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More than two hours of homework may be counterproductive, research suggests.

A Stanford education researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.   "Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good," wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .   The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students' views on homework.   Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.   Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.   "The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students' advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being," Pope wrote.   Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.   Their study found that too much homework is associated with:   • Greater stress : 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.   • Reductions in health : In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.   • Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits : Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were "not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills," according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.   A balancing act   The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.   Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as "pointless" or "mindless" in order to keep their grades up.   "This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points," said Pope, who is also a co-founder of Challenge Success , a nonprofit organization affiliated with the GSE that conducts research and works with schools and parents to improve students' educational experiences..   Pope said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.   "Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development," wrote Pope.   High-performing paradox   In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. "Young people are spending more time alone," they wrote, "which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities."   Student perspectives   The researchers say that while their open-ended or "self-reporting" methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for "typical adolescent complaining" – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.   The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

Clifton B. Parker is a writer at the Stanford News Service .

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7 Research-Based Reasons Why Students Should Not Have Homework: Academic Insights, Opposing Perspectives & Alternatives

The push against homework is not just about the hours spent on completing assignments; it’s about rethinking the role of education in fostering the well-rounded development of young individuals. Critics argue that homework, particularly in excessive amounts, can lead to negative outcomes such as stress, burnout, and a diminished love for learning. Moreover, it often disproportionately affects students from disadvantaged backgrounds, exacerbating educational inequities. The debate also highlights the importance of allowing children to have enough free time for play, exploration, and family interaction, which are crucial for their social and emotional development.

Checking 13yo’s math homework & I have just one question. I can catch mistakes & help her correct. But what do kids do when their parent isn’t an Algebra teacher? Answer: They get frustrated. Quit. Get a bad grade. Think they aren’t good at math. How is homework fair??? — Jay Wamsted (@JayWamsted) March 24, 2022

As we delve into this discussion, we explore various facets of why reducing or even eliminating homework could be beneficial. We consider the research, weigh the pros and cons, and examine alternative approaches to traditional homework that can enhance learning without overburdening students.

Once you’ve finished this article, you’ll know:

Insights from Teachers and Education Industry Experts: Diverse Perspectives on Homework

Here are the insights and opinions from various experts in the educational field on this topic:

“I teach 1st grade. I had parents ask for homework. I explained that I don’t give homework. Home time is family time. Time to play, cook, explore and spend time together. I do send books home, but there is no requirement or checklist for reading them. Read them, enjoy them, and return them when your child is ready for more. I explained that as a parent myself, I know they are busy—and what a waste of energy it is to sit and force their kids to do work at home—when they could use that time to form relationships and build a loving home. Something kids need more than a few math problems a week.” — Colleen S. , 1st grade teacher

“The lasting educational value of homework at that age is not proven. A kid says the times tables [at school] because he studied the times tables last night. But over a long period of time, a kid who is drilled on the times tables at school, rather than as homework, will also memorize their times tables. We are worried about young children and their social emotional learning. And that has to do with physical activity, it has to do with playing with peers, it has to do with family time. All of those are very important and can be removed by too much homework.” — David Bloomfield , education professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York graduate center

“Homework in primary school has an effect of around zero. In high school it’s larger. (…) Which is why we need to get it right. Not why we need to get rid of it. It’s one of those lower hanging fruit that we should be looking in our primary schools to say, ‘Is it really making a difference?’” — John Hattie , professor

”Many kids are working as many hours as their overscheduled parents and it is taking a toll – psychologically and in many other ways too. We see kids getting up hours before school starts just to get their homework done from the night before… While homework may give kids one more responsibility, it ignores the fact that kids do not need to grow up and become adults at ages 10 or 12. With schools cutting recess time or eliminating playgrounds, kids absorb every single stress there is, only on an even higher level. Their brains and bodies need time to be curious, have fun, be creative and just be a kid.” — Pat Wayman, teacher and CEO of HowtoLearn.com

7 Reasons Why Students Should Not Have Homework

Let’s delve into the reasons against assigning homework to students. Examining these arguments offers important perspectives on the wider educational and developmental consequences of homework practices.

1. Elevated Stress and Health Consequences

This data paints a concerning picture. Students, already navigating a world filled with various stressors, find themselves further burdened by homework demands. The direct correlation between excessive homework and health issues indicates a need for reevaluation. The goal should be to ensure that homework if assigned, adds value to students’ learning experiences without compromising their health and well-being.

2. Inequitable Impact and Socioeconomic Disparities

Moreover, the approach to homework varies significantly across different types of schools. While some rigorous private and preparatory schools in both marginalized and affluent communities assign extreme levels of homework, many progressive schools focusing on holistic learning and self-actualization opt for no homework, yet achieve similar levels of college and career success. This contrast raises questions about the efficacy and necessity of heavy homework loads in achieving educational outcomes.

3. Negative Impact on Family Dynamics

The issue is not confined to specific demographics but is a widespread concern. Samantha Hulsman, a teacher featured in Education Week Teacher , shared her personal experience with the toll that homework can take on family time. She observed that a seemingly simple 30-minute assignment could escalate into a three-hour ordeal, causing stress and strife between parents and children. Hulsman’s insights challenge the traditional mindset about homework, highlighting a shift towards the need for skills such as collaboration and problem-solving over rote memorization of facts.

4. Consumption of Free Time

Authors Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish , in their book “The Case Against Homework,” offer an insightful window into the lives of families grappling with the demands of excessive homework. They share stories from numerous interviews conducted in the mid-2000s, highlighting the universal struggle faced by families across different demographics. A poignant account from a parent in Menlo Park, California, describes nightly sessions extending until 11 p.m., filled with stress and frustration, leading to a soured attitude towards school in both the child and the parent. This narrative is not isolated, as about one-third of the families interviewed expressed feeling crushed by the overwhelming workload.

5. Challenges for Students with Learning Disabilities

In conclusion, the conventional homework paradigm needs reevaluation, particularly concerning students with learning disabilities. By understanding and addressing their unique challenges, educators can create a more inclusive and supportive educational environment. This approach not only aids in their academic growth but also nurtures their confidence and overall development, ensuring that they receive an equitable and empathetic educational experience.

6. Critique of Underlying Assumptions about Learning

7. issues with homework enforcement, reliability, and temptation to cheat, addressing opposing views on homework practices, 1. improvement of academic performance, 2. reinforcement of learning, 3. development of time management skills, 4. preparation for future academic challenges, 5. parental involvement in education, exploring alternatives to homework and finding a middle ground, alternatives to traditional homework, ideas for minimizing homework, useful resources, leave a comment cancel reply.

Is homework a necessary evil?

After decades of debate, researchers are still sorting out the truth about homework’s pros and cons. One point they can agree on: Quality assignments matter.

By Kirsten Weir

March 2016, Vol 47, No. 3

Print version: page 36

• Schools and Classrooms

Homework battles have raged for decades. For as long as kids have been whining about doing their homework, parents and education reformers have complained that homework's benefits are dubious. Meanwhile many teachers argue that take-home lessons are key to helping students learn. Now, as schools are shifting to the new (and hotly debated) Common Core curriculum standards, educators, administrators and researchers are turning a fresh eye toward the question of homework's value.

But when it comes to deciphering the research literature on the subject, homework is anything but an open book.

The 10-minute rule

In many ways, homework seems like common sense. Spend more time practicing multiplication or studying Spanish vocabulary and you should get better at math or Spanish. But it may not be that simple.

Homework can indeed produce academic benefits, such as increased understanding and retention of the material, says Duke University social psychologist Harris Cooper, PhD, one of the nation's leading homework researchers. But not all students benefit. In a review of studies published from 1987 to 2003, Cooper and his colleagues found that homework was linked to better test scores in high school and, to a lesser degree, in middle school. Yet they found only faint evidence that homework provided academic benefit in elementary school ( Review of Educational Research , 2006).

Then again, test scores aren't everything. Homework proponents also cite the nonacademic advantages it might confer, such as the development of personal responsibility, good study habits and time-management skills. But as to hard evidence of those benefits, "the jury is still out," says Mollie Galloway, PhD, associate professor of educational leadership at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. "I think there's a focus on assigning homework because [teachers] think it has these positive outcomes for study skills and habits. But we don't know for sure that's the case."

Even when homework is helpful, there can be too much of a good thing. "There is a limit to how much kids can benefit from home study," Cooper says. He agrees with an oft-cited rule of thumb that students should do no more than 10 minutes a night per grade level — from about 10 minutes in first grade up to a maximum of about two hours in high school. Both the National Education Association and National Parent Teacher Association support that limit.

Beyond that point, kids don't absorb much useful information, Cooper says. In fact, too much homework can do more harm than good. Researchers have cited drawbacks, including boredom and burnout toward academic material, less time for family and extracurricular activities, lack of sleep and increased stress.

In a recent study of Spanish students, Rubén Fernández-Alonso, PhD, and colleagues found that students who were regularly assigned math and science homework scored higher on standardized tests. But when kids reported having more than 90 to 100 minutes of homework per day, scores declined ( Journal of Educational Psychology , 2015).

"At all grade levels, doing other things after school can have positive effects," Cooper says. "To the extent that homework denies access to other leisure and community activities, it's not serving the child's best interest."

Children of all ages need down time in order to thrive, says Denise Pope, PhD, a professor of education at Stanford University and a co-founder of Challenge Success, a program that partners with secondary schools to implement policies that improve students' academic engagement and well-being.

"Little kids and big kids need unstructured time for play each day," she says. Certainly, time for physical activity is important for kids' health and well-being. But even time spent on social media can help give busy kids' brains a break, she says.

All over the map

But are teachers sticking to the 10-minute rule? Studies attempting to quantify time spent on homework are all over the map, in part because of wide variations in methodology, Pope says.

A 2014 report by the Brookings Institution examined the question of homework, comparing data from a variety of sources. That report cited findings from a 2012 survey of first-year college students in which 38.4 percent reported spending six hours or more per week on homework during their last year of high school. That was down from 49.5 percent in 1986 ( The Brown Center Report on American Education , 2014).

The Brookings report also explored survey data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which asked 9-, 13- and 17-year-old students how much homework they'd done the previous night. They found that between 1984 and 2012, there was a slight increase in homework for 9-year-olds, but homework amounts for 13- and 17-year-olds stayed roughly the same, or even decreased slightly.

Yet other evidence suggests that some kids might be taking home much more work than they can handle. Robert Pressman, PhD, and colleagues recently investigated the 10-minute rule among more than 1,100 students, and found that elementary-school kids were receiving up to three times as much homework as recommended. As homework load increased, so did family stress, the researchers found ( American Journal of Family Therapy , 2015).

Many high school students also seem to be exceeding the recommended amounts of homework. Pope and Galloway recently surveyed more than 4,300 students from 10 high-achieving high schools. Students reported bringing home an average of just over three hours of homework nightly ( Journal of Experiential Education , 2013).

On the positive side, students who spent more time on homework in that study did report being more behaviorally engaged in school — for instance, giving more effort and paying more attention in class, Galloway says. But they were not more invested in the homework itself. They also reported greater academic stress and less time to balance family, friends and extracurricular activities. They experienced more physical health problems as well, such as headaches, stomach troubles and sleep deprivation. "Three hours per night is too much," Galloway says.

In the high-achieving schools Pope and Galloway studied, more than 90 percent of the students go on to college. There's often intense pressure to succeed academically, from both parents and peers. On top of that, kids in these communities are often overloaded with extracurricular activities, including sports and clubs. "They're very busy," Pope says. "Some kids have up to 40 hours a week — a full-time job's worth — of extracurricular activities." And homework is yet one more commitment on top of all the others.

"Homework has perennially acted as a source of stress for students, so that piece of it is not new," Galloway says. "But especially in upper-middle-class communities, where the focus is on getting ahead, I think the pressure on students has been ratcheted up."

Yet homework can be a problem at the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum as well. Kids from wealthier homes are more likely to have resources such as computers, Internet connections, dedicated areas to do schoolwork and parents who tend to be more educated and more available to help them with tricky assignments. Kids from disadvantaged homes are more likely to work at afterschool jobs, or to be home without supervision in the evenings while their parents work multiple jobs, says Lea Theodore, PhD, a professor of school psychology at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. They are less likely to have computers or a quiet place to do homework in peace.

"Homework can highlight those inequities," she says.

Quantity vs. quality

One point researchers agree on is that for all students, homework quality matters. But too many kids are feeling a lack of engagement with their take-home assignments, many experts say. In Pope and Galloway's research, only 20 percent to 30 percent of students said they felt their homework was useful or meaningful.

"Students are assigned a lot of busywork. They're naming it as a primary stressor, but they don't feel it's supporting their learning," Galloway says.

"Homework that's busywork is not good for anyone," Cooper agrees. Still, he says, different subjects call for different kinds of assignments. "Things like vocabulary and spelling are learned through practice. Other kinds of courses require more integration of material and drawing on different skills."

But critics say those skills can be developed with many fewer hours of homework each week. Why assign 50 math problems, Pope asks, when 10 would be just as constructive? One Advanced Placement biology teacher she worked with through Challenge Success experimented with cutting his homework assignments by a third, and then by half. "Test scores didn't go down," she says. "You can have a rigorous course and not have a crazy homework load."

Still, changing the culture of homework won't be easy. Teachers-to-be get little instruction in homework during their training, Pope says. And despite some vocal parents arguing that kids bring home too much homework, many others get nervous if they think their child doesn't have enough. "Teachers feel pressured to give homework because parents expect it to come home," says Galloway. "When it doesn't, there's this idea that the school might not be doing its job."

Galloway argues teachers and school administrators need to set clear goals when it comes to homework — and parents and students should be in on the discussion, too. "It should be a broader conversation within the community, asking what's the purpose of homework? Why are we giving it? Who is it serving? Who is it not serving?"

Until schools and communities agree to take a hard look at those questions, those backpacks full of take-home assignments will probably keep stirring up more feelings than facts.

Further reading

• Cooper, H., Robinson, J. C., & Patall, E. A. (2006). Does homework improve academic achievement? A synthesis of research, 1987-2003. Review of Educational Research, 76 (1), 1–62. doi: 10.3102/00346543076001001
• Galloway, M., Connor, J., & Pope, D. (2013). Nonacademic effects of homework in privileged, high-performing high schools. The Journal of Experimental Education, 81 (4), 490–510. doi: 10.1080/00220973.2012.745469
• Pope, D., Brown, M., & Miles, S. (2015). Overloaded and underprepared: Strategies for stronger schools and healthy, successful kids . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework—Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help ” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next , Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU Today  sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.

BU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older—to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills.

We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways—by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

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Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

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Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what’s going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

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Should We Get Rid of Homework?

Some educators are pushing to get rid of homework. Would that be a good thing?

By Jeremy Engle and Michael Gonchar

Do you like doing homework? Do you think it has benefited you educationally?

Has homework ever helped you practice a difficult skill — in math, for example — until you mastered it? Has it helped you learn new concepts in history or science? Has it helped to teach you life skills, such as independence and responsibility? Or, have you had a more negative experience with homework? Does it stress you out, numb your brain from busywork or actually make you fall behind in your classes?

Should we get rid of homework?

In “ The Movement to End Homework Is Wrong, ” published in July, the Times Opinion writer Jay Caspian Kang argues that homework may be imperfect, but it still serves an important purpose in school. The essay begins:

Do students really need to do their homework? As a parent and a former teacher, I have been pondering this question for quite a long time. The teacher side of me can acknowledge that there were assignments I gave out to my students that probably had little to no academic value. But I also imagine that some of my students never would have done their basic reading if they hadn’t been trained to complete expected assignments, which would have made the task of teaching an English class nearly impossible. As a parent, I would rather my daughter not get stuck doing the sort of pointless homework I would occasionally assign, but I also think there’s a lot of value in saying, “Hey, a lot of work you’re going to end up doing in your life is pointless, so why not just get used to it?” I certainly am not the only person wondering about the value of homework. Recently, the sociologist Jessica McCrory Calarco and the mathematics education scholars Ilana Horn and Grace Chen published a paper, “ You Need to Be More Responsible: The Myth of Meritocracy and Teachers’ Accounts of Homework Inequalities .” They argued that while there’s some evidence that homework might help students learn, it also exacerbates inequalities and reinforces what they call the “meritocratic” narrative that says kids who do well in school do so because of “individual competence, effort and responsibility.” The authors believe this meritocratic narrative is a myth and that homework — math homework in particular — further entrenches the myth in the minds of teachers and their students. Calarco, Horn and Chen write, “Research has highlighted inequalities in students’ homework production and linked those inequalities to differences in students’ home lives and in the support students’ families can provide.”

Mr. Kang argues:

But there’s a defense of homework that doesn’t really have much to do with class mobility, equality or any sense of reinforcing the notion of meritocracy. It’s one that became quite clear to me when I was a teacher: Kids need to learn how to practice things. Homework, in many cases, is the only ritualized thing they have to do every day. Even if we could perfectly equalize opportunity in school and empower all students not to be encumbered by the weight of their socioeconomic status or ethnicity, I’m not sure what good it would do if the kids didn’t know how to do something relentlessly, over and over again, until they perfected it. Most teachers know that type of progress is very difficult to achieve inside the classroom, regardless of a student’s background, which is why, I imagine, Calarco, Horn and Chen found that most teachers weren’t thinking in a structural inequalities frame. Holistic ideas of education, in which learning is emphasized and students can explore concepts and ideas, are largely for the types of kids who don’t need to worry about class mobility. A defense of rote practice through homework might seem revanchist at this moment, but if we truly believe that schools should teach children lessons that fall outside the meritocracy, I can’t think of one that matters more than the simple satisfaction of mastering something that you were once bad at. That takes homework and the acknowledgment that sometimes a student can get a question wrong and, with proper instruction, eventually get it right.

