HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Homework is a set of tasks assigned to
student A student is a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution. In the United Kingdom and most commonwealth countries, a "student" attends a secondary school or higher (e.g., college or university); those in primary or elementar ...
s by their
teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...
s to be completed outside the
classroom A classroom or schoolroom is a learning space in which both children and adults learn. Classrooms are found in educational institutions of all kinds, ranging from preschools to universities, and may also be found in other places where education ...
. Common homework assignments may include required
reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of Letter (alphabet), letters, symbols, etc., especially by Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process invo ...
, a writing or
typing Typing is the process of writing or inputting text by pressing keys on a typewriter, computer keyboard, mobile phone or calculator. It can be distinguished from other means of text input, such as handwriting and speech recognition. Text can b ...
project, mathematical exercises to be completed, information to be reviewed before a
test Test(s), testing, or TEST may refer to: * Test (assessment), an educational assessment intended to measure the respondents' knowledge or other abilities Arts and entertainment * ''Test'' (2013 film), an American film * ''Test'' (2014 film), ...
, or other skills to be practiced. The effects of homework are debated. Generally speaking, homework does not improve academic performance among young children. Homework may improve academic skills among older students, especially lower-achieving students. However, homework also creates stress for students and parents, and reduces the amount of time that students can spend in other activities.


Purposes

The basic objectives of assigning homework to students often align with
school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compuls ...
ing in general. However, teachers have many purposes for assigning homework, including: * reinforcing skills taught in class * extending skills to new situations * preparing for future class lessons * engaging students in active learning * developing
time management Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. It involves of various demands upon a person relating to Employme ...
and study skills * promoting parent-student communications * encouraging collaboration between students * fulfilling school/
district A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions o ...
policies * demonstrating a rigorous school program to others * punishing a student or a class


Effects


Academic performance

Homework research dates back to the early 1900s. However, no consensus exists on the general effectiveness on homework. Results of homework studies vary based on multiple factors, such as the age group of those studied and the measure of academic performance. Younger students who spend more time on homework generally have slightly worse, or the same academic performance, as those who spend less time on homework. Homework has not been shown to improve academic achievements for
grade school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary e ...
students. Proponents claim that assigning homework to young children helps them learn good study habits. Essentially, they advocate for doing potentially unnecessary homework from approximately age five to ten as a way of practicing for doing necessary homework from age 10 to 15. No research has ever been conducted to determine whether this claim has any merit. Among teenagers, students who spend more time on homework generally have higher
grades Grade most commonly refers to: * Grade (education), a measurement of a student's performance * Grade, the number of the year a student has reached in a given educational stage * Grade (slope), the steepness of a slope Grade or grading may also r ...
, and higher test scores than students who spend less time on homework. Large amounts of homework cause students' academic performance to worsen, even among older students. Students who are assigned homework in middle and high school score somewhat better on standardized tests, but the students who have more than 90 minutes of homework a day in middle school or more than two hours in high school score worse. Low-achieving students receive more benefit from doing homework than high-achieving students. However, school teachers commonly assign less homework to the students who need it most, and more homework to the students who are performing well. In past centuries, homework was a cause of academic failure: when school attendance was optional, students would drop out of school entirely if they were unable to keep up with the homework assigned.


Non-academic

The amount of homework given does not necessarily affect students' attitudes towards homework and various other aspects of school. found a near-zero correlation between the amount of homework and parents' reports on how well their elementary school students behaved. studied 809 adolescents in American high schools, and found that, using the Normative Deviance Scale as a model for deviance, the correlation was for
white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...
students, and for
African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
students. For all three of the correlations, higher values represent a higher correlation between time spent on homework and poor conduct. says that homework develops students' motivation and study skills. In a single study, parents and teachers of middle school students believed that homework improved students' study skills and personal responsibility skills. Their students were more likely to have negative perceptions about homework and were less likely to ascribe the development of such skills to homework. found that students generally had negative emotions when completing homework and reduced engagement compared to other activities.


Health and daily life

Homework has been identified in numerous studies and articles as a dominant or significant source of stress and anxiety for students. Studies on the relation between homework and health are few compared to studies on academic performance. surveyed 1,983 students in Hong Kong, and found that homework led not only to added stress and anxiety, but also physical symptoms, such as headaches and stomachaches. Students in the survey who were ridiculed or punished by parents and peers had a higher incidence of depression symptoms, with 2.2% of students reporting that they "always" had suicidal thoughts, and anxiety was exacerbated by punishments and criticism of students by teachers for both problems with homework as well as forgetting to hand in homework. A 2007 study of American students by
MetLife MetLife, Inc. is the holding corporation for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MLIC), better known as MetLife, and its affiliates. MetLife is among the largest global providers of insurance, annuities, and employee benefit programs, wi ...
found that 89% of students felt stressed from homework, with 34% reporting that they "often" or "very often" felt stressed from homework. Stress was especially evident among high school students. Students that reported stress from homework were more likely to be deprived of sleep. Homework can cause tension and conflict in the home as well as at school, and can reduce students' family and leisure time. In the survey, failure to complete homework and low grades where homework was a contributing factor was correlated with greater conflict; some students have reported teachers and parents frequently criticizing their work. In the MetLife study, high school students reported spending more time completing homework than performing home tasks. argued that homework can create family conflict and reduce students' quality of life. The authors of , both high school English teachers, reported that their homework disrupted their students' extracurricular activities and responsibilities. However, found that parents were less likely to report homework as a distraction from their children's activities and responsibilities. recommended further empirical study relating to this aspect due to the difference between student and parent observations.


