting, teachers have the impossible task of trying to satisfy both ends of the homework wish list and everything in-between.
have assigned over the years, those that have been most beneficial to students have had several key characteristics (of which I sometimes managed to achieve): it has been interesting to students and they have seen the purpose; it has not taken hours; it involved an amount of reflection on what was being learnt; and it involved collaboration either with peers, the teacher or the family.
In conclusion, I would be wary of remembering your own homework experience with rose-tinted spectacles, be cautious about the school or teacher that assigns piles of homework and that it is better to question ‘why’ a school assigns homework rather than ‘how much’.