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Credit: August de Richelieu

Does homework still have value? A Johns Hopkins education expert weighs in

Joyce epstein, co-director of the center on school, family, and community partnerships, discusses why homework is essential, how to maximize its benefit to learners, and what the 'no-homework' approach gets wrong.

By Vicky Hallett

The necessity of homework has been a subject of debate since at least as far back as the 1890s, according to Joyce L. Epstein , co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University. "It's always been the case that parents, kids—and sometimes teachers, too—wonder if this is just busy work," Epstein says.

But after decades of researching how to improve schools, the professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Education remains certain that homework is essential—as long as the teachers have done their homework, too. The National Network of Partnership Schools , which she founded in 1995 to advise schools and districts on ways to improve comprehensive programs of family engagement, has developed hundreds of improved homework ideas through its Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program. For an English class, a student might interview a parent on popular hairstyles from their youth and write about the differences between then and now. Or for science class, a family could identify forms of matter over the dinner table, labeling foods as liquids or solids. These innovative and interactive assignments not only reinforce concepts from the classroom but also foster creativity, spark discussions, and boost student motivation.

"We're not trying to eliminate homework procedures, but expand and enrich them," says Epstein, who is packing this research into a forthcoming book on the purposes and designs of homework. In the meantime, the Hub couldn't wait to ask her some questions:

What kind of homework training do teachers typically get?

Future teachers and administrators really have little formal training on how to design homework before they assign it. This means that most just repeat what their teachers did, or they follow textbook suggestions at the end of units. For example, future teachers are well prepared to teach reading and literacy skills at each grade level, and they continue to learn to improve their teaching of reading in ongoing in-service education. By contrast, most receive little or no training on the purposes and designs of homework in reading or other subjects. It is really important for future teachers to receive systematic training to understand that they have the power, opportunity, and obligation to design homework with a purpose.

Why do students need more interactive homework?

If homework assignments are always the same—10 math problems, six sentences with spelling words—homework can get boring and some kids just stop doing their assignments, especially in the middle and high school years. When we've asked teachers what's the best homework you've ever had or designed, invariably we hear examples of talking with a parent or grandparent or peer to share ideas. To be clear, parents should never be asked to "teach" seventh grade science or any other subject. Rather, teachers set up the homework assignments so that the student is in charge. It's always the student's homework. But a good activity can engage parents in a fun, collaborative way. Our data show that with "good" assignments, more kids finish their work, more kids interact with a family partner, and more parents say, "I learned what's happening in the curriculum." It all works around what the youngsters are learning.

Is family engagement really that important?

At Hopkins, I am part of the Center for Social Organization of Schools , a research center that studies how to improve many aspects of education to help all students do their best in school. One thing my colleagues and I realized was that we needed to look deeply into family and community engagement. There were so few references to this topic when we started that we had to build the field of study. When children go to school, their families "attend" with them whether a teacher can "see" the parents or not. So, family engagement is ever-present in the life of a school.

My daughter's elementary school doesn't assign homework until third grade. What's your take on "no homework" policies?

There are some parents, writers, and commentators who have argued against homework, especially for very young children. They suggest that children should have time to play after school. This, of course is true, but many kindergarten kids are excited to have homework like their older siblings. If they give homework, most teachers of young children make assignments very short—often following an informal rule of 10 minutes per grade level. "No homework" does not guarantee that all students will spend their free time in productive and imaginative play.

Some researchers and critics have consistently misinterpreted research findings. They have argued that homework should be assigned only at the high school level where data point to a strong connection of doing assignments with higher student achievement . However, as we discussed, some students stop doing homework. This leads, statistically, to results showing that doing homework or spending more minutes on homework is linked to higher student achievement. If slow or struggling students are not doing their assignments, they contribute to—or cause—this "result."

Teachers need to design homework that even struggling students want to do because it is interesting. Just about all students at any age level react positively to good assignments and will tell you so.

Did COVID change how schools and parents view homework?

Within 24 hours of the day school doors closed in March 2020, just about every school and district in the country figured out that teachers had to talk to and work with students' parents. This was not the same as homeschooling—teachers were still working hard to provide daily lessons. But if a child was learning at home in the living room, parents were more aware of what they were doing in school. One of the silver linings of COVID was that teachers reported that they gained a better understanding of their students' families. We collected wonderfully creative examples of activities from members of the National Network of Partnership Schools. I'm thinking of one art activity where every child talked with a parent about something that made their family unique. Then they drew their finding on a snowflake and returned it to share in class. In math, students talked with a parent about something the family liked so much that they could represent it 100 times. Conversations about schoolwork at home was the point.

How did you create so many homework activities via the Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program?

We had several projects with educators to help them design interactive assignments, not just "do the next three examples on page 38." Teachers worked in teams to create TIPS activities, and then we turned their work into a standard TIPS format in math, reading/language arts, and science for grades K-8. Any teacher can use or adapt our prototypes to match their curricula.

Overall, we know that if future teachers and practicing educators were prepared to design homework assignments to meet specific purposes—including but not limited to interactive activities—more students would benefit from the important experience of doing their homework. And more parents would, indeed, be partners in education.

Posted in Voices+Opinion

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Too much homework can be counterproductive

May 31, 2005

University Park, Pa. -- Instead of improving educational achievement in countries around the world, increases in homework may actually undercut teaching effectiveness and worsen disparities in student learning, according to two Penn State researchers.

Most teachers worldwide are not making efficient use of homework, said David P. Baker, professor of education and sociology. They assign homework mostly as drill, to improve memorization of material either in math, science or the humanities. While drills and repetitive exercises have their place in schooling, homework may not be that place.

"Assigning textbook or worksheet questions as a drill assumes that the child has the kind of home environment conductive to supporting drill and memorization practice," noted Gerald K. LeTendre, associate professor of education.

Upper-income parents, who tend to have closer communication with the school and with teachers, are better able to assist their children with homework. But in poorer households -- often headed by single parents, parents with comparatively little education or, in some nations, parents held back by language barriers -- homework may not be cordially received, especially by parents of small children.

"An unintended consequence may be that those children who need extra work and drill the most are the ones least likely to get it. Increasing homework loads is likely to aggravate tensions within the family, thereby generating more inequality and eroding the quality of overall education," Baker said.

LeTendre and Baker are co-authors of the book, "National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future of Schooling," recently published by Stanford University Press. Chapter Eight, "Schoolwork at Home? Low-Quality Schooling and Homework," was written in collaboration with Motoko Akiba, assistant professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

The researchers analyzed data from the Third International Study of Mathematics and Sciences (TIMSS), which in 1994 collected a large amount of data from schools in 41 nations across the fourth, eighth and 12th grades. For some analyses, they employed figures from the TIMSS 99, an identical study carried out in 1999 with 50 nations.

Their findings indicated a frequent lack of positive correlation between the average amount of homework assigned in a nation and corresponding level of academic achievement. For example, many countries with the highest scoring students, such as Japan, the Czech Republic and Denmark, have teachers who give little homework. "At the other end of the spectrum, countries with very low average scores -- Thailand, Greece, Iran -- have teachers who assign a great deal of homework," Baker noted.

"The United States is among the most homework-intensive countries in the world for seventh- and eighth-grade math classes. U.S. math teachers on average assigned more than two hours of mathematics homework per week in 1994-95," said LeTendre. "Contrary to our expectations, one of the lowest levels was recorded in Japan -- about one hour a week. These figures challenge previous stereotypes about the lackadaisical American teenager and his diligent peer in Japan."

During the early 1980s, many U.S. schools and teachers ramped up their homework assignments, at least to younger children, in reaction to intense media focus on studies comparing the mediocre performance of American students to the industriousness of their Japanese counterparts. At the same time, ironically, Japanese educators were attempting to reduce the amount of homework given to their students and allow them more leisure from the rigors of schooling. Neither the American nor the Japanese educational reform of the 1980s seems to have affected general achievement levels in either country, according to the book.

"American students appear to do as much homework as their peers overseas -- if not more -- but still only score around the international average," LeTendre said. "Undue focus on homework as a national quick-fix, rather than a focus on issues of instructional quality and equity of access to opportunity to learn, may lead a country into wasted expenditures of time and energy."

If schools expect every family to reinforce the child's learning process at home, they need to realize that, when families are unequal to the task, students will not receive the same quality of education. The addition of homework will only exacerbate existing inequities within a nation's student population and pull down overall scores, said Baker.

"Those families that are better able to marshal resources to support outside school learning will likely gain disproportionate advantage," he added.

"However, even in affluent nations, parents are extremely busy with work and household chores, not to mention chauffeuring young people to various extracurricular activities, athletic and otherwise," LeTendre said. "Parents might sometimes see exercises in drill and memorization as intrusions into family time."

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Is Homework Good for Kids? Here’s What the Research Says

A s kids return to school, debate is heating up once again over how they should spend their time after they leave the classroom for the day.

The no-homework policy of a second-grade teacher in Texas went viral last week , earning praise from parents across the country who lament the heavy workload often assigned to young students. Brandy Young told parents she would not formally assign any homework this year, asking students instead to eat dinner with their families, play outside and go to bed early.

But the question of how much work children should be doing outside of school remains controversial, and plenty of parents take issue with no-homework policies, worried their kids are losing a potential academic advantage. Here’s what you need to know:

For decades, the homework standard has been a “10-minute rule,” which recommends a daily maximum of 10 minutes of homework per grade level. Second graders, for example, should do about 20 minutes of homework each night. High school seniors should complete about two hours of homework each night. The National PTA and the National Education Association both support that guideline.

But some schools have begun to give their youngest students a break. A Massachusetts elementary school has announced a no-homework pilot program for the coming school year, lengthening the school day by two hours to provide more in-class instruction. “We really want kids to go home at 4 o’clock, tired. We want their brain to be tired,” Kelly Elementary School Principal Jackie Glasheen said in an interview with a local TV station . “We want them to enjoy their families. We want them to go to soccer practice or football practice, and we want them to go to bed. And that’s it.”

A New York City public elementary school implemented a similar policy last year, eliminating traditional homework assignments in favor of family time. The change was quickly met with outrage from some parents, though it earned support from other education leaders.

New solutions and approaches to homework differ by community, and these local debates are complicated by the fact that even education experts disagree about what’s best for kids.

The research

The most comprehensive research on homework to date comes from a 2006 meta-analysis by Duke University psychology professor Harris Cooper, who found evidence of a positive correlation between homework and student achievement, meaning students who did homework performed better in school. The correlation was stronger for older students—in seventh through 12th grade—than for those in younger grades, for whom there was a weak relationship between homework and performance.

Cooper’s analysis focused on how homework impacts academic achievement—test scores, for example. His report noted that homework is also thought to improve study habits, attitudes toward school, self-discipline, inquisitiveness and independent problem solving skills. On the other hand, some studies he examined showed that homework can cause physical and emotional fatigue, fuel negative attitudes about learning and limit leisure time for children. At the end of his analysis, Cooper recommended further study of such potential effects of homework.

Despite the weak correlation between homework and performance for young children, Cooper argues that a small amount of homework is useful for all students. Second-graders should not be doing two hours of homework each night, he said, but they also shouldn’t be doing no homework.

Not all education experts agree entirely with Cooper’s assessment.

Cathy Vatterott, an education professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, supports the “10-minute rule” as a maximum, but she thinks there is not sufficient proof that homework is helpful for students in elementary school.

“Correlation is not causation,” she said. “Does homework cause achievement, or do high achievers do more homework?”

Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs , thinks there should be more emphasis on improving the quality of homework tasks, and she supports efforts to eliminate homework for younger kids.

“I have no concerns about students not starting homework until fourth grade or fifth grade,” she said, noting that while the debate over homework will undoubtedly continue, she has noticed a trend toward limiting, if not eliminating, homework in elementary school.

The issue has been debated for decades. A TIME cover in 1999 read: “Too much homework! How it’s hurting our kids, and what parents should do about it.” The accompanying story noted that the launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to a push for better math and science education in the U.S. The ensuing pressure to be competitive on a global scale, plus the increasingly demanding college admissions process, fueled the practice of assigning homework.

“The complaints are cyclical, and we’re in the part of the cycle now where the concern is for too much,” Cooper said. “You can go back to the 1970s, when you’ll find there were concerns that there was too little, when we were concerned about our global competitiveness.”

Cooper acknowledged that some students really are bringing home too much homework, and their parents are right to be concerned.

“A good way to think about homework is the way you think about medications or dietary supplements,” he said. “If you take too little, they’ll have no effect. If you take too much, they can kill you. If you take the right amount, you’ll get better.”

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by Huntington Research School on the 10th November 2017

“ Most homework teachers set is crap.” Dylan Wiliam, ResearchEd 2014 .

The subject of homework inspires strong opinions. Teachers, parents and students themselves all have a view on the matter and those views are often diametrically opposed. Dylan Wiliam , back in 2014 , shared a very strong opinion that didn’t exactly condemn the evidence and action related to homework to the dustbin, but he poked a gaping hole into our every assumption about homework and its impact.

At Huntington School, we battled with the issues and surveyed the best available evidence, from the EEF Toolkit ( Secondary and Primary – note the crucial differences here: homework is much more effective with older children), to specific recent studies on homework (this one via Dan Willingham ). The IEE ​ ‘ Best Evidence in Brief ‘ newsletter has done a great job of collating homework research HERE . Certainly, knowing the evidence base can help our decision-making, though it is of course a little more complicated than that.

So What Does The Evidence Say?

Homework (or home learning, or ​ “ extended learning” as we relabelled it at Huntington) is seemingly most effective when it involves practice or rehearsal of subject matter already taught. Students should not typically be exposed to new material for their home learning, unless they are judged more expert learners. Complex, open ended homework is often completed least effectively; whereas, short, frequent homework, closely monitored by teachers is more likely to have more impact. This could include summarising notes; using graphic organisers to recast classroom materials; guided research; exam question practise; guided revision etc.

Home learning is proven to be more effective with older students than their younger counterparts. This is typically because they are more able to self-regulate their learning and they have more background knowledge to draw upon. For similar reasons, high ability students typically benefit more from home learning than low ability students.

Teacher scaffolding is essential to guide effective home learning. Parental involvement is desirable, but it should not be essential, otherwise the nature of the task is likely too complex for successful completion.

What Makes Home Learning Effective?

Cathy Vatterott ( 2010 ) identified five fundamental characteristics of good homework: purpose, efficiency, ownership, competence, and aesthetic appeal.

• Purpose : all homework assignments are mean­ingful &  students must also understand the purpose of the assignment and why it is important in the context of their academic experience (Xu,  2011 ).
• Efficiency : homework should not take an inordinate amount of time and should require some hard thinking.
• Ownership : students who feel connected to the content and assignment learn more and are more motivat­ed. Providing students with choice in their assignments is one way to create ownership.
• Competence: students should feel competent in completing homework. In order to achieve this, it’s benefi­cial to abandon the one-size-fits-all model. Homework that students can’t do without help is not good homework.
• Inspiring: A well-considered &  clearly designed resource and task impacts positively upon student motivation.

We should pose ourselves some tricky questions:

• Has the purpose of the homework been made clear to students?
• Are the students in possession of all the resources require to undertake the task independently?
• What are the existing beliefs about home learning (students &  teachers) that we need to recognise/​challenge?
• How can we best leverage parental support for home learning that is effectively communicated?
• How do you plan to provide specific and timely feedback to students on their home learning?

Maybe Wiliam is right and that regardless of the evidence, too much of the homework we set is just crap! The challenge is certainly a healthy one given the cost in terms of time for all involved. We should expect that every teacher and school leader understands the nuanced evidence that attends homework, with the differences that relate to individuals, groups and students of very different ages and stages of development. We will still be left with tricky decisions and no little disagreement, but we will be better off having tackled the issue properly.

If you want to read more about the evidence that attends homework, then try the following:

Related Reading:

• Professor Sue Hallam, from the Institute of Education, has written an excellent summary of homework, entitled ​ ‘ Homework: It’s Uses and Abuses ‘.
• The Time magazine article is a handy and accessible summary of the debate, entitled: ​ ‘ Homework: Is It Any Good for Kids ‘.
• This ASCD educational leadership article is not the most recent recently, but it is very good and clear: ​ ‘ If Only They’d Do Their Work ’.

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Education scholar Denise Pope has found that too much homework has negative effects on student well-being and behavioral engagement. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

A Stanford researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.

“Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good,” wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .

The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students’ views on homework.

Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.

Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.

“The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students’ advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being,” Pope wrote.

Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.

Their study found that too much homework is associated with:

* Greater stress: 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.

* Reductions in health: In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.

* Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits: Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were “not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills,” according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.

A balancing act

The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.

Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as “pointless” or “mindless” in order to keep their grades up.

“This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points,” Pope said.

She said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.

“Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development,” wrote Pope.

High-performing paradox

In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. “Young people are spending more time alone,” they wrote, “which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities.”

Student perspectives

The researchers say that while their open-ended or “self-reporting” methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for “typical adolescent complaining” – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.