Time use

A
University of Michigan Institute for Social Research The University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) is one of the largest academic social research and survey organization in the world, established in 1949. ISR includes more than 250 scientists from many academic disciplines – in ...
nationally representative survey of American 15- to 17-year olds, conducted in 2003, found an average of 50 minutes of homework each weekday. A 2019
Pew Research Center The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan American think tank (referring to itself as a "fact tank") based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the w ...
review of
Bureau of Labor Statistics The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics and serves as a principal agency of t ...
' American Time Use Survey data reported that 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds Americans, spent on average an hour a day on homework during the school year. The change in this demographic's average daily time spent doing homework (during the school year) increased by about 16 minutes from 2003-2006 to 2014-2017. U.S. teenage girls spent more time doing homework than U.S. teenage boys. A 2019 nationally representative survey of 95,505 freshmen at U.S. colleges, conducted by the
UCLA Higher Education Research Institute The Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) serves as an interdisciplinary center for research, evaluation, information, policy studies, and research training in post-secondary education. HERI is housed in the UCLA Graduate School of Education ...
, asked respondents, "During your last year in high school, how much time did you spend during a typical week studying/doing homework?" 1.9% of respondents said none, 7.4% said less than one hour, 19.5% said 1-2 hours, 27.9% said 3-5 hours, 21.4% said 6-10 hours, 11.4% said 11-15 hours, 6.0% said 16-20 hours, 4.5% said over 20 hours. surveyed 4,317 students from ten "privileged, high-performing" high schools in the U.S., and found that students reported spending more than 3 hours on homework daily. 72% of the students reported stress from homework, and 82% reported physical symptoms. The students slept an average of 6 hours 48 minutes, lower than
recommendations A recommender system, or a recommendation system (sometimes replacing 'system' with a synonym such as platform or engine), is a subclass of information filtering system that provide suggestions for items that are most pertinent to a particular u ...
prescribed by various health agencies.


Benefits

Some educators argue that homework is beneficial to students, as it enhances learning, develops the skills taught in class, and lets educators verify that students comprehend their lessons.Grohnke, Kennedy, and Jake Merritt. "Do Kids Need Homework?" ''Scholastic: News/ Weekly Reader Edition 5/6'', vol. 85, no. 3, 2016, pp. 7. Proponents also argue that homework makes it more likely that students will develop and maintain proper study habits that they can use throughout their educational career.


History


United States

Historically, homework was frowned upon in American culture. With few students able to pursue
higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completi ...
, and with many children and teenagers needing to dedicate significant amounts of time to chores and
farm work A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...
, homework was disliked not only by parents, but also by some schools. The students' inability to keep up with the homework, which was largely memorizing an assigned text at home, contributed to students dropping out of school at a relatively early age. Attending school was not legally required, and if the student could not spend afternoons and evenings working on homework, then the student could quit school. Complaints from parents were common at all levels of society. In 1880, Francis Amasa Walker convinced the school board in Boston to prohibit teachers from assigning math homework under normal circumstances. In 1900, journalist Edward Bok railed against schools assigning homework to students until age 15. He encouraged parents to send notes to their children's teachers to demand the end of all homework assignments, and thousands of parents did so. Others looked at the new
child labor laws in the United States Child labor laws in the United States address issues related to the employment and welfare of working children in the United States. The most sweeping federal law that restricts the employment and abuse of child workers is the Fair Labor Standard ...
and noted that school time plus homework exceeded the number of hours that a child would be permitted to work for pay. The campaign resulted in the US Congress receiving testimony to the effect that experts thought children should never have any homework, and that teenagers should be limited to a maximum of two hours of homework per day. In 1901, the
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
legislature passed an act that effectively abolished homework for anyone under the age of 15. While homework was generally out of favor in the first half of the 20th century, some people supported homework reform, such as by making the assignments more relevant to the students' non-school lives, rather than prohibiting it. In the 1950s, with increasing pressure on the United States to stay ahead in the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, homework made a resurgence, and children were encouraged to keep up with their Russian counterparts. From that time on, social attitudes have oscillated approximately on a 15-year cycle: homework was encouraged in the 1950s to mid-1960s; it was rejected from the mid-1960s until 1980; it was encouraged again from 1980 and the publication of ''
A Nation at Risk ''A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform'' is the 1983 report of the United States National Commission on Excellence in Education. Its publication is considered a landmark event in modern American educational history. Among othe ...
'' until the mid-1990s, when the Cold War ended. At that time, American schools were overwhelmingly in favor of issuing some homework to students of all grade levels. Homework was less favored after the end of the Cold War.