The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

Media Contacts

Denise Pope, Stanford Graduate School of Education: (650) 725-7412, [email protected] Clifton B. Parker, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224, [email protected]

Homework – Top 3 Pros and Cons

Pro/Con Arguments | Discussion Questions | Take Action | Sources | More Debates

From dioramas to book reports, from algebraic word problems to research projects, whether students should be given homework, as well as the type and amount of homework, has been debated for over a century. [ 1 ]

While we are unsure who invented homework, we do know that the word “homework” dates back to ancient Rome. Pliny the Younger asked his followers to practice their speeches at home. Memorization exercises as homework continued through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment by monks and other scholars. [ 45 ]

In the 19th century, German students of the Volksschulen or “People’s Schools” were given assignments to complete outside of the school day. This concept of homework quickly spread across Europe and was brought to the United States by Horace Mann , who encountered the idea in Prussia. [ 45 ]

In the early 1900s, progressive education theorists, championed by the magazine Ladies’ Home Journal , decried homework’s negative impact on children’s physical and mental health, leading California to ban homework for students under 15 from 1901 until 1917. In the 1930s, homework was portrayed as child labor, which was newly illegal, but the prevailing argument was that kids needed time to do household chores. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 45 ] [ 46 ]

Public opinion swayed again in favor of homework in the 1950s due to concerns about keeping up with the Soviet Union’s technological advances during the Cold War . And, in 1986, the US government included homework as an educational quality boosting tool. [ 3 ] [ 45 ]

A 2014 study found kindergarteners to fifth graders averaged 2.9 hours of homework per week, sixth to eighth graders 3.2 hours per teacher, and ninth to twelfth graders 3.5 hours per teacher. A 2014-2019 study found that teens spent about an hour a day on homework. [ 4 ] [ 44 ]

Beginning in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic complicated the very idea of homework as students were schooling remotely and many were doing all school work from home. Washington Post journalist Valerie Strauss asked, “Does homework work when kids are learning all day at home?” While students were mostly back in school buildings in fall 2021, the question remains of how effective homework is as an educational tool. [ 47 ]

Is Homework Beneficial?

Pro 1 Homework improves student achievement. Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicated that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” [ 6 ] Students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework on both standardized tests and grades. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take-home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school. [ 10 ] Read More

Pro 2 Homework helps to reinforce classroom learning, while developing good study habits and life skills. Students typically retain only 50% of the information teachers provide in class, and they need to apply that information in order to truly learn it. Abby Freireich and Brian Platzer, co-founders of Teachers Who Tutor NYC, explained, “at-home assignments help students learn the material taught in class. Students require independent practice to internalize new concepts… [And] these assignments can provide valuable data for teachers about how well students understand the curriculum.” [ 11 ] [ 49 ] Elementary school students who were taught “strategies to organize and complete homework,” such as prioritizing homework activities, collecting study materials, note-taking, and following directions, showed increased grades and more positive comments on report cards. [ 17 ] Research by the City University of New York noted that “students who engage in self-regulatory processes while completing homework,” such as goal-setting, time management, and remaining focused, “are generally more motivated and are higher achievers than those who do not use these processes.” [ 18 ] Homework also helps students develop key skills that they’ll use throughout their lives: accountability, autonomy, discipline, time management, self-direction, critical thinking, and independent problem-solving. Freireich and Platzer noted that “homework helps students acquire the skills needed to plan, organize, and complete their work.” [ 12 ] [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 15 ] [ 49 ] Read More

Pro 3 Homework allows parents to be involved with children’s learning. Thanks to take-home assignments, parents are able to track what their children are learning at school as well as their academic strengths and weaknesses. [ 12 ] Data from a nationwide sample of elementary school students show that parental involvement in homework can improve class performance, especially among economically disadvantaged African-American and Hispanic students. [ 20 ] Research from Johns Hopkins University found that an interactive homework process known as TIPS (Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork) improves student achievement: “Students in the TIPS group earned significantly higher report card grades after 18 weeks (1 TIPS assignment per week) than did non-TIPS students.” [ 21 ] Homework can also help clue parents in to the existence of any learning disabilities their children may have, allowing them to get help and adjust learning strategies as needed. Duke University Professor Harris Cooper noted, “Two parents once told me they refused to believe their child had a learning disability until homework revealed it to them.” [ 12 ] Read More

Con 1 Too much homework can be harmful. A poll of California high school students found that 59% thought they had too much homework. 82% of respondents said that they were “often or always stressed by schoolwork.” High-achieving high school students said too much homework leads to sleep deprivation and other health problems such as headaches, exhaustion, weight loss, and stomach problems. [ 24 ] [ 28 ] [ 29 ] Alfie Kohn, an education and parenting expert, said, “Kids should have a chance to just be kids… it’s absurd to insist that children must be engaged in constructive activities right up until their heads hit the pillow.” [ 27 ] Emmy Kang, a mental health counselor, explained, “More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies.” [ 48 ] Excessive homework can also lead to cheating: 90% of middle school students and 67% of high school students admit to copying someone else’s homework, and 43% of college students engaged in “unauthorized collaboration” on out-of-class assignments. Even parents take shortcuts on homework: 43% of those surveyed admitted to having completed a child’s assignment for them. [ 30 ] [ 31 ] [ 32 ] Read More

Con 2 Homework exacerbates the digital divide or homework gap. Kiara Taylor, financial expert, defined the digital divide as “the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology and those that don’t. Though the term now encompasses the technical and financial ability to utilize available technology—along with access (or a lack of access) to the Internet—the gap it refers to is constantly shifting with the development of technology.” For students, this is often called the homework gap. [ 50 ] [ 51 ] 30% (about 15 to 16 million) public school students either did not have an adequate internet connection or an appropriate device, or both, for distance learning. Completing homework for these students is more complicated (having to find a safe place with an internet connection, or borrowing a laptop, for example) or impossible. [ 51 ] A Hispanic Heritage Foundation study found that 96.5% of students across the country needed to use the internet for homework, and nearly half reported they were sometimes unable to complete their homework due to lack of access to the internet or a computer, which often resulted in lower grades. [ 37 ] [ 38 ] One study concluded that homework increases social inequality because it “potentially serves as a mechanism to further advantage those students who already experience some privilege in the school system while further disadvantaging those who may already be in a marginalized position.” [ 39 ] Read More

Con 3 Homework does not help younger students, and may not help high school students. We’ve known for a while that homework does not help elementary students. A 2006 study found that “homework had no association with achievement gains” when measured by standardized tests results or grades. [ 7 ] Fourth grade students who did no homework got roughly the same score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math exam as those who did 30 minutes of homework a night. Students who did 45 minutes or more of homework a night actually did worse. [ 41 ] Temple University professor Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek said that homework is not the most effective tool for young learners to apply new information: “They’re learning way more important skills when they’re not doing their homework.” [ 42 ] In fact, homework may not be helpful at the high school level either. Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth, stated, “I interviewed high school teachers who completely stopped giving homework and there was no downside, it was all upside.” He explains, “just because the same kids who get more homework do a little better on tests, doesn’t mean the homework made that happen.” [ 52 ] Read More

Discussion Questions

1. Is homework beneficial? Consider the study data, your personal experience, and other types of information. Explain your answer(s).

2. If homework were banned, what other educational strategies would help students learn classroom material? Explain your answer(s).

3. How has homework been helpful to you personally? How has homework been unhelpful to you personally? Make carefully considered lists for both sides.

Take Action

1. Examine an argument in favor of quality homework assignments from Janine Bempechat.

2. Explore Oxford Learning’s infographic on the effects of homework on students.

3. Consider Joseph Lathan’s argument that homework promotes inequality .

4. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the “other side of the issue” now helps you better argue your position.

5. Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives .

More School Debate Topics

Should K-12 Students Dissect Animals in Science Classrooms? – Proponents say dissecting real animals is a better learning experience. Opponents say the practice is bad for the environment.

Should Students Have to Wear School Uniforms? – Proponents say uniforms may increase student safety. Opponents say uniforms restrict expression.

Should Corporal Punishment Be Used in K-12 Schools? – Proponents say corporal punishment is an appropriate discipline. Opponents say it inflicts long-lasting physical and mental harm on students.

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Natalie Leppard Managing Editor [email protected]

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Should homework be banned?

Social media has sparked into life about whether children should be given homework - should students be freed from this daily chore? Dr Gerald Letendre, a professor of education at Pennsylvania State University, investigates.

We’ve all done it: pretended to leave an essay at home, or stayed up until 2am to finish a piece of coursework we’ve been ignoring for weeks. Homework, for some people, is seen as a chore that’s ‘wrecking kids’ or ‘killing parents’, while others think it is an essential part of a well-rounded education. The problem is far from new: public debates about homework have been raging since at least the early-1900s, and recently spilled over into a Twitter feud between Gary Lineker and Piers Morgan.

Ironically, the conversation surrounding homework often ignores the scientific ‘homework’ that researchers have carried out. Many detailed studies have been conducted, and can guide parents, teachers and administrators to make sensible decisions about how much work should be completed by students outside of the classroom.

So why does homework stir up such strong emotions? One reason is that, by its very nature, it is an intrusion of schoolwork into family life. I carried out a study in 2005, and found that the amount of time that children and adolescents spend in school, from nursery right up to the end of compulsory education, has greatly increased over the last century . This means that more of a child’s time is taken up with education, so family time is reduced. This increases pressure on the boundary between the family and the school.

Plus, the amount of homework that students receive appears to be increasing, especially in the early years when parents are keen for their children to play with friends and spend time with the family.

Finally, success in school has become increasingly important to success in life. Parents can use homework to promote, or exercise control over, their child’s academic trajectory, and hopefully ensure their future educational success. But this often leaves parents conflicted – they want their children to be successful in school, but they don’t want them to be stressed or upset because of an unmanageable workload.

However, the issue isn’t simply down to the opinions of parents, children and their teachers – governments also like to get involved. In the autumn of 2012, French president François Hollande hit world headlines after making a comment about banning homework, ostensibly because it promoted inequality. The Chinese government has also toyed with a ban, because of concerns about excessive academic pressure being put on children.

The problem is, some politicians and national administrators regard regulatory policy in education as a solution for a wide array of social, economic and political issues, perhaps without considering the consequences for students and parents.

Does homework work?

Homework seems to generally have a positive effect for high school students, according to an extensive range of empirical literature. For example, Duke University’s Prof Harris Cooper carried out a meta-analysis using data from US schools, covering a period from 1987 to 2003. He found that homework offered a general beneficial impact on test scores and improvements in attitude, with a greater effect seen in older students. But dig deeper into the issue and a complex set of factors quickly emerges, related to how much homework students do, and exactly how they feel about it.

In 2009, Prof Ulrich Trautwein and his team at the University of Tübingen found that in order to establish whether homework is having any effect, researchers must take into account the differences both between and within classes . For example, a teacher may assign a good deal of homework to a lower-level class, producing an association between more homework and lower levels of achievement. Yet, within the same class, individual students may vary significantly in how much homework improves their baseline performance. Plus, there is the fact that some students are simply more efficient at completing their homework than others, and it becomes quite difficult to pinpoint just what type of homework, and how much of it, will affect overall academic performance.

Over the last century, the amount of time that children and adolescents spend in school has greatly increased

Gender is also a major factor. For example, a study of US high school students carried out by Prof Gary Natriello in the 1980s revealed that girls devote more time to homework than boys, while a follow-up study found that US girls tend to spend more time on mathematics homework than boys. Another study, this time of African-American students in the US, found that eighth grade (ages 13-14) girls were more likely to successfully manage both their tasks and emotions around schoolwork, and were more likely to finish homework.

So why do girls seem to respond more positively to homework? One possible answer proposed by Eunsook Hong of the University of Nevada in 2011 is that teachers tend to rate girls’ habits and attitudes towards work more favourably than boys’. This perception could potentially set up a positive feedback loop between teacher expectations and the children’s capacity for academic work based on gender, resulting in girls outperforming boys. All of this makes it particularly difficult to determine the extent to which homework is helping, though it is clear that simply increasing the time spent on assignments does not directly correspond to a universal increase in learning.

Can homework cause damage?

The lack of empirical data supporting homework in the early years of education, along with an emerging trend to assign more work to this age range, appears to be fuelling parental concerns about potential negative effects. But, aside from anecdotes of increased tension in the household, is there any evidence of this? Can doing too much homework actually damage children?

Evidence suggests extreme amounts of homework can indeed have serious effects on students’ health and well-being. A Chinese study carried out in 2010 found a link between excessive homework and sleep disruption: children who had less homework had better routines and more stable sleep schedules. A Canadian study carried out in 2015 by Isabelle Michaud found that high levels of homework were associated with a greater risk of obesity among boys, if they were already feeling stressed about school in general.

For useful revision guides and video clips to assist with learning, visit BBC Bitesize . This is a free online study resource for UK students from early years up to GCSEs and Scottish Highers.

It is also worth noting that too much homework can create negative effects that may undermine any positives. These negative consequences may not only affect the child, but also could also pile on the stress for the whole family, according to a recent study by Robert Pressman of the New England Centre for Pediatric Psychology. Parents were particularly affected when their perception of their own capacity to assist their children decreased.

What then, is the tipping point, and when does homework simply become too much for parents and children? Guidelines typically suggest that children in the first grade (six years old) should have no more that 10 minutes per night, and that this amount should increase by 10 minutes per school year. However, cultural norms may greatly affect what constitutes too much.

A study of children aged between 8 and 10 in Quebec defined high levels of homework as more than 30 minutes a night, but a study in China of children aged 5 to 11 deemed that two or more hours per night was excessive. It is therefore difficult to create a clear standard for what constitutes as too much homework, because cultural differences, school-related stress, and negative emotions within the family all appear to interact with how homework affects children.

Should we stop setting homework?

In my opinion, even though there are potential risks of negative effects, homework should not be banned. Small amounts, assigned with specific learning goals in mind and with proper parental support, can help to improve students’ performance. While some studies have generally found little evidence that homework has a positive effect on young children overall, a 2008 study by Norwegian researcher Marte Rønning found that even some very young children do receive some benefit. So simply banning homework would mean that any particularly gifted or motivated pupils would not be able to benefit from increased study. However, at the earliest ages, very little homework should be assigned. The decisions about how much and what type are best left to teachers and parents.

As a parent, it is important to clarify what goals your child’s teacher has for homework assignments. Teachers can assign work for different reasons – as an academic drill to foster better study habits, and unfortunately, as a punishment. The goals for each assignment should be made clear, and should encourage positive engagement with academic routines.

Parents should inform the teachers of how long the homework is taking, as teachers often incorrectly estimate the amount of time needed to complete an assignment, and how it is affecting household routines. For young children, positive teacher support and feedback is critical in establishing a student’s positive perception of homework and other academic routines. Teachers and parents need to be vigilant and ensure that homework routines do not start to generate patterns of negative interaction that erode students’ motivation.

Likewise, any positive effects of homework are dependent on several complex interactive factors, including the child’s personal motivation, the type of assignment, parental support and teacher goals. Creating an overarching policy to address every single situation is not realistic, and so homework policies tend to be fixated on the time the homework takes to complete. But rather than focusing on this, everyone would be better off if schools worked on fostering stronger communication between parents, teachers and students, allowing them to respond more sensitively to the child’s emotional and academic needs.

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25 Reasons Homework Should Be Banned (Busywork Arguments)

As students across the globe plow through heaps of homework each night, one question lingers in the minds of educators, parents, and students alike: should homework be banned?

This question is not new, yet it continues to spark lively debate as research findings, anecdotal evidence, and personal experiences paint a complex picture of the pros and cons of homework.

On one hand, proponents of homework argue that it reinforces classroom learning, encourages a disciplined work ethic, and provides teachers with valuable insight into student comprehension. They see homework as an extension of classroom instruction that solidifies and enriches learning while fostering important skills like time management and self-discipline. It also offers an opportunity for parents to be involved in their children's education.

However, some people say there are a lot of downsides. They argue that excessive homework can lead to stress and burnout, reduce time for extracurricular activities and family interactions, exacerbate educational inequalities, and even negatively impact students' mental health.

This article presents 25 reasons why we might need to seriously consider this radical shift in our educational approach. But first, lets share some examples of what homework actually is.

Examples of Homework

These examples cover a wide range of subjects and complexity levels, reflecting the variety of homework assignments students might encounter throughout their educational journey.

• Spelling lists to memorize for a test
• Math worksheets for practicing basic arithmetic operations
• Reading assignments from children's books
• Simple science projects like growing a plant
• Basic geography assignments like labeling a map
• Art projects like drawing a family portrait
• Writing book reports or essays
• Advanced math problems
• Research projects on various topics
• Lab reports for science experiments
• Reading and responding to literature
• Preparing presentations on various topics
• Advanced math problems involving calculus or algebra
• Reading classic literature and writing analytical essays
• Research papers on historical events
• Lab reports for advanced science experiments
• Foreign language exercises
• Preparing for standardized tests
• College application essays
• Extensive research papers
• In-depth case studies
• Advanced problem-solving in subjects like physics, engineering, etc.
• Thesis or dissertation writing
• Extensive reading and literature reviews
• Internship or practicum experiences

Lack of proven benefits

Homework has long been a staple of traditional education, dating back centuries. However, the actual efficacy of homework in enhancing learning outcomes remains disputed. A number of studies indicate that there's no conclusive evidence supporting the notion that homework improves academic performance, especially in primary education . In fact, research suggests that for younger students, the correlation between homework and academic achievement is weak or even negative .

Too much homework can often lead to increased stress and decreased enthusiasm for learning. This issue becomes particularly pressing when considering the common 'more is better' approach to homework, where the quantity of work given to students often outweighs the quality and effectiveness of the tasks. For instance, spending countless hours memorizing facts for a history test may not necessarily translate to better understanding or long-term retention of the subject matter.

However, it's worth noting that homework isn't completely devoid of benefits. It can help foster self-discipline, time management skills, and the ability to work independently. But, these positive outcomes are usually more pronounced in older students and when homework assignments are thoughtfully designed and not excessive in volume.

When discussing the merits and drawbacks of homework, it's critical to consider the nature of the assignments. Routine, repetitive tasks often associated with 'drill-and-practice' homework, such as completing rows of arithmetic problems or copying definitions from a textbook, rarely lead to meaningful learning. On the other hand, assignments that encourage students to apply what they've learned in class, solve problems, or engage creatively with the material can be more beneficial.

Increased stress

Homework can often lead to a significant increase in stress levels among students. This is especially true when students are burdened with large volumes of homework, leaving them with little time to relax or pursue other activities. The feeling of constantly racing against the clock to meet deadlines can contribute to anxiety, frustration, and even burnout.

Contrary to popular belief, stress does not necessarily improve performance or productivity. In fact, high levels of stress can negatively impact memory, concentration, and overall cognitive function. This counteracts the very purpose of homework, which is intended to reinforce learning and improve academic outcomes.

However, one might argue that homework can teach students about time management, organization, and how to handle pressure. These are important life skills that could potentially prepare them for future responsibilities. But it's essential to strike a balance. The pressure to complete homework should not come at the cost of a student's mental wellbeing.

Limited family time

Homework often infringes upon the time students can spend with their families. After spending the entire day in school, children come home to yet more academic work, leaving little room for quality family interactions. This limited family time can hinder the development of important interpersonal skills and familial bonds.

Moreover, family time isn't just about fun and relaxation. It also plays a crucial role in the social and emotional development of children. Opportunities for unstructured play, family conversations, and shared activities can contribute to children's well-being and character building.

Nonetheless, advocates of homework might argue that it can be a platform for parental involvement in a child's education. While this may be true, the involvement should not transform into parental control or cause friction due to differing expectations and pressures.

Reduced physical activity

Homework can often lead to reduced physical activity by eating into the time students have for sports, recreation, and simply being outdoors. Physical activity is essential for children's health, well-being, and even their academic performance. Research suggests that physical activity can enhance cognitive abilities, improve concentration, and reduce symptoms of ADHD .

Homework, especially when it's boring and repetitive, can deter students from engaging in physical activities, leading to a sedentary lifestyle. This lack of balance between work and play can contribute to physical health problems such as obesity, poor posture, and related health concerns.

Homework proponents might point out that disciplined time management could allow students to balance both work and play. However, given the demanding nature of many homework assignments, achieving this balance is often easier said than done.

Negative impact on sleep

A significant concern about homework is its impact on students' sleep patterns. Numerous studies have linked excessive homework to sleep deprivation in students. Children often stay up late to complete assignments, reducing the amount of sleep they get. Lack of sleep can result in a host of issues, from poor academic performance and difficulty concentrating to physical health problems like weakened immunity.

Even the quality of sleep can be affected. The stress and anxiety from a heavy workload can lead to difficulty falling asleep or restless nights. And let's not forget that students often need to wake up early for school, compounding the negative effects of late-night homework sessions.

On the other hand, some argue that homework can teach children time management skills, suggesting that effective organization could help prevent late-night work. However, when schools assign excessive amounts of homework, even the best time management might not prevent encroachment on sleep time.

Homework can exacerbate existing educational inequalities. Not all students have access to a conducive learning environment at home, necessary resources, or support from educated family members. For these students, homework can become a source of stress and disadvantage rather than an opportunity to reinforce learning.

Children from lower socio-economic backgrounds might need to contribute to household chores or part-time work, limiting the time they have for homework. This can create a gap in academic performance and grades, reflecting not on the students' abilities but their circumstances.

While homework is meant to level the playing field by providing additional learning time outside school, it often does the opposite. It's worth noting that students from privileged backgrounds can often access additional help like tutoring, further widening the gap.

Reduced creativity and independent thinking

Homework, particularly when it involves rote learning or repetitive tasks, can stifle creativity and independent thinking. Students often focus on getting the "right" answers to please teachers rather than exploring different ideas and solutions. This can hinder their ability to think creatively and solve problems independently, skills that are increasingly in demand in the modern world.

Homework defenders might claim that it can also promote independent learning. True, when thoughtfully designed, homework can encourage this. But, voluminous or repetitive tasks tend to promote compliance over creativity.

Diminished interest in learning

Overburdening students with homework can diminish their interest in learning. After long hours in school followed by more academic tasks at home, learning can begin to feel like a chore. This can lead to a decline in intrinsic motivation and an unhealthy association of learning with stress and exhaustion.

In theory, homework can deepen interest in a subject, especially when it involves projects or research. Yet, an excess of homework, particularly routine tasks, might achieve the opposite, turning learning into a source of stress rather than enjoyment.

Inability to pursue personal interests

Homework can limit students' ability to pursue personal interests. Hobbies, personal projects, and leisure activities are crucial for personal development and well-being. With heavy homework loads, students may struggle to find time for these activities, missing out on opportunities to discover new interests and talents.

Supporters of homework might argue that it teaches students to manage their time effectively. However, even with good time management, an overload of homework can crowd out time for personal interests.

Excessive workload

The issue of excessive workload is a common complaint among students. Spending several hours on homework after a full school day can be mentally and physically draining. This workload can lead to burnout, decreased motivation, and negative attitudes toward school and learning.

While homework can help consolidate classroom learning, too much can be counterproductive. It's important to consider the overall workload of students, including school, extracurricular activities, and personal time, when assigning homework.

Limited time for reflection

Homework can limit the time students have for reflection. Reflection is a critical part of learning, allowing students to digest and integrate new information. With the constant flow of assignments, there's often little time left for this crucial process. Consequently, the learning becomes superficial, and the true understanding of subjects can be compromised.

Although homework is meant to reinforce what's taught in class, the lack of downtime for reflection might hinder deep learning. It's important to remember that learning is not just about doing, but also about thinking.

Increased pressure on young children

Young children are particularly vulnerable to the pressures of homework. At an age where play and exploration are vital for cognitive and emotional development, too much homework can create undue pressure and stress. This pressure can instigate a negative relationship with learning from an early age, potentially impacting their future attitude towards education.

Advocates of homework often argue that it prepares children for the rigors of their future academic journey. However, placing too much academic pressure on young children might overshadow the importance of learning through play and exploration.

Lack of alignment with real-world skills

Traditional homework often lacks alignment with real-world skills. Assignments typically focus on academic abilities at the expense of skills like creativity, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence. These are crucial for success in the modern workplace and are often under-emphasized in homework tasks.

Homework can be an opportunity to develop these skills when properly structured. However, tasks often focus on memorization and repetition, rather than cultivating skills relevant to the real world.

Loss of motivation

Excessive homework can lead to a loss of motivation. The constant pressure to complete assignments and meet deadlines can diminish a student's intrinsic motivation to learn. This loss of motivation might not only affect their academic performance but also their love of learning, potentially having long-term effects on their educational journey.

Some believe homework instills discipline and responsibility. But, it's important to balance these benefits against the potential for homework to undermine motivation and engagement.

Disruption of work-life balance

Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is as important for students as it is for adults. Overloading students with homework can disrupt this balance, leaving little time for relaxation, socializing, and extracurricular activities. All of these are vital for a student's overall development and well-being.

Homework supporters might argue that it prepares students for the workloads they'll face in college and beyond. But it's also crucial to ensure students have time to relax, recharge, and engage in non-academic activities for a well-rounded development.

Impact on mental health

There's a growing body of evidence showing the negative impact of excessive homework on students' mental health. The stress and anxiety from heavy homework loads can contribute to issues like depression, anxiety, and even thoughts of suicide. Student well-being should be a top priority in education, and the impact of homework on mental health cannot be ignored.

While some might argue that homework helps students develop resilience and coping skills, it's important to ensure these potential benefits don't come at the expense of students' mental health.

Limited time for self-care

With excessive homework, students often find little time for essential self-care activities. These can include physical exercise, proper rest, healthy eating, mindfulness, or even simple leisure activities. These activities are critical for maintaining physical health, emotional well-being, and cognitive function.

Some might argue that managing homework alongside self-care responsibilities teaches students valuable life skills. However, it's important that these skills don't come at the cost of students' health and well-being.

Decreased family involvement

Homework can inadvertently lead to decreased family involvement in a child's learning. Parents often feel unqualified or too busy to help with homework, leading to missed opportunities for family learning interactions. This can also create stress and conflict within the family, especially when parents have high expectations or are unable to assist.

Some believe homework can facilitate parental involvement in education. But, when it becomes a source of stress or conflict, it can discourage parents from engaging in their child's learning.

Reinforcement of inequalities

Homework can unintentionally reinforce inequalities. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds might lack access to resources like private tutors or a quiet study space, placing them at a disadvantage compared to their more privileged peers. Additionally, these students might have additional responsibilities at home, further limiting their time to complete homework.

While the purpose of homework is often to provide additional learning opportunities, it can inadvertently reinforce existing disparities. Therefore, it's essential to ensure that homework doesn't favor students who have more resources at home.

Reduced time for play and creativity

Homework can take away from time for play and creative activities. These activities are not only enjoyable but also crucial for the cognitive, social, and emotional development of children. Play allows children to explore, imagine, and create, fostering innovative thinking and problem-solving skills.

Some may argue that homework teaches discipline and responsibility. Yet, it's vital to remember that play also has significant learning benefits and should be a part of every child's daily routine.

Increased cheating and academic dishonesty

The pressure to complete homework can sometimes lead to increased cheating and academic dishonesty. When faced with a large volume of homework, students might resort to copying from friends or searching for answers online. This undermines the educational value of homework and fosters unhealthy academic practices.

While homework is intended to consolidate learning, the risk of promoting dishonest behaviors is a concern that needs to be addressed.

Strained teacher-student relationships

Excessive homework can strain teacher-student relationships. If students begin to associate teachers with stress or anxiety from homework, it can hinder the development of a positive learning relationship. Furthermore, if teachers are perceived as being unfair or insensitive with their homework demands, it can impact the overall classroom dynamic.

While homework can provide an opportunity for teachers to monitor student progress, it's important to ensure that it doesn't negatively affect the teacher-student relationship.

Negative impact on family dynamics

Homework can impact family dynamics. Parents might feel compelled to enforce homework completion, leading to potential conflict, stress, and tension within the family. These situations can disrupt the harmony in the household and strain relationships.

Homework is sometimes seen as a tool to engage parents in their child's education. However, it's crucial to ensure that this involvement doesn't turn into a source of conflict or pressure.

Cultural and individual differences

Homework might not take into account cultural and individual differences. Education is not a one-size-fits-all process, and what works for one student might not work for another. Some students might thrive on hands-on learning, while others prefer auditory or visual learning methods. By standardizing homework, we might ignore these individual learning styles and preferences.

Homework can also overlook cultural differences. For students from diverse cultural backgrounds, certain types of homework might seem irrelevant or difficult to relate to, leading to disengagement or confusion.

Encouragement of surface-level learning

Homework often encourages surface-level learning instead of deep understanding. When students are swamped with homework, they're likely to rush through assignments to get them done, rather than taking the time to understand the concepts. This can result in superficial learning where students memorize information to regurgitate it on assignments and tests, instead of truly understanding and internalizing the knowledge.

While homework is meant to reinforce classroom learning, the quality of learning is more important than the quantity. It's important to design homework in a way that encourages deep, meaningful learning instead of mere rote memorization.

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“Homework Feedback Is…”: Elementary and Middle School Teachers’ Conceptions of Homework Feedback

Jennifer cunha.

1 Departamento de Psicologia Aplicada, Escola de Psicologia, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal

Pedro Rosário

José carlos núñez.

2 Departamento de Psicología, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain

Ana Rita Nunes

Tânia moreira, tânia nunes.

This study explored mathematics teachers’ conceptions of the homework feedback focusing on four key aspects: definition, purpose, types, and perceived impact. Forty-seven teachers from elementary and middle schools participated in six focus groups. Data were analyzed using content analysis. To enhance the trustworthiness of findings, classroom observations were used for triangulation of data. Participants conceptualized homework feedback in three directions (i.e., teachers’ feedback provided to students, students’ feedback provided to teachers, and homework self-feedback), being teachers’ monitoring of students’ learning the purpose reported by most teachers. Participants also reported the types of homework feedback more frequently used in class (e.g., checking homework completion, checking homework on the board), and their perceived impact on students. Findings provide valuable information to deepen the understanding of the homework feedback process, which may help develop new avenues for future research.

Introduction

Homework may be defined as tasks assigned by teachers to be completed in non-instructive time ( Cooper, 2001 ), and has proved to enhance students’ academic achievement when endowed with particular characteristics (e.g., short, purposeful, frequent assignments, high quality) (e.g., Dettmers et al., 2010 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ; Rosário et al., 2015a ).

In addition, the homework feedback provided by the teacher in class is an important tool to increase the impact of homework on students’ learning and academic achievement (e.g., Walberg and Paik, 2000 ; Núñez et al., 2015b ; Rosário et al., 2015b ), and a crucial aspect of the quality of homework ( Cooper, 2001 ). However, detailed information on elementary and middle school teachers’ perspectives about their practices and on the reasons why teachers choose and use particular types of homework feedback in class is still scarce ( Bang et al., 2009 ; Deslandes, 2009 ; Rosário et al., 2015b ). Investigating teachers’ conceptions of the homework feedback, particularly in elementary and middle school, may provide new insights into research on homework (e.g., helping further explain previous quantitative results; improving homework feedback measures), as well as into educational practices (e.g., teachers getting training on homework feedback practices).

Teachers’ Role on the Homework Feedback Process

Teachers play an important role in the first phase of the homework process by setting up the objectives of homework assignments and designing tasks, and also in the final phase by implementing classroom follow-up practices ( Cooper, 2001 ; Epstein and Van Voorhis, 2001 ; Rosário et al., 2015a , b ). The latter includes, among other practices, homework feedback provided in class: oral or written praise, criticism, written comments (highlighting right and wrong answers), rewards, general review of homework in class, and grading (i.e., teachers giving numerical grades) (e.g., Elawar and Corno, 1985 ; Murphy et al., 1987 ; Corno, 2000 ; Cooper, 2001 ). These homework feedback practices are an important instructional tool for teachers in their teaching process (e.g., helping identify students’ difficulties, errors or misconceptions in homework; approaching the learning contents to accommodate students’ lack of prior knowledge, and redesigning homework to match students’ needs) ( Corno, 2000 ; Walberg and Paik, 2000 ; Epstein and Van Voorhis, 2001 ; An and Wu, 2012 ; Bang, 2012 ).

Extant research lacks studies which have focused specifically on each of the above-mentioned types of homework feedback; still, some studies have shed some light on the usage and benefits of the various types of homework feedback. For example, Murphy et al. (1987 , p. 68) found that “class discussion on homework,” and grading and commenting on homework were the practices most frequently used by high school teachers (i.e., English, mathematics, science, and social science) to monitor students’ completion of homework. Focusing on mathematics, Kaur (2011) explored the nature of homework tasks assigned by three 8th grade mathematics teachers (e.g., types of homework, sources of homework tasks), and found that teachers provided feedback on errors by grading assignments, orienting discussions and checking homework on the board when needed. Using the TIMSS 2003 data set, Zhu and Leung (2012) found that a high percentage of 8th grade mathematics teachers reported checking homework completion (85%), providing feedback regularly (i.e., at least “sometimes”, 100%), and discussing homework in class (96%). Nevertheless, none of these studies deeply explored the process of homework feedback.

Students’ Role on the Homework Feedback Process

Students engaging in school tasks with autonomy and responsibility are expected to develop a sense of personal agency for self-managing their behaviors ( Zimmerman, 1989 ). Besides, students who proactively manage their behaviors to attain self-set goals are likely to self-regulate their learning efficiently ( Zimmerman, 1989 ). From a social cognitive perspective, self-regulated learning (SRL) may be defined as an active learning process whereby students self-set goals that direct their cognitions, motivations and behaviors toward those goals ( Zimmerman, 1989 ; Núñez et al., 2013 ; Rosário et al., 2013 ). For example, robust self-efficacy and autonomy, good study skills, commitment to self-set goals, and positive academic attitudes are examples of core elements of academic self-regulation which are necessary to complete homework ( Zimmerman and Kitsantas, 2005 ; Ramdass and Zimmerman, 2011 ; Schmitz and Perels, 2011 ; Núñez et al., 2015c ). Regarding the latter, extant literature highlighted self-regulation competencies as essential tools not only to help students complete their homework, but also use the homework feedback delivered with efficacy and responsibility ( Ramdass and Zimmerman, 2011 ; Zhu and Leung, 2012 ; Xu and Wu, 2013 ). In fact, students are given homework feedback in class and play an important role deciding what to do next with the information given (e.g., ignoring feedback, self-evaluating their homework performance, using SRL learning strategies).

However, to authors’ knowledge, research has not yet provided information to contribute to understanding how teachers’ homework feedback may promote students’ active role in the homework feedback process. As Corno (2000) reported, teachers are expected to promote students’ capacity to self-evaluate their homework, which would involve addressing important self-regulatory processes. Otherwise, homework feedback may fail to benefit students ( Zhu and Leung, 2012 ).