United Kingdom

British students get more homework than many other countries in Europe. The weekly average for the subject is 5 hours. The main distinction for UK homework is the social gap, with middle-class teenagers getting a disproportionate amount of homework compared to Asia and Europe.


Spain

In 2012, a report by the
OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...
showed that Spanish children spend 6.4 hours a week on homework. This prompted the CEAPA, representing 12,000 Spanish parent associations, to call for a homework strike.


Criticism

Homework and its effects, justifications, motivations and alleged benefits have been the subject of sharp criticism among many education experts and researchers. According to a study by the
Dresden University of Technology TU Dresden (for german: Technische Universität Dresden, abbreviated as TUD and often wrongly translated as "Dresden University of Technology") is a public research university, the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, th ...
, homework—described in the study as "an educational ritual"—has little to no influence on academic performance. When assigning homework, each student is usually given the same exercises, regardless of how well the student is performing. This leaves some students under-challenged and others overwhelmed by their homework. For others, the degree of difficulty of homework may be appropriate, but students are unable to decide for themselves whether they need to deepen their knowledge in a particular subject or whether to use the time in other subjects with which they experience more difficulty, despite the fact that homework is often seen as a way of encouraging
self-regulation Self-regulation may refer to: *Emotional self-regulation *Self-control, in sociology/psychology *Self-regulated learning, in educational psychology *Self-regulation theory (SRT), a system of conscious personal management *Industry self-regulation, ...
. Homework is sometimes used to outsource school material not completed in class to the home, leaving children with homework that is not designed to be done on their own and parents feeling helpless and frustrated. As a consequence, students often have to use the internet or other resources for help, which provides disadvantages for students without internet access. Thus, such homework fails to promote
equality of opportunity Equal opportunity is a state of fairness in which individuals are treated similarly, unhampered by artificial barriers, prejudices, or preferences, except when particular distinctions can be explicitly justified. The intent is that the important ...
. Homework without professional feedback from the teacher has little effect on the learning success of students. Even if it is generally not wanted by homework distributors (unless homework is given as a punishment), completing homework may take up a large part of the student's free time. It is often the case that children try to finish their homework until late at night, which can lead to sleep disorders and unhealthy stress. Children may feel overwhelmed when they have too much homework, which can negatively affect children's natural
curiosity Curiosity (from Latin '' cūriōsitās'', from ''cūriōsus'' "careful, diligent, curious", akin to ''cura'' "care") is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in humans ...
and thirst for knowledge. A study by the UCL Institute of Education, which concerned the impact of homework in different countries, discovered that the pressure associated with homework causes arguments among family members. The study also showed that homework can lead to
anxiety Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
, depression, and
emotional exhaustion Emotional exhaustion is a chronic state of physical and emotional depletion that results from excessive job, personal demands, and/or continuous stress. It describes a feeling of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by one's work. It is ma ...
among children.


Notes and references


Citations


Works


Effectiveness of homework

* * * *


Homework and non-academic effects

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Other

* * *
Chapter 2
is free to read.


Further reading

*

Homework Helps Students Succeed in School, As Long as There Isn't Too Much'' * ''The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It'' b
Sarah Bennett

Nancy Kalish
(2006) Discusses in detail assessments of studies on homework and the authors' own research and assessment of the homework situation in the United States. Has specific recommendations and sample letters to be used in negotiating a reduced homework load for your child. * ''Closing the Book on Homework: Enhancing Public Education and Freeing Family Time'' b
John Buell
(2004) * ''The Battle Over Homework: Common Ground for Administrators, Teachers, and Parents'' b

(2007) * ''The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing'' by Alfie Kohn (2006) * ''The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning'' by Etta Kralovec an
John Buell
(2000)


External links



Claudia Wallis, ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'', August 29, 2006.
History of "The Dog Ate My Homework" as an excuse
''Slate''.
Bridging the Great Homework Divide: A Solutions Guide for Parents of Middle School Students
- from the National Education Association.
Homework tips for parents
- U.S. Department of Education.
BBC's (U.K.) parents' school guide


- U.S. Department of Education.
Homework Practices that Support Students with Disabilities
{{Authority control Education reform Learning methods School terminology Standards-based education Home