The Benefits of Homework Feedback

Research has analyzed the effect of specific types of homework feedback provided by teachers on students’ academic performance in a particular subject (e.g., Elawar and Corno, 1985 ; Rosário et al., 2015b ), and also the relationships between homework variables (e.g., homework feedback perceived by students, students’ interest, homework management) using non-subject-centered designs ( Xu, 2012 ; Núñez et al., 2015b ). Focusing on the former (i.e., investigating homework feedback in a particular subject), Cardelle and Corno (1981) examined the effect of three types of written homework feedback (i.e., praise, constructive criticism, and constructive criticism plus praise) on college students’ written performance in a second language. Findings showed that students under the constructive criticism plus praise condition achieved a better written performance than their counterparts. Moreover, irrespective of performance levels (i.e., high, middle, and low), participants reported their preference for the constructive criticism plus praise condition. Elawar and Corno (1985) conducted a similar study in mathematics with 6th grade students. Findings showed that students under the constructive criticism plus praise condition showed better achievement and a more positive attitude toward mathematics (e.g., enthusiasm for mathematics) than students of the control group.

The synthesis by Walberg et al. (1985) , and also recent findings by Rosário et al. (2015b) , indicated that specific and individual feedback (i.e., giving written comments or grading homework) positively impacts students’ academic achievement. However, checking homework, grading, and providing individual feedback on homework assignments for every single student in class may not always be feasible because of teacher’s heavy workload (e.g., large numbers of students per class, large numbers of classes to teach, many school meetings per week) ( Cooper, 2001 ; Rosário et al., 2015b ). This educational constraint may help explain why checking homework on the board and checking homework orally are among the homework follow-up practices most frequently used by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers ( Rosário et al., 2015b ). These practices are useful to teachers because they allow providing feedback to the whole class (e.g., Brookhart, 2008 ) with less effort than that needed to grade homework or comment on students’ assignments.

Moreover, homework feedback perceived by students was also investigated using non-subject-centered designs (e.g., Xu, 2011 ; Núñez et al., 2015b ; for exceptions see Tas et al., 2016 ; Xu et al., 2017 ). In general, findings showed some of the benefits of homework feedback for students. For example, Xu’s studies using multilevel designs found that at student level teachers’ homework feedback reported by 8th and 11th grade students was positively associated with students’ interest in homework ( Xu, 2008 ), students’ reasons for doing homework ( Xu, 2010 ), students’ homework management ( Xu and Wu, 2013 ; Xu et al., 2017 ), and students’ homework motivation management ( Xu, 2014 ).

Analyzing students’ homework completion at 8th and 11th grade levels, Xu (2011) found a positive association with teacher homework feedback at both student level and class level. The explained variance was higher at class level. The author concluded that students’ homework completion is related to teachers’ provision of homework feedback ( Xu, 2011 ). This proposition is further substantiated by the findings by Bang (2011) , showing that high school immigrant students perceived teachers’ feedback as a facilitating factor, and the lack of it as an obstacle to homework completion.

More recently, Núñez et al. (2015b) conducted a study with students from various school years (grades 5–12) and concluded that the stronger the teachers’ homework feedback is perceived by students, the greater the amount of homework completed and the better the quality of homework time management (e.g., how well students managed time devoted to homework and avoided distractions). Moreover, these authors found that students’ academic achievement is indirectly and positively associated with homework feedback through students’ homework behaviors (i.e., amount of homework completed) and self-regulation (i.e., quality of homework time management), highlighting the importance of student engagement in the homework process ( Núñez et al., 2015b ). The results of Tas et al. (2016) are consistent with those, showing that middle school students’ homework self-regulation (e.g., orientation goals, learning strategies) mediated the relationship between perceived homework feedback and science achievement.

Bang (2012) reported that teachers acknowledged homework feedback (i.e., grading homework) as an important tool to motivate immigrant students to complete homework. Still, teachers admitted the educational challenge of providing homework feedback because of the time-consuming nature of this strategy. In fact, Rosário et al. (2015b) also reported the difficulties faced by EFL teachers to collect and grade homework on a regular basis. Both studies ( Bang, 2012 ; Rosário et al., 2015b ) called for further research on teachers’ perspectives about homework feedback.

In spite of the benefits of homework feedback for students previously reported, the literature has shown that teachers’ support in homework perceived by students decreases from elementary to middle school ( Katz et al., 2010 ; Núñez et al., 2015b ), without specifying in what aspects. Moreover, Kukliansky et al. (2016) recently observed middle school teachers’ behaviors in science classes (3–5 consecutive times) and found that in-class instructional feedback was not always provided, even when demanded by students. However, the authors did not explore the reasons why teachers did not provide feedback in this situation.

In sum, extant research on homework feedback has been conducted on controlled domain-centered contexts (e.g., Elawar and Corno, 1985 ; Rosário et al., 2015b ), on single grade levels (e.g., Kaur, 2011 ; Zhu and Leung, 2012 ; Xu et al., 2017 ), is non-subject-centered (e.g., Xu, 2011 ), or explored specific populations (e.g., teachers of immigrant students, Bang, 2012 ) (cf. Table ​ Table1 1 ), thus further research is needed to deepen the understanding of the homework feedback process.

Summary of studies that focus homework feedback.

The Present Study

Teachers are an important source of information in the study of the homework feedback process because they actually manage feedback in class ( Cooper, 2001 ). Still, little is known about how mathematics teachers of different school levels perceive homework feedback. Examining elementary and middle school teachers’ conceptions of the homework feedback is expected to reveal useful information on the homework process, especially teachers’ beliefs and practices concerning homework feedback (cf. Irving et al., 2011 ). The model of teachers’ conceptions of assessment and feedback ( Irving et al., 2011 ; see also Peterson and Irving, 2008 ) provides a relevant theoretical framework for the current research, and guided the research questions, data collection and analysis. This model addresses four key aspects of assessment and feedback: definition, purpose, personal response (i.e., types of assessment and feedback used) and perceived impact. Analyzing these key aspects focused on the homework feedback may provide data to help explain previous findings showing small effect sizes or low explained variances (see Zhu and Leung, 2012 ; Xu, 2014 ; Núñez et al., 2015b ; Rosário et al., 2015b ), and design future studies, homework policies or school-based interventions.

The following research questions guided the current study:

What are elementary and middle school teachers’ conceptions of homework feedback?

How do the four key aspects of the homework feedback relate to each other?

The current study explores the conceptions of teachers of two school levels for two reasons. Firstly, there are some differences as to the educational goals of those school levels; while teachers at elementary school focus on working on the foundations of mathematics (e.g., giving support in the development of number sense), middle school students are expected to learn high-level concepts (e.g., application of proportional relationships). Secondly, homework research found that the characteristics of the homework assigned (e.g., amount of homework assigned, homework purposes) vary for elementary and middle school. For example, Mullis et al. (2004) found that middle school students are expected to do larger amounts of homework than elementary school students. Besides, the purposes of assignments may also vary for both school grades. While homework purposes for middle school may be more related to school contents assessed in tests, homework purposes for elementary school are more likely to aim at developing personal skills such as time management (e.g., Muhlenbruck et al., 1999 ; Cooper and Valentine, 2001 ). Notwithstanding, the recent meta-analysis focused on mathematics and science by Fan et al. (2017) included a study in which elementary school teachers reported to assign homework to practice basic mathematics skills (see Bedford, 2014 ). Those differences (e.g., amount of homework assigned, homework purposes) may help explain the differential results regarding the benefits of homework in elementary and middle school (e.g., Cooper et al., 2006 ; Fan et al., 2017 ). Hence, elementary and middle school teachers were invited to talk about homework feedback in order to learn their conceptions and reported practices.

The current study focuses on mathematics (see Trautwein et al., 2006 on the importance of focusing homework research on a specific domain). The reason is threefold: students’ achievement levels, educational relevance of the subject, and previous research findings on homework. There is a global educational concern about students’ poor performance in mathematics. The PISA 2012 report indicates that students from 35 countries show a mathematics performance below the OECD average ( OECD, 2014 ). This worrying educational scenario raises serious challenges for some countries (among which is Portugal), given the fundamental role played by mathematics in other subjects (e.g., biology, physics) and in the development of life and citizenship skills (e.g., Reyna and Brainerd, 2007 ; OECD, 2014 ; Hagger et al., 2015 ). Moreover, mathematics was chosen because of the great amount of homework that is regularly set by teachers (e.g., Trautwein et al., 2006 ; Schmitz and Perels, 2011 ; Xu, 2015 ).

Materials and Methods

School and participants characteristics.

The last 2 years of elementary school in the Portuguese educational system encompass 5th and 6th grades (10 and 11 years old), while middle school includes 7th, 8th, and 9th grade (12–14 years old). Students have 270 min of mathematics per week in 5th and 6th grade, and 225 min per week in each of the three middle school years. At the end of 6th and 9th grade students complete a final exam that counts toward 30% of the overall grade.

Homework is an educational tool often used by Portuguese teachers as part of their lessons; still, there are no formal homework policies for Portuguese public schools (e.g., characteristics of homework assignments, homework follow-up practices; Rosário et al., 2015b ).

In the current study, participants were involved in focus group discussions and some of them in classroom observations.

Participants in Focus Groups

Six focus group discussions were conducted in this study, each of which comprised 7–9 mathematics teachers. Three focus groups were set up with elementary school teachers (5th and 6th grade) and three focus groups with middle school teachers (7th, 8th, and 9th grade). Following Morgan (1997) , homogeneity of groups was ensured in order to encourage participation among participants and minimize inhibition. Participating teachers met the following criteria: (i) having experience in teaching mathematics at elementary or middle school for at least 2 years, and (ii) assigning homework and providing homework feedback regularly (at least once a week). These requirements aimed to guarantee participants’ ability to generate ideas and opinions to share in their focus group.

The school administrators from the pool of schools which had previously enrolled in other university research projects were contacted by the authors. From those schools who agreed to participate, 20 public schools (approximately 25%) were randomly selected, and 75 mathematics teachers (approximately 25% of the pool of available elementary and middle school teachers) were randomly selected. Teachers were e-mailed about the purposes and procedures of the study (e.g., duration of the session, videotaping of the session) and invited to participate. To encourage participation (see Krueger and Casey, 2010 ), teachers were offered a participation reward (i.e., gift card), free baby-sitting services and a 3-h seminar on homework process and SRL to be held after the study had concluded.

In the end, 47 mathematics teachers (an acceptance rate of 63%) from 12 schools agreed to participate in the present study. The first author phoned the volunteer teachers to schedule the focus group meeting. Then, teachers were distributed into the various groups considering criteria such as: school, school level, and preferred scheduled time. Teachers with a hierarchical relationship were not allocated in the same focus group because this might affect their responses and the dynamics of the discussion ( Kitzinger, 1995 ; Irving et al., 2011 ). In order to encourage attendance, all participants were reminded of the focus group session 1 week before and were asked to arrive 10 min early. A map with the location was sent to all participants.

All teachers attended the focus group discussions on the scheduled day (see Table ​ Table2 2 for focus group demographics). Twenty-four teachers (51.1%) were teaching at elementary school level, and 23 (48.9%) at middle school level. In general, participating teachers had 21 years of teaching experience ( SD = 6.11); taught students from middle-class families, as evidenced by the low percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch (19.7%, data collected from the secretary’s office of the participating schools).

Summary of demographic information of the focus groups.

Participants in Classroom Observations

Given the time-consuming nature of observational studies, of these 47 teachers, 25% of the participants were randomly selected and asked to be observed in their mathematics classes. Finally, six teachers of each school level ( N = 12; four males) were observed in their classrooms. These teachers had been teaching between two to five classes and they had an average of 19 years of teaching experience ( SD = 6.93).

Data Collection

Data was collected from two data sources: focus groups and classroom observations. The research team had previously enrolled in a qualitative research course offered by the University of Minho. Following a hands-on approach, the course training addressed topics including the following: how to lead focus group discussions (e.g., encouraging participation) and observations, and how to ensure the quality and credibility of a qualitative study.

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the ethics committee of the University of Minho. All subjects gave written informed consent to the different phases of the research (i.e., focus groups and classroom observations) in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Focus Group Discussions

Focus group interviews allow for in-depth exploration of meanings, attitudes, and personal experiences of participants about a particular topic during an informal, but structured, group discussion ( Kitzinger, 1995 ; Krueger and Casey, 2010 ). This method of data collection helps capture teachers’ tacit knowledge in order to fill research gaps ( Ryan et al., 2014 ). The focus group interviews were conducted by two members of the research team as facilitators while a third member filmed the sessions. To meet teachers’ availability requirements to participate, four focus group discussions were held at the end of the school year (July), and two at the beginning of the following school year (October). Each focus group session lasted approximately 60 min and took place in a room with appropriate light and sound conditions. To create a friendly environment, snacks and refreshments were offered to participants before and after the discussion. The chairs were arranged in a half circle to allow participants to see each other and to facilitate the filming of everyone in the room.

Prior to the discussions, teachers filled in a socio-demographic questionnaire (e.g., gender, years of teaching experience) and signed the written informed consent form. Then, the facilitators introduced themselves, read aloud the study purpose and the basic rules of the focus group discussion, and ensured confidentiality of participants’ responses (i.e., any information that may identify participants or their schools was eliminated at the end of the study).

To facilitate the interaction between participants, all focus group sessions started with a warm-up activity. Then, the facilitators started the discussion with general questions (e.g., the importance of homework) and, following Peterson and Irving (2008) and Irving et al. (2011) , specific questions related to the four key aspects of homework feedback were asked: definition, purpose, types of homework feedback, and perceived impact (see Table ​ Table3 3 ). This set of questions was previously asked to two teachers in order to ensure comprehensibility. These teachers did not participate in the focus group discussions.

Key areas and guiding questions used in teachers’ focus groups.

Classroom Observations

Classroom observations were conducted to capture teachers’ spontaneous behaviors regarding the homework feedback process. All invited teachers were informed that they would be observed five times on average (see Kukliansky et al., 2016 ), in a period of 3 weeks in the middle of the school year (March). Teachers were blind to the exact date or timetable of the observations (dates of the mathematics assessment tests were excluded from the observations schedule) and all agreed to participate acknowledging these requirements. Two other members of the research team, who were knowledgeable about homework research, conducted the classroom observations. These observations incorporated a structured content based on previous homework research to direct researchers’ attention to teacher’s responses to students’ homework completion (see Choo et al., 2015 ). The instrument used to collect data included the five homework feedback types reported in the literature (e.g., Rosário et al., 2015b ). Additionally, researchers took field notes independently on the homework feedback process (e.g., time spent and how homework feedback was delivered), cross-checked and expanded upon their notes as promptly as possible. In the end, each teacher was observed on average five times, thus gathering a total of 64 h of classroom observations.

Data Analysis

Transcriptions of focus group discussions and observation field notes were analyzed using content analysis ( Bardin, 1996 ). The latter is a qualitative research technique used to search for and identify categories, following systematic procedures ( Bardin, 1996 ).

The researchers who conducted the focus groups carried out the data analysis. Content analysis followed three main steps ( Bardin, 1996 ): (i) reading the focus groups’ verbatim transcriptions to get an overview of the data (pre-analysis), (ii) coding (exploration of data), and (iii) treatment (e.g., percentages) and interpretation of data (e.g., comparing frequencies of coded categories). The organization, management, coding, and querying process of the data were conducted using the QSR International’s NVivo 10 software (e.g., Richards, 2005 ).

The extensiveness of comments (i.e., number of participants who convey an idea, Krueger and Casey, 2000 ) in the current study was the criterion used to identify categories. The identification of categories followed a deductive and inductive iterative process ( Bardin, 1996 ). The categories were organized a priori in a coding scheme based on the theoretical model by Irving et al. (2011) , and on the homework research (e.g., Walberg et al., 1985 ; Cooper, 2001 ; Xu, 2011 ; Rosário et al., 2015b ). For example, the categories “definition,” “purposes,” “types,” and “perceived impact” of homework feedback were driven by the Irving et al. (2011) theoretical model, while each type of homework feedback (e.g., subcategory “checking homework on the board”) was driven by homework research (e.g., Rosário et al., 2015b ). New categories were added during the analysis using participants’ words ( Bardin, 1996 ). For example, the subcategories “homework feedback provided to teacher,” “self-esteem,” “homework self-feedback” were subcategories build upon teachers’ words. In the end, all transcripts were reviewed in order to check whether the already coded material fit the new subcategories.

Finally, the two researchers reviewed all the categories and sub-categories and discussed the differences found in order to reach a consensus (e.g., elimination of the subcategory “teachers assess students’ progress” because it was highly related to the subcategory “teachers monitor students’ learning”). After the data analysis of four focus group discussions (two from each school level), the researchers coded the two other focus group discussions and no new information was added. To ensure the reliability of findings, the Kappa value was calculated using the Coding Comparison Queries in the Navigation View of the NVivo software. The Kappa value was 0.86, which may be considered “almost perfect” according to Landis and Koch (1977 , p. 165). Then data from the elementary and middle school teachers were analyzed separately conducting a matrix-coding query, crossing nodes with attributes (i.e., school level). The number of participants for each subcategory was converted into a percentage.

The two researchers who conducted the classroom observations coded independently the process of homework feedback delivery described in the field notes according to the codebook used in the focus groups. No new categories or subcategories were identified or redefined. Data from the elementary and middle school teachers were analyzed separately following the procedure used in focus groups, and the number of participants for each subcategory was converted into a percentage. To avoid bias on the Kappa value in NVivo, due to different numbers of characters of the researchers’ field notes ( Kim et al., 2016 ), data was exported and IBM SPSS was used to calculate Cohen’s Kappa for nominal variables. The Cohen’s Kappa value for each subcategory ranged between 0.81 and 1.0, which indicates high agreement across observers.

To answer the second research question (i.e., How do the four key aspects of the homework feedback relate to each other?), data analysis followed two steps using the same software. First, a Cluster Analysis Wizard by word similarity between nodes was conducted to explore patterns and connections between nodes in an initial phase of data analysis ( Bazeley and Jackson, 2013 ). Second, a case-by-nodes matrix was conducted to explore the relationships between each category in the focus group discussion transcripts as suggested by Bazeley and Jackson (2013) .

Specific quality procedures were used to enhance the trustworthiness of the findings of the current study ( Lincoln and Guba, 1985 ): investigator triangulation (i.e., several investigators were involved in the analysis process), methodological triangulation (i.e., patterns in data from focus groups and classroom observations were compared using a matrix-coding query, crossing nodes with classified sources – focus group and observations), and a member checking run at the University facilities. The researchers randomly selected and invited 25% of the participants of each grade level to do a member check ( Lincoln and Guba, 1985 ). Ten teachers agreed to participate (six from elementary school and four from middle school) (response rate of 83%). Member checking session lasted approximately 2 h. Firstly, participants were informed of the findings (approximately 45 min). Afterward, they were given a copy of the findings and asked to analyze and discuss whether the description was an authentic representation of the topics covered during the focus group interviews. The participants also analyzed whether the description of the homework feedback types provided to students was an authentic representation of what usually happens in class. Participants were invited to critically analyze the findings and comment on them ( Creswell, 2007 ).

Data were organized and reported according to each of the key aspects of teachers’ conceptions of the homework feedback (see Peterson and Irving, 2008 ): definition, purpose, types of homework feedback practices, and perceived impact of homework feedback (see Figures ​ Figures1 1 , ​ 2 2 ). Furthermore, the relationships between these four aspects were presented (see Figure ​ Figure3 3 ). Teachers’ verbatim quotes were introduced to illustrate the categories and conversations held in the focus group discussions (see also Table ​ Table4 4 ). In addition, whenever possible, data from classroom observations were included to illustrate findings. Categories were reported using the criteria by Hill et al. (2005 , p. 16) as follows: general (i.e., categories include all, or all but one, of the cases), typical (i.e., categories include more than half of the cases) and variant (i.e., categories include more than three cases or up to half of the cases). For reasons of parsimony, rare categories (two or three cases) were not reported.

Elementary and middle school teachers’ conceptions of homework feedback for each key aspect.

Observed elementary and middle school teachers’ homework feedback practices.

Relationships among teachers’ conceptions of homework feedback.

Summary of findings.

Initial Data Screening

All participants reported assigning homework regularly and considered homework feedback as an important element for homework effectiveness. Data showed that, for each homework assignment, 96% of the elementary school teachers and 52% of the middle school teachers reported spending approximately 30 min giving homework feedback in class. Moreover, 48% of the middle school teachers spent on average 15 min giving homework feedback in class. Classroom observations provided precise information on the time spent in class giving homework feedback: 3–80 min in elementary school classes ( M = 32.75; SD = 19.91), and 5–55 min in middle school classes ( M = 29.89; SD = 17.36).

Definitions of Homework Feedback

When teachers were asked about their definition of homework feedback, the majority said they “had never thought about it” (F1P1). Still, elementary and middle school teachers elaborated on homework feedback differently (see Figure ​ Figure1 1 ). Teachers from elementary school proposed two meanings for homework feedback: (i) homework feedback provided by the teacher and (ii) students’ homework self-feedback. For middle school teachers, homework feedback was conceptualized as threefold): (i) homework feedback provided by the teacher; (ii) homework feedback provided by the student; and (iii) students’ homework self-feedback. The analysis of the frequency labels for each category revealed no general categories, which allows concluding that definitions of homework feedback vary among teachers, irrespective of the grade level. Moreover, while “homework feedback provided to students” is a variant category in elementary school, in middle school is a typical category (see Figure ​ Figure1 1 ).

For elementary school teachers in one focus group discussion and for middle school teachers in two focus groups, homework feedback provided by teachers was defined as a message provided to students with information concerning their homework behaviors (i.e., completion, effort), and comprehension of homework tasks and performance (e.g., how well students answered, why answers are wrong).

Middle school teachers in all focus groups conceptualized homework feedback in the reverse direction (i.e., from the students to the teacher), as the following statement illustrates:

• simple  F5P2: Some weeks ago, I noticed that several students in class had not understood some homework exercises. I asked the whole class and found out that no one had understood. Two or three students said: Sir, these exercises were a bit complicated… We did not understand what we were expected to do, how to start… This was the homework feedback they gave me.

The remaining teachers nodded their heads in agreement and added that this piece of information gathered at the beginning of a lesson helps them choose the type of homework feedback to give to students.

Lastly, elementary school teachers of two focus groups, and middle school teachers of one focus group (see Figure ​ Figure1 1 ) proposed another meaning for homework feedback: “homework self-feedback” (typical category in elementary school and variant category in middle school). The following utterance illustrates this conceptualization:

• simple  F2P3: Homework feedback is when students can explain or reflect upon what they are doing…or checking from their seats when we check homework on the board.

Another elementary school teacher elaborated on students’ homework self-feedback:

• simple  F4P4: Homework feedback is also related to students’ homework completion. All my students draw a grid in their notebooks and devote one row to homework. Every day they write 1 for “completed” homework and 0 for “missing.” At the end of the term they have a score. I believe this to be self-feedback because students know their score and link it to school grades. They know that those who complete homework are likely to achieve better results. The opposite is also true….

This type of homework feedback (i.e., self-feedback) is more focused on students’ homework behaviors than on students’ homework performance. Still, other teachers from the same focus group reported that they do not use this strategy with their students.

Purposes of Homework Feedback

The homework feedback purposes identified by teachers at both school levels were similar. Teachers enthusiastically talked about homework feedback as a “working tool” serving three main purposes (see Figure ​ Figure1 1 ): (i) teachers monitor students’ learning and behavior (typical category in both school levels); (ii) students monitor their own learning (typical category in elementary school and variant category in middle school); and (iii) promotion of students’ self-esteem (variant category in both school levels).

When asked to expand on this idea, participants explained that homework feedback helps teachers identify students’ difficulties and monitor their content knowledge, which provides information to self-evaluate the instruction process and introduce changes if necessary. In fact, some students struggle to learn and show difficulties to understand and complete homework. To promote students’ motivation to do homework, teachers agreed on the need – “after charging our batteries of patience” (F6P3) – to explain in class how to do homework exercises. Besides, teachers exemplified the usefulness of homework feedback for monitoring students’ homework behaviors (e.g., checking whether students have completed their homework, whether they have copied the solutions from a textbook). This category emerged in all focus group discussions, and was consensual among participants. Teachers emphatically agreed on the examples discussed and expanded on others’ ideas. The following statements illustrate some of the conversations held:

• simple  F2P4: Homework feedback is important in order to learn about what is happening on earth [some teachers laughed], to learn whether most students do their homework, whether they manage to do it alone or need some help, but also to learn about their difficulties during the learning process and act upon their mistakes.
• simple  F2P1: To know whether I delivered the message well or not so… Homework feedback should make us change our instruction methodologies. If the message was not properly delivered, it’s necessary to change the course of action…

Moreover, many elementary and some middle school teachers in all focus groups mentioned students’ monitoring of their own learning as an important purpose of homework feedback, as illustrated by the following opinion:

• simple  F5P3: With the help of homework feedback, students can learn what is right or wrong in their homework. If the homework assignment is correct, they get some positive reinforcement. If it is not correct, they learn that they have to study more and do additional exercises.

Some points made by participants focused exclusively on one of the two previous purposes (see Figure ​ Figure1 1 ). However, some teachers in all focus groups irrespective of grade level considered homework feedback a purposeful tool for teachers or students to monitor progress in learning. In sum, teachers admitted that homework feedback provides on-task opportunities for teachers and students to monitor the teaching and learning process.

Moreover, teachers from five focus groups pointed at the promotion of students’ self-esteem as another purpose of homework feedback (see Figure ​ Figure1 1 ). Elementary and middle school teachers supported this idea, showing concern about students’ wellbeing, mainly of low achievers:

• simple  F5P6: When they [students] realize that they are capable of doing homework exercises, they feel very happy and proud of themselves. When they fail to complete or feel frustrated because they couldn’t find a way to do the exercises, I try to make positive comments, highlighting what they did well in order to make them feel confident. It is crucial to give them positive reinforcements to improve their self-esteem.

Types of Homework Feedback Practices

Going further in the discussion, teachers identified the most frequently used homework feedback practices: (i) checking homework completion; (ii) checking homework on the board; (iii) testing related content; (iv) considering homework in the overall grade; (v) informing parents of their children’s homework non-compliance (homework feedback to parents); and (vi) giving written comments (see Figure ​ Figure1 1 ).

The two types of homework feedback practices first mentioned in all focus group discussions were: checking who completes homework and checking homework on the board. The classroom observations (see Figure ​ Figure2 2 ) provided information on the classroom routines and, with some exceptions, allowed concluding that classes usually begin with similar routines: checking who did homework and then checking homework on the board.

As Figure ​ Figure1 1 shows, checking homework completion is a general and typical category among elementary and middle school teachers, respectively. When discussing this practice (see Table ​ Table4 4 ), some of the elementary and middle school teachers argued that they simply ask who completed homework. On the other hand, most elementary and some middle school teachers explained that they walk around the class having a glance at students’ notebooks in order to check homework completion. This strategy allows noting who actually did their homework and gathers information on how students did it (e.g., whether students followed all the steps to solve a problem). In this process, teachers reported that they try to understand the reasons why students did not complete homework (e.g., is failing to complete homework a class problem or is it only associated with a particular student?). The participating teachers considered this type of homework feedback useful because it gives information on the process and allows them to respond to students’ maladaptive homework behaviors (e.g., missing homework, copying solutions from peer students, writing down results without checking). Teachers from both school levels reported using logs in class to record who missed homework, and data from the classroom observations corroborated this finding. When asked how they usually deal with maladaptive homework completion behaviors, some teachers at both school levels reported criticizing students who repeatedly fail to complete homework or copy answers from the textbook, as the following utterance illustrates:

• simple  F6P5: Where is your homework? Oh, I see. Keep working like this and you will get far… [ironic tone]

The use of public criticism and irony in response to maladaptive homework behaviors was observed sometimes in elementary school classes, and often in middle school classes.

When discussing the best practice regarding homework, participants at both school levels named checking homework on the board as a practice that “reaches all students” (F6P4). All teachers were very emphatic about the importance and usefulness of this type of feedback. As Figure ​ Figure1 1 shows, this practice is the most frequently used by elementary and middle school teachers. Moreover, present data (i.e., focus group discussions and classroom observations) suggest several ways in which this type of homework feedback may be put into practice. For example, some teachers reported that they check homework on the board; others mentioned writing on the board the answers dictated by students from their seats; while others explained that they randomly choose one or more students to do homework exercises on the board. Elementary and middle school teachers further explained additional homework feedback practices adopted after displaying the solution for the exercise on the board: (i) whole-class discussion led by the teacher; (ii) further explanation provided by the teacher or by the students on what is written on the board; (iii) teachers’ praise for students’ efforts in learning or good performance, or (iv) general incentives encouraging students to persist when doing homework. The observations conducted in the classrooms provided data that showed that all these strategies were used in class when teachers were checking homework on the board. Still, frequency and sequence of the strategies used by teachers (e.g., students check homework on the board, teacher explains problem solving procedures, class discussion) varied according to the needs and characteristics of the class. Moreover, classroom observations revealed that when students ask teachers for help, some teachers provide individual explanations while checking homework on the board. For example, when students raise their hand to show a lack of understanding while checking homework on the board, some teachers go to the student’s desk to answer their question individually.

Teachers at both school levels also emphasized checking homework on the board as a way of giving feedback to the whole class with minimum time and effort:

• simple  F1P1: When homework is being checked on the board by a student, I identify what is incorrect and explain how the exercise may be approached. Still, this feedback is very general because I cannot check every single assignment that students hands in. I simple cannot do it!

However, some participating teachers alerted that students who check homework on the board get a more detailed type of feedback than those who passively watch from their seats or do not pay attention to the checking process.

Moreover, many elementary and some middle school teachers in all focus group discussions mentioned asking questions, or assigning exercises similar to those of previous homework assignments (see Figure ​ Figure1 1 , Testing of related content). Data from the classroom observations confirmed this practice. Participants stressed that this practice provides students with a new feedback event centered on the level of accuracy of their responses and on their ability to transfer the knowledge learned to new tasks. However, despite the general agreement regarding this homework feedback practice, some middle school teachers admitted that they only check students’ ability to transfer knowledge in assessment tests and claimed that this practice should not be considered homework feedback – “This is assessment, not feedback! [Emphatic tone]” (F1P5).

Most participants at both school levels reported following their school’s assessment criteria regarding homework. Generally, homework completion counts for 2–5% of the overall grade in mathematics. When asked to be more specific, several teachers explained that they use information on homework completion recorded in class logs, while others declared using information on students’ performance when checking homework on the board. Teachers admitted that they do not examine the quality of all homework assignments given in class because of the heavy workload they faced on a daily basis. During classroom observations, teachers registered who did not complete homework and sometimes they referred that this behavior would decrease their overall grade. Most teachers in all focus groups reported including information on homework completion in the overall mathematics grade; still, less than half identified this practice as a type of homework feedback.

Furthermore, some of the elementary and middle school teachers in all focus groups mentioned sending parents a message when their children miss homework three times as a type of homework feedback. This practice was confirmed by data from classroom observations. Interestingly, participants did not mention reporting children’s progress on homework to parents during the focus group discussions, and accordingly this practice was not observed in class.

Finally, a few elementary school teachers in two focus group discussions and a few middle school teachers in one focus group reported commenting on students’ homework regularly. Comments address the strengths and weaknesses of homework, pointing out the topics that need to be improved, as the following quotation exemplifies:

• simple  F4P1: I comment on what is done well, but I also point out mistakes and suggest ways to improve what is wrong or not so well done. For example, I’d write: “Great line of reasoning but try to do x so you’ll only have to do two calculations and you’ll finish the exercises faster.” Unfortunately, sometimes I have to write other kinds of comments such as “What a coincidence, your answer is exactly the same as Joana’s or Catarina’s … and the three of you have made exactly the same mistakes…”

These few participants were asked by their focus group peers how they managed to comment on students’ homework regularly. A teacher answered that she could do it because she had been assigned only one class; still, “I spent my lunch hour and some of my free time at school working on this” (F3P3). Another teacher explained that she provides this type of homework feedback weekly, except for those weeks when students have assessment tests. According to this last participant, the negative side of this practice, “frustrating I should say” (F4P1), is when students copy homework answers from another student. Commenting on students’ homework is a very time-consuming practice, and this participant expressed feeling discouraged when such maladaptive behaviors occur in class. To overcome the “very time-consuming obstacle,” another teacher who also claimed to use this practice explained that he usually asks the whole class to complete homework on a separate sheet – “I choose only one good exercise which reflects the material covered in class” (F5P7). In the next lesson, and without prior notice, he collects four or five homework assignments, which are returned with feedback comments in the following class. Participants in the three focus group discussions agreed that this type of homework feedback is very useful, but also stressed the unlikelihood of giving it in class because of the heavy workload they as teachers have to bear (e.g., teachers have to teach five or six classes at different grade levels, each of them with over 25 students, heavy curriculums). In this context, one participant complained: “I’m not a rubber band that may be stretched [endlessly]” (F5P5).

Perceived Impact of Homework Feedback

As Figure ​ Figure1 1 shows, elementary and middle school teachers highlighted the positive impact of homework feedback on content learning, self-esteem, and homework completion (some categories are typical and others are variant).

The following dialog among elementary school teachers illustrates their conceptions on the impact of homework feedback:

• simple  F4P9: Students who complete homework regularly are more willing to understand the contents covered.
• simple  F4P2: …and they complete homework more often… At least I notice more effort.

Moreover, both elementary and middle school teachers related homework feedback to class participation (variant category in both school levels), as the following participant argued:

• simple  F4P5: Yes…they [students who complete homework regularly] follow classroom instructions and participate in class more actively, for example, by asking me questions and answering mine more frequently…

Only elementary school teachers in two focus group discussions related homework feedback to students’ achievement, while none of the middle school teachers did so (see Figure ​ Figure1 1 ). In fact, some of the middle school teachers in all the focus group discussions defended the need for students to play an active role in their learning, arguing that homework feedback is not worthwhile for those who are not interested in learning.

Relationships between Teachers’ Conceptions of Homework Feedback

The second research question aimed to examine how the four key aspects of the homework feedback are related. Figure ​ Figure3 3 provides a graphical model of teachers’ most salient conceptions of homework feedback and the relationships among them. The bold solid lines represent typical cases (more than 50%), the thinner solid lines represent variant categories (between 25 and 50% cases), and the dotted lines represent variant categories (between 17 and 24% cases). All lines represent the conceptions of both elementary and middle school teachers except for the lines with an asterisk, which refer to a specific school level (see legend of Figure ​ Figure3 3 ).

As Figure ​ Figure3 3 shows, the definitions of homework feedback provided by elementary and middle school teachers differ regarding the purposes for giving homework feedback. The middle school teachers perceived homework feedback as the feedback provided by the teacher to their students about their homework. The purpose for this homework feedback was described by teachers as twofold: help teachers monitor students’ learning and help students monitor their own learning. The latter was mentioned less often by middle school teachers. Besides, the middle school teachers conceptualized homework feedback provided to teachers by their students with the purpose of helping teachers monitor students’ learning.

In turn, elementary school teachers perceived homework feedback mainly as self-feedback and, accordingly, conceptualized students’ monitoring of their learning as the main purpose for giving homework feedback. While discussing, these teachers highlighted students’ active role in self-regulate their learning during and after homework completion (e.g., students checking their answers when solutions are written on the board). Still, the elementary school teachers did not explain how they promote these self-regulation skills in class. Moreover, the second set of relationships (i.e., purposes and homework feedback types) reveals a different pattern of results as described below.

Interestingly, the participating teachers operationalized both homework purposes (i.e., teachers monitoring students learning and students’ monitoring their own learning, the latter less often; see Figure ​ Figure3 3 ) through the “checking homework on the board” homework feedback type. Teachers’ arguments were twofold: this practice allows checking students’ level of understanding of content (e.g., students solving exercises autonomously on the board), and students can learn about their skills while checking their answers with those written on the board.

The homework feedback practice testing related contents was also linked to both purposes but only by elementary school teachers. These teachers argued that providing students with similar exercises to those previously set as homework helps teachers monitor their students’ learning and students to monitor their own learning.

The purpose “teachers’ monitoring their students’ learning” was linked to the practice “checking homework completion” by elementary and middle school teachers. This homework feedback practice helps teachers learn who completed homework and collect information on the content with which students are struggling the most. This information is expected to help teachers meet their students’ needs.

Finally, the various types of homework feedback were associated with various perceived impacts. Teachers at both school levels converged in the fact that checking homework completion impacts students’ homework completion positively. In general, teachers mentioned that some students are “immature” and their lack of active involvement and strong volition prevent them from completing homework. Thus, most of the teachers at both school levels anticipated that external control is needed to help students complete homework. Checking homework completion was referred to as an important tool for encouraging students to do homework.

As Figure ​ Figure3 3 depicts, teachers described checking homework on the board as the homework feedback practice that most benefits students. According to participants, this practice fosters self-esteem (only reported by elementary school teachers), homework completion (reported by some teachers at both school levels), class participation (reported by some teachers at both levels), and learning of the content taught in class (reported by most of the teachers from both levels). Teachers explained that praising students on their good performance while doing exercises on the board is likely to increase their self-esteem. Furthermore, teachers said that this practice encourages homework completion and increases class participation because it provides students with specific information on how to solve exercises.

Some elementary school teachers reported that testing related content helps students participate more in class (e.g., answering teacher’s questions, asking more questions) and be more engaged in their learning.

A few teachers at both school levels (see Figure ​ Figure3 3 ) mentioned counting homework in the overall grade, and communicating with parents when their children miss homework three times as two types of homework feedback with impact on students’ homework completion. Counting homework completion in the overall grade was referred to as a direct incentive for students to complete homework. However, some teachers alerted that this practice may not always be effective because of the time gap between students’ homework behaviors and the end of term when they get their final grade report. Thus, all agreed that teachers should respond to students’ homework behaviors (e.g., missing homework or doing assignments correctly) as soon as possible. Participants highlighted the importance of communicating with families about children’s homework behaviors. However, teachers alerted that this type of homework feedback may not be effective without the implication of the family in the learning process; “if the family is aware of the importance of this type of practice, then it will be effective, otherwise it will have no effect” (F3P4).

As reported previously, 17% of the elementary and middle school teachers claimed to make written comments on students’ homework assignments (see Figure ​ Figure1 1 ). However, when discussing the possible impact of the various types of homework feedback, more teachers (than that 17%) agreed that written comments on students’ assignments would improve students’ learning of content (see Figure ​ Figure3 3 ). These teachers mentioned that personalized homework feedback would help students correct their mistakes and might provide guidance on the topics that need to be further studied. As a result, students were likely to improve their grades.

The discussion of the current study is organized according to each key aspect of teachers’ conceptions of homework feedback. Regarding the first key aspect of homework feedback, teachers proposed a multifaceted definition of homework feedback: (i) homework feedback provided by the teacher, (ii) homework feedback provided by the student, and (iii) homework self-feedback. The latter extends the definition of Cooper (2001) , who defined homework feedback as the teachers’ responses to students’ homework completion as a follow-up (e.g., comments, incentives, grades). The definition of homework self-feedback is linked to the internal feedback or self-feedback proposed by Butler and Winne (1995) and Hattie and Timperley (2007) , respectively. According to these authors, students are expected to display self-regulatory skills to self-evaluate their performance in homework assignments (see Hattie and Timperley, 2007 ). Interestingly, this category is typical in elementary school, but variant in middle school. This is an important finding because the generation of internal feedback requires knowledge on strategies and standards, as well as the capacity to judge the quality of a task in relation to standards, which not all students are capable of, especially those at lower grade levels ( Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons, 1990 ; Butler and Winne, 1995 ; Rosário et al., 2016 ). Moreover, low achievers struggling to learn often fail to activate and control the SRL process ( Núñez et al., 2015a ). In fact, these students are likely to fail to monitor their homework behaviors because they do not know “whether they are on the right track” (F4P8).

Consistently with literature, teachers’ major conceptions of homework feedback purposes addressed monitoring students’ learning, either focusing on teachers’ or on students’ role ( Corno, 2000 ; An and Wu, 2012 ; Bang, 2012 ). This may be particularly important in mathematics where contents are organized so as to follow a continuous progression and lower levels prepare the foundations of subsequent levels ( Pijls and Dekker, 2011 ). Teachers’ monitoring provides the opportunity for teachers to change their teaching practices in response to students’ needs ( Walberg and Paik, 2000 ; Kralovec and Buell, 2001 ), which may be understood as a “student-centered” approach (see Sheridan, 2013 ). The conception of homework feedback purposes focused on students’ monitoring their work emphasizes students’ active role during the homework process and the use of SRL competencies such as self-monitoring and self-reflection (e.g., Ramdass and Zimmerman, 2011 ; Zhu and Leung, 2012 ). The last purpose of homework feedback proposed by participants is to “promote self-esteem.” This purpose is not mentioned in homework literature; however, in the study by Irving et al. (2011) , teachers mentioned the need to inform students about the positive aspects of their performance, thus incentivizing their progress, especially among low achievers showing low self-esteem.

Regarding the third topic of homework feedback (homework feedback types), findings in the current study are consistent with literature ( Cooper, 2001 ; Mullis et al., 2004 ; Kaur, 2011 ; Zhu and Leung, 2012 ; Rosário et al., 2015b ; Kukliansky et al., 2016 ). However, despite the similarity of the homework feedback practices reported by elementary and middle school teachers, the percentages of each reported category vary. For example, checking homework completion and checking homework on the board are general categories in elementary school and typical categories in middle school; while testing of related content is a typical category in elementary school and a variant category in middle school. These findings are consistent with students’ reports on their teachers’ support in homework ( Katz et al., 2010 ; Núñez et al., 2015b ). A decrease in teachers’ support in homework at middle school level is expected because older students are likely to be more autonomous. However, Katz et al. (2010) found that the middle school students who perceived low teachers’ homework support reported high psychological needs and low intrinsic motivation. Other important finding to note is the use of criticism observed in elementary and middle school classrooms which may have the opposite effect of teachers’ intentions (e.g., reduce homework non-compliance). In fact, being criticized in class is likely to be non-constructive because it may reduce students’ willingness to accept criticism and result in low favorable responses toward homework. On the contrary, criticism delivered in private is likely to lead to better responses (see Leung et al., 2001 ).

According to participants, homework feedback impacts in the following aspects: content learning, self-esteem, homework completion, class participation, and achievement. Globally, this finding is consistent with previous research (e.g., Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2009 ; Xu, 2011 ; Núñez et al., 2015b ), except for class participation and self-esteem which have not yet been studied. It is interesting to note, however, that despite most teachers reported spending 30 min or more providing homework feedback in each class (see Initial Data Screening subsection); about one third of elementary school teachers related homework feedback to students’ achievement, while none of the middle school teachers did so. However, prior research has evidenced the positive impact of homework feedback on students’ academic achievement ( Núñez et al., 2015b ), especially when teachers provide suggestions on how to improve learning (see Elawar and Corno, 1985 ; Walberg et al., 1985 ; Rosário et al., 2015b ).

Moreover, middle school teachers added that when students do not play an active role in their learning, feedback is not likely to have any impact. This conception is consistent with the SRL approach to the homework process (e.g., Xu and Wu, 2013 ; Xu, 2014 ; Núñez et al., 2015b ) which stresses, for example, the role that teachers may play in helping students define their own homework goals and reflect on the relationship between homework completion and achieving self-set learning goals (e.g., Núñez et al., 2015b ; Rosário et al., 2015b ). As Labuhn et al. (2010) observed, the feedback provided by teachers may not impact students’ learning and behaviors if students do not understand what is intended with homework feedback.

Findings gathered from relationships between teachers’ conceptions of homework feedback provide additional useful insights. Interestingly, the two most frequently reported types of homework feedback (i.e., checking homework completion and checking homework on the board) in both school levels are more linked to the purpose “teachers monitoring students’ learning” than to the purpose “students monitoring their own learning.” This data may suggest that teachers may not be fully aware of the importance of promoting students’ SRL competencies to increase the benefits of homework feedback or they may lack the knowledge to promote these skills in class (see Spruce and Bol, 2015 ).

Practical Implications

The current study provides four major findings of relevance for educational practice: (i) decrease of teachers’ reported homework feedback practices from elementary to middle school level; (ii) a few teachers from elementary school and none from middle school level perceive homework feedback impacting on students’ academic achievement; (iii) usage of public criticism in class, especially in middle school; and (iv) teachers’ lack of awareness on SRL strategies.

First, teachers and school administrators with the help of school psychologists could examine homework practices delivered in class, namely homework feedback, to analyze whether they are set to be responsive to students’ educational needs. As found in the current study, there is a decrease of the homework feedback from elementary to middle school; however, this finding should be considered by teachers because, according to literature, many middle school students still report the need of teachers’ homework support (e.g., Katz et al., 2010 ).

Data also showed that both elementary and middle school teachers spend around 30 min providing homework feedback in class, but the perceived impact of this school practice on students’ achievement was barely mentioned in the focus groups. This data merit reflection within the school context to understand whether homework feedback is being used with efficacy. For example, school-based training for teachers’ on homework models (e.g., Cooper, 2001 ; Trautwein et al., 2006 ) could theoretically ground their homework practices in schools. This training would also help teachers understand that criticism and irony in class may discourage homework compliance, but it also may lead to undesirable outcomes such as children homework disengagement.

Finally, data (e.g., elementary school teachers believe that students generate homework self-feedback; the homework feedback practices most used in class are more closely related to the purpose “teachers monitoring students’ learning” than to the purpose “students monitoring their own learning”) suggest the need to set school-based training for teachers on SRL strategies. This training could consider addressing the homework process in relation with SRL to promote students’ agency and sense of responsibility over homework and homework feedback in particular. For example, teachers are expected to learn and practice how to model the use of SRL strategies in class ( Rosário et al., 2013 ; Spruce and Bol, 2015 ). In fact, students lacking SRL skills may fail to use the homework feedback delivered in class, which may compromise the impact of this instructional tool on students learning and achievement (see Corno, 2000 ; Peterson and Irving, 2008 ; Zhu and Leung, 2012 ). To promote the development of students SRL competencies and increase the benefits of homework feedback, teachers may also consider using “diary tasks” to promote students’ homework self-reflection in class (see Ferreira et al., 2015 ).

Strengths, Limitations, and Future Research

To authors’ knowledge, this study was the first to map mathematics teachers’ conceptions of homework feedback and examine the relationships between teachers’ definitions, purposes, types, and perceived impact of homework feedback. The analysis of these relationships focusing on a specific content domain at two school levels showed which categories were linked, and how, by the participating teachers. This study extended previous research conducted with mathematics teachers from a single grade level (see Kaur, 2011 ; Zhu and Leung, 2012 ).

According to the current findings, elementary and middle school teachers’ conceptions of homework feedback vary, as well as the time spent in class providing feedback. Moreover, in spite of the fact that the types of homework feedback practices are the same, the type of categories (i.e., general vs. typical and typical vs. variant) varies in the two school levels, and the dynamic of providing homework feedback at those school levels is diverse and complex (e.g., usage of various strategies to provide some types of homework feedback, even by the same teacher). These findings may help understand why the relationship between homework and academic achievement reported in the literature varies from elementary to middle school (see Cooper et al., 2006 ; Fan et al., 2017 ).

Furthermore, the complexity of the homework feedback process reflected by the collected data may not be captured by extant instruments that examine teachers’ homework feedback practices. To some extent, this may contribute to understand the low effect sizes and explained variances found in the homework feedback research (e.g., Xu, 2014 ; Rosário et al., 2015b ). This finding reinforces the need for future studies collect data using more than one method to capture and better understand the phenomenon of the homework process and its influence on students’ academic outcomes (e.g., Cooper et al., 2006 ). Furthermore, findings showed positive relationships between some types of homework feedback practices and perceived impact on students’ variables that have not yet been examined in homework research (e.g., checking homework on the blackboard and class participation). Future studies may consider further examining these relationships.

The present study followed methodological procedures to enhance trustworthiness of findings such as random sampling, investigator and methodological triangulation, provision of direct quotations, and member checking ( Lincoln and Guba, 1985 ; Shenton, 2004 ; Elo et al., 2014 ). Results from member checking were very positive. The majority of the participants agreed that the description of the findings was a genuine reflection of the topics covered in the focus group discussions, and of the homework routines in the classroom. No suggestions were made to change the description of data. Such data have strengthened present findings. In addition, teachers highlighted that they usually choose types of homework feedback that reach all students because of the professional constraints they experience daily (i.e., heavy workload). This topic was mentioned during the discussions and may merit further investigation because it may be an important factor compromising the homework feedback process.

Notwithstanding the strengths of the current study, there are also some limitations that need to be addressed. Classroom observations helped strengthen findings, nevertheless only 25% of the participating teachers were observed in a limited period of time. Moreover, most of the participants have extensive experience in teaching, which may have contributed to the results. As Hattie (2003) reported, expert teachers are more capable of seeking and giving feedback, and also monitoring their students’ learning than novice teachers. Conducting studies on novice teachers would help identify their specific needs for training on instructional variables, and design school-based interventions to meet these professionals’ needs.

Elementary and middle school teachers’ conceptions of homework feedback were mapped, but the role of students in the homework feedback process should be further researched. Further investigation may want to explore elementary and middle school students’ conceptions of homework feedback and compare their responses with current findings. The information provided would be useful to learn how students understand (e.g., in what ways students perceive teachers’ homework feedback practices as helpful, see Xu, 2016 ) and cope with the homework feedback given in class. Examining the (mis)alignment of both conceptions of homework feedback (elementary and middle school teachers and students) may help deepen the understanding of the impact of homework feedback and further examine the differential relationship between doing homework and academic achievement at these two school levels (see Cooper et al., 2006 ). The results, although promising, should be further investigated in different school grades and subjects. At this level, however, they may be useful to researchers looking for an in-depth understanding of homework feedback and willing to explore new research topics on the “last but not least” aspect of the homework process.

Ethics Statement

This study was reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of the University of Minho. All research participants provided written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Author Contributions

JC and PR substantially contributed to the conception and the design of the work. JC was responsible for the literature search. JC, AN, TM, JN, and TN were responsible for the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data for the work. PR was also in charge of technical guidance. JN made important intellectual contribution in manuscript revision. JC wrote the manuscript with valuable inputs from the remaining authors. All authors agreed for all aspects of the work and approved the version to be published.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

Authors would like to thank Sofia Kirkman and Fuensanta Monroy for the English editing of the manuscript.

Funding. This study was conducted at Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, and supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653). JC was supported by a Ph.D. fellowship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT – SFRH/BD/95341/2013).

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What science says about the benefits of homework

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Madeline Levine, PhD, is a psychologist with close to 30 years of experience as a clinician, consultant and educator. Her New York Times bestseller, The Price of Privilege , explores the reasons why teenagers from affluent families are experiencing epidemic rates of emotional problems.  Her book, Teach Your Children Well,  outlines how our current narrow definition of success unnecessarily stresses academically talented kids and marginalizes many more whose talents and interests are less amenable to measurement. The development of skills needed to be successful in the 21 st century- creativity, collaboration, innovation – are not easily developed in our competitive, fast-paced, high pressure world. Teach Your Children Well gives practical, research- based solutions to help parents return their families to healthier and saner versions of themselves.

Dr. Levine is also a co-founder of Challenge Success, a project born at the Stanford School of Education. Challenge Success believes that our increasingly competitive world has led to tremendous anxiety about our children’s’ futures and has resulted in a high pressure, myopic focus on grades, test scores and performance. This kind of pressure and narrow focus isn’t helping our kids become the resilient, capable, meaningful contributors we need in the 21st century. So every day, Challenge Success provides families and schools with the practical research-based tools they need to raise healthy, motivated kids, capable of reaching their full potential. We know that success is measured over the course of a lifetime, not at the end of the grading period.

Dr. Levine began her career as an elementary and junior high school teacher in the South Bronx of New York before moving to California and earning her degrees in psychology. She has had a large clinical practice with an emphasis on child and adolescent problems and parenting issues. Currently however, she spends most of her time crisscrossing the country speaking to parents, educators, students, and business leaders. Dr. Levine has taught Child Development classes to graduate students at the University of California Medical Center/ San Francisco. For many years, Dr. Levine has been a consultant to various schools, from preschool through High School, public as well as private, throughout the country. She has been featured on television programs from the Early Show to the Lehrer report, on NPR stations such as Diane Rheems in Washington and positively reviewed in publications from Scientific American to the Washington Post. She is sought out both nationally and internationally as an expert and keynote speaker. 

Dr. Levine and her husband of 35 years, Lee Schwartz, MD are the incredibly proud (and slightly relieved) parents of three newly minted and thriving sons.

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The Effortful Educator

Applying Cognitive Psychology to the Classroom

Homework Isn’t A Bad Word

Like assessment , homework has taken a lot of flack lately; and unduly so, I believe.  There is a real push, and even a hashtag (#ditchHW), that aims to end the practice of teacher-prescribed homework for students.  In my best estimation, those who oppose homework cite either a lack of evidence for its effect or a more pressing need for quality family time in our current climate.  In all honesty, I totally sympathize with the argument for more family time .  I love teaching.  I love my students.  I love reading about the intricacies in teaching methods/research and thinking about how I can improve my classroom.  However, I value my family more.   I genuinely look forward to arriving home to see my wife and three children.  I love the conversations we have over dinner.  I love waking up to them jumping in our bed in the morning.  I get it.  Family time is incredibly important for the development of my children, my marriage, and my happiness.  

Unfortunately, I believe the idea that homework, especially at the high school level, is bad or useless is a dangerous notion.  Today, in a conversation with Ken Sheck ( @KenSheck ) on twitter, he mentioned three reasons for homework:

• Practicing procedures students have been thoroughly taught…think math homework to practice usage of formulas, etc.
• Retrieval practice of factual information students have been explicitly taught.
• Reading for background knowledge or extension of concepts/principles students have been explicitly taught.

*Ken pointed out, especially with middle school students, reading ability may hinder the effectiveness of this application of homework.  

I agree with Ken and see a time and place for all of the above mentioned types of homework.  Also, notice that in all three examples, homework is used as a review of material or procedures.  I do not generally believe homework should be used to introduce new material to students.  Especially with my subject matter (psychology), students can become confused by new information and perhaps create incorrect beliefs about the material which then becomes difficult to unlearn.  

I would like to propose another reason to not ditch homework.  I believe there are some real habit forming benefits of homework.  As I’ve stated before on my blog , I teach mostly 11th and 12th grade students who, statistically speaking, will attend a college or university in the next few years.  Depending on the graduating class, somewhere between 80% and 90% of students attend university.  Students need to know how to study independently…and I don’t mean independently in the classroom.  I mean independently where there’s no pressure from other students studying or not studying right beside them.  They need to understand how it feels to have other, probably more fun, ways to spend their time but instead choose to take a look back at their notes or wrestle with review questions/prompts.  It is naive to believe, if we expel homework from our schools, that students will somehow just figure out how to properly manage their time or know how to study/practice in college.

Like walking students through the metacognitive values of retrieval practice , they need to be taught how to study properly and effectively.  Most students who enter my room believe highlighting and rereading are effective for memory retention.  When they implore these methods in their studies and see no results, students usually give up on studying and homework. These ‘strategies’ are the only examples they see modeled by other students and, unfortunately, most teachers don’t have time to work through their curriculum and also instruct students on how to study/practice effectively.   

So, practically, what do I believe homework should look like?

As stated above, in my estimation, homework should only be a means to practice procedures already learned or to retrieve information from past class meetings.  There is certainly a lot of evidence for this spaced practice (Thank you, @AceThatTest ).  In its simplest form, spaced practice is the opposite of cramming for an assessment.  Think about studying for an assessment at home for four nights in 15 minute increments over just studying for 1 hour the night before the test.  Evidence shows that the over-time, multiple retrieval of information assists with retention of memories much better than the one time cram session.  

*photo courtesy of  https://www.marketing91.com/forgetting-curve/

Knowing this bit of evidence with respect to spacing learning, I ask my students to take 10-20 minutes per night to review the information from that day or if there are particularly tricky information from lessons past, I may ask them to have a look at that material.  ‘Looking back’ is better than nothing, but an easy way to amp up the benefits of spaced practice is to have the students interact with the information.  More focused cognitive effort used while studying or practicing equals a greater level of retention.  Attempting to answer questions or formulate a short essay requires much more cognitive effort than simply rereading or highlighting notes.  

A very practical example of homework from my class includes ‘pre-loading’ the information for retrieval at home.  Here are the simple steps:

• After a class, elicit a quick discussion with or among students to extrapolate the important terms and/or concepts from the lesson.
• Have students write down these terms at the top of a piece of paper.
• When home, students should take out the piece of paper and write as much as they can about the terms; including a definition, but also how terms relate, how a concept operates or affects the environment, or even how these terms relate to past class material.

*This should be done with no outside assistance.  No book.  No notes.  No peers.  Just students using their brain to dump as much information as possible onto their paper.

That’s it.  This can easily be completed in 10-20 minutes.  Have them bring the paper in the next day to class for a discussion and review of the material.  There are a number of avenues that can be taken to revisit the material here…maybe a discussion among fellow classmates to complete any forgotten vocabulary or perhaps provide particular prompts to assist students with priming their memories of the material.  Point out, though, that although all information will be finished by the end of the activity, students only remember the material they completed without outside assistance from notes, textbook, and peers.  I believe this very important statement is often never mentioned and students need this prompting to assist with assessment of their learning .  

Yes, this homework helps with retention of material, which is of utmost important in school.  It also helps students cultivate a healthy habit of what homework should be.  For my students, particularly, I then ask them how easy an activity like this could be translated to their college classes.  Most easily understand how it is easily adaptable.  Unless we set up these opportunities for students to use proper learning strategies and practice homework, I believe we are doing a disservice and leaving them ill-equipped for their collegiate future.  Homework is an important cog in the wheel of success at the university level.  Ditching it would be a big mistake.

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12 thoughts on “ homework isn’t a bad word ”.

First, I want to really second everything you said about family time. That’s an under-discussed part of this debate, I think. Kudos to you for raising it.

At different points of my career I’ve had different attitudes to homework. When I started out, I was fairly against HW, mostly because I thought it was a waste of time. This was mostly because my students didn’t take HW seriously (or, at least, this was what I saw and my colleagues told me). It was a widespread problem in the school, partly an artifact of our VERY long school day (from 8 to 6) but also because of a sort of school-wide sloppiness. If kids weren’t going to take the HW seriously, then how much effort should I really put in to it? Better to just ditch it and give kids their practice opportunities in class, which is what I tried to do.

When I switched schools, I took this attitude with me. After fielding several phone calls and complaints from students about how little homework I was assigning, my department chair asked me, in as kind a way as humanly possible: what the hell are you doing? And then I realized that, with this very different population and very different school, homework mostly got done, and so was valuable as practice.

I suspect the value of homework really differs widely according to school, population, age, etc. At least, that’s what my experience tells me.

As far as your arguments, I remain unconvinced. You point out that there can be spaced practice benefits from homework. True, but that’s just because homework is practice. Homework is always going to have some value for learning when it’s compared to no homework, since no homework is e.g. playing video games, reading for fun, spending time with family, having a job, doing stupid teen stuff, etc. It’s also true that e.g. 7 hours of homework is better for learning than 1 hour (if it really gets done). That can’t be an argument in favor of HW, though. More practice is always going to help kids learn.

As far as for helping kids learn what it’s like to study when there are other choices, to feel the sacrifice of studying…I’m not sure. Are we talking about a (domain general) skill here, that of “studying independently”? Can it really be taught? How do we know? I’m not so sure that it can be.

If we’re talking about HW as an opportunity to learn some domain-specific study skills — how to study vocab, how to rehearse info from a textbook effectively, how to prepare for a science quiz — that makes more sense to me. But I don’t see this as an argument for assigning HW, but as an argument for teaching these domain-specific study skills.

And if the argument is that kids will need to learn this in college, well, why not just learn it in college? (Many will also need to learn to balance studying with a job in college — should we assign every student a job in high school?)

In the end, though, I don’t feel as if I have a whole lot to say about HW. I like the idea that a school should decide together with parents how much HW their kids should have. In a lot of schools, HW will be a waste of time for the teachers and kids. In other schools, it will certainly provide good practice opportunities. I’m OK with leaving this up for local debate.

I think homework – what it consists of, how much time it takes, and who should and should not be doing it – is very personal. There are many things I could respond to, but the one I think you should know is that the hashtag you’re referring to – #DitchHW – is from a recent book written by Matt Miller and Alice Keeler. As with Matt’s other book – DITCH THAT TEXTBOOK, he isn’t saying to toss it in the garbage. They’re providing the history behind homework, reasons why much homework teachers assign doesn’t work, and alternatives. Please check it out before you ditch that hashtag. There’s been a lot of good conversation about homework – at various levels.. Let’s keep it going!

Thank you for your comment. I have had a bit of conversation, via twitter, with Mr. Miller on this matter. I have also participated in several edchats with the #ditchHW hashtag. Thanks.

In each of the conversations that I’ve participated in regarding homework like this one, “homework” is limited to a review or extension of taught material. What about independent reading or reading an assigned novel? Is that “homework”? The temptation for online support is real, but reading every page of a long work in class does not support the independent discipline required by colleges either. Most teachers try to strike a balance between the two, but all who teach novels or extended nonfiction works need to have the students encounter the ideas in the text before the class begins. Otherwise, the lesson becomes summary instead of in-depth analysis. If reading is not “homework,” then I believe that we should be having a discussion that handles those ideas separate from the “recall and extension” type of homework discussed in the novel.

Totally agree (as do we all on this page, I think), that TYPE of homework matters a lot!

On the specific topic of independent reading: if you’re not giving time in school, it’s not happening at home, no matter whether you assign it or not. Students need regular library access (classroom, school, and/or city), and time to start/continue books to keep their momentum up.

With assigned novels, I think most HS English teachers also fool themselves about the percentage of kids doing all of the reading. I don’t think you have to give time to read the whole thing in class, but starting it either aloud or silently (while you can conference/check in with students who need it) will get a much higher percentage of kids both completing the homework, get you talking to your quiet kids more, AND give you a very clear sense of how much time they’re going to take to complete the assignment.

I’ve been listening to “The Homework Myth” by Kohn while I drive, and I think I’m landing about where this blog post is for higher grades: be VERY mindful of what’s getting assigned, set students up for success in completing it (so, what I wrote about reading above would be setting kids up for success), and keep the time minimal.

Note: this thinking is for MS and HS. I’m pretty on board with the idea of ONLY independent reading/reading with parents as assigned as homework in lower grades.

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I have also wondered about how homework might help parents, those who never learnt the maths etc or have forgotten. Knowing and understanding what their children are learning, parents are then prepared when the children need support for learning. If we never send anything home, how will the parents know?

I want you to think back to your own homework experience; did it foster a positive relationship between you and your parents around schoolwork? I know that was not true in my house, particularly in high school, and I listen to a lot of parenting podcasts, and homework seems to create a TON of tension for families if their discussions are to be believed (and I think they are).

If that’s your goal in assigning homework, then there are much better, more direct ways to communicate with parents; why not share a link to a Kahn Academy (or similar) video for each new unit if you want to help educate parents? And if the goal is parent learning, why are we grading the students on it?

I agree with this blog post in that homework, particularly in higher grades, isn’t ALL bad, but should be chosen mindfully and set students up for success. Part of that mindfulness has to be going through the thought process of: Why am I assigning this? Can all students complete this without undue burden on them and their families? Could the goals of the assignment be accomplished in another, better way?

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Students Are Turning to TikTok for Homework Help. Is That a Bad Thing?

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Students are increasingly turning to social media platforms when they need to research topics for school.

One of those platforms is TikTok, a video-sharing platform popular with K-12 students of various ages. Kids ages 4 to 18 spend an average of 91 minutes per day watching TikTok videos, according to data from parental control software maker Qustodio .

In fact, a general survey of TikTok users in the United States found that 1 in 4 use the platform for educational purposes, according to a new survey from online learning platform Study.com. And 69 percent of those who use TikTok for educational purposes said it has helped them complete their homework.

The Study.com analysis also examined what academic subjects had the most views on TikTok. English was first, followed by history, science, and math. Survey respondents who reported using TikTok for educational purposes said they used it most frequently for English classes.

Teachers who spoke with Education Week said they weren’t surprised that so many people use the platform for educational purposes.

“It’s the app where the majority of students are,” said Chris Dier, a high school history teacher in New Orleans and the 2020 Louisiana Teacher of the Year. “So it does make sense that a lot of them are getting their information from TikTok.”

While TikTok could be used to better engage students in lessons, it’s also been a big distraction. A string of viral challenges on the platform have caused headaches for educators. And like with other social media platforms, TikTok could be a forum for bullying and misinformation, along with data privacy concerns. The platform is owned by Beijing, China-based tech company ByteDance.

Plus, many experts remain critical of using social media platforms—such as Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter—for educational purposes. They say the platforms emphasize quick-hit learning, rather than deep discovery and analysis.

“It’s also important to distinguish the learning that might come from a TikTok video to that of a book or a longer article or even long-form video,” said Christine Elgersma, senior editor of learning apps for Common Sense Media, in an email. “We like short, and sometimes that works when it comes to homework: Kids might just want to know if they need a comma or how to cite a source.”

“But when it comes to critical thinking, forming opinions and values, or understanding key moments in history, surface learning just doesn’t do the subjects justice,” she added. “It may be able to provide one piece of a greater puzzle, but it isn’t suited to deeper thinking.”

Students bring information to class from TikTok

Still, some teachers say they use TikTok to meet students where they are, and then engage them in deeper learning through other approaches.

During the pandemic, when Dier was teaching remotely, he was making lengthy content videos for students. That’s when his students told him to try out TikTok.

“At first, I thought ‘I definitely don’t want to join whatever this app is. It’s for kids.’” Dier said. “But as I started teaching, I noticed that students were bringing in information from TikTok. I would ask them, ‘Where did you learn this information?’ They would say, ‘Oh, I heard about it on TikTok.’”

Eventually, Dier created an account and started sharing quick history lessons. “As teachers, we’re supposed to meet students where they are, to engage and make our content come alive. What better way to do that than to utilize the app [where] students are already watching content?” he said. (Dier’s TikTok account now has more than 146,000 followers.)

Claudine James, a middle school English/language arts teacher in Arkansas, also started a TikTok account after she realized her students weren’t watching the grammar and vocabulary video lessons she posted on YouTube.

During one stretch in the fall semester of 2020, she had more than 25 students absent due to COVID quarantine protocols, but her YouTube video lesson only had seven views.

When the students came back to class, James asked them why they didn’t watch the YouTube videos. Her students said they don’t watch videos on YouTube because they don’t spend time there.

“Someone said, ‘You should put them on TikTok. [Students will] be on there and they’ll just happen to see [the videos],’” James said.

Two years later, James said her TikTok videos on grammar, spelling, and other English lessons have been helpful to her current and past students. “I’ll have a past student send me a message like, ‘If you haven’t already, do a lesson on this, because I want you to explain it to me.’” (James now has 4.5 million followers on TikTok.)

For better or worse, TikTok caters to kids’ shorter attention spans

When asked why they use TikTok for educational purposes, 60 percent of survey respondents said the app is easy to access, 57 percent said it’s easy to understand, 51 percent said there’s a lot of content, and 47 percent said it’s free, according to the Study.com survey.

TikTok “presented a new way to deliver information that corresponded with students’ attention spans,” Dier said. “Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. And now there’s an app that allows you to create content that caters to the attention span of younger generations.”

TikTok could also be used to share information that’s often left out of textbooks or the curriculum that students might have never heard of otherwise, Dier said. For instance, Dier put together an educational TikTok video after he uncovered historical records about a reconstruction-era massacre orchestrated by white residents against Black people in a Louisiana community in 1868, fueled by whites’ fears that Blacks had gained the right to vote.

But because anyone can post a TikTok video, misinformation can be a problem. The majority of TikTok users judged the trustworthiness of the content by its number of likes (55 percent) and views (53 percent), as well as the number of followers the creator had (51 percent), according to the Study.com survey. Less than half, 44 percent, said they fact-checked a video before deeming it credible.

“[Misinformation] is an issue because I have heard students repeat things that they’ve heard from TikTok that are definitely not true,” Dier said. But when he corrects them, he said the students are “really receptive.”

“As history teachers, we teach students how to analyze the source, how to contextualize information, how to corroborate information with other sources. So in many ways, this push to TikTok also highlights the importance of teaching these types of skills in the classroom that can transcend just what we learned in class,” he added.

Elgersma echoed those sentiments.

“Likes and follows doesn’t mean a creator truly knows what they’re talking about, so it’s always best to fact-check and consult multiple sources,” she said.

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