003: Is homework worth the work?

Podcasts

Aug 3

Written By Sarah Gilmore

Transcript

Homework.

Jump to…

Did you shudder when you read that? If so, you’re probably a parent of a child who hates it, a teacher who hates assigning it, or remember being a student who hated doing it. It’s one of those topics that really divides people: you tend to be for homework or against it and, to be honest, some of us (*cough* me *cough*) came into this with some pretty strong opinions already in place. My experience of it as a teacher was that it was a needless burden on mine and my students’ time and energy, and if social media is to be believed, everyone agreed with me: kids hate it, teachers hate it, parents really hate it. But actually not everybody hates it, many people believe that homework is not necessary and valuable to learning. So, what does the research tell us about homework?

The Research

When we started looking into this topic we expected to find two distinct sides to the argument, in line with what we see in the media and in classrooms. What we found, though, surprised us. Rather than being a black and white issue with two distinct sides, our interpretation of the research we read is that there is more consensus than we had realised. It’s not so much a question of whether homework does or doesn’t work, or whether it should or shouldn’t be done, but of what it works for, and how it should be done.

Prof. Harris Cooper, of Duke University has been one of the big names in homework research since the 1980’s. He’s so important to homework research that when people cite the current academic definition of homework, it’s his definition they’re using. Cooper is such a leading name in homework partly due to the two really big meta analyses he published about homework in 1989 and then 2006. A meta analysis is where a researcher takes a number of other studies that have been done (not necessarily by them), and then uses statistics to try and draw overarching conclusions about what those studies are saying. In Cooper’s case his 1989 meta analysis was of 120 studies into the effectiveness of homework, and his 2006 analysis covered the research between 1987 and 2003. That is a lot of information, and a lot of analysing, and the conclusions he drew from it were pretty definitive in showing that there is definitely a positive effect of homework on achievement. Kids who do homework do “better” than kids who don’t, when it comes to things we can measure, like tests of knowledge. Cooper’s work showed that the average student in a class in which appropriate homework was assigned would score 23 percentile points higher on tests like those than the average student in a class in which homework was not assigned.

Of course, the key words there are “appropriate” and “average”. Let’s start with “average”. What that means is that all students don’t experience the same effect from homework: some benefit more, some less, but on average it’s a 23% improvement. Also, it’s important to note that tests don’t and can’t measure every type of learning.

In terms of what “appropriate” homework means, Cooper said this in 1989: “homework is a cost-effective instructional device. However, it must serve different purposes at different grades. Our expectations for its effects, especially in the short term and in earlier grades, must be modest. It should be one of several approaches we use, along with soccer and the scouts, to show our children that learning takes place everywhere.”

A large body of research agrees with him and it really seems like there shouldn’t be much argument on whether homework works - it definitely works in improving some measurable student outcomes… but with some caveats in terms of how much time students spend, at what ages, how it is designed, and what its purpose is, which we will come to later.

So, why is there even any argument that homework is good?

Cooper pointed out in 1989 that the thinking about the benefits and drawbacks of homework is - like everything else in education - cyclical:

At the outset of 20th century, it was in (think here about what it was like to be educated in the era of industrialization and empires)
By the 1940’s, it was out, as a focus on problem solving over memorization became popular…
But then, in the 1950’s the Russians launched Sputnik and got everyone else worried about being left behind, so memorization (and thus homework) were back in!
In the1960’s it began to be seen as unnecessary pressure on students, and was back out but then…
by the time Cooper was writing about this, in the 1980’s sure enough it was in again.
(I think we need to be asking ourselves whether there is some sort of correlation between public opinion towards homework and perceived threats from Russia??)

Where are we now, do you think, in this cycle? Is homework in, or out?

Beyond the vagaries of shifting opinions, lots of factors, both home and school-baed, can and do influence homework’s efficacy. As Cooper says, “homework probably involves the complex interaction of more influences than any other instructional device [..]. Because homework goes home”

As we all know from working real life classrooms, there are a lot of factors at play in school that affect student outcomes, and Cooper tells us that the following are the ones with the biggest effect on homework’s efficacy:

subject matter
student’s grade level

type of assignment
length of assignment

purpose (e.g. consolidation, introducing new material, skills practice/integration, curriculum extension)
whether it’s Tailored for individual students or entire classes
Individual or collaborative
Teacher effort in creating homework
Teacher response to completed homework (nothing, grading, responding, commenting etc)

students other time commitments,
the home environment
the involvement of others

So…. just everything really.

And then when you add in the effects of home factors such as students’ other time commitments, the home environment, and caregivers’ involvement and attitude to homework etc. etc., that makes for a lot of variability in outcome.

To make things more tricky, the nature of educational research is that the findings are just pretty much never cut and dried. As Marzano and Pickering point out in “The case for and against homework”: “Cooper (2007) recommended on the basis of 60-plus years of homework research that teachers should not comment on or grade every homework assignment. But John Hattie, one of the biggest names in edu-research and one that most of us are familiar with, has been responsible for a lot of leading research on feedback that, contradictorily, has found that providing “feedback coupled with remediation” or feedback on “testlike events” in the form of explanations to students positively affects achievement.”

Finally, all researchers can’t help but bring their own worldview, opinions and priorities to the research they conduct. How researchers interpret and value the results they get, affect the conclusions they draw from it.

One of the loudest voices against homework makes exactly that point of Cooper’s research. Alfie Kohn, of Brown University, wrote the book “The Homework Myth: Why our kids get too much of a bad thing” in 2006, and he said then that:

"A careful reading of Cooper's own studies . . . reveals further examples of his determination to massage the numbers until they yield something—anything—on which to construct a defense of homework for younger children. (2006a, p. 84)

Kohn was then, and remains now, strongly against homework, arguing that it is a tradition based on tradition: we do it because we have always done it, not necessarily because it is worthwhile. He also argues that our attitude to homework is rooted in a faulty logic: some homework is good, therefore more is better (which Cooper’s research also shows is not the case).

He argues that homework, contrary to Cooper’s assertions, does not foster good study habits or positive attitudes to school and learning. Rather, he says, it:

extinguishes the flame of curiosity which connects to meaningful learning
burdens parents
stresses kids
causes conflict in families
leaves less time for other activities.

And that is the central point of Kohn’s argument: that the time kids spend outside school should be spent on activities that are of greater worth than homework could ever be, such as playing, sleeping, socialising, being outdoors, and being creative.

A shift is required in our “default” thinking, he suggests. Away from “There will be homework, so we had better come up with some”, to “There is no homework, unless there really has to be”.

The Conclusion

This is where, to us, these two seemingly opposing camps come together somewhat. Everyone agrees that too much homework is bad, and everyone agrees that bad, low-quality homework, will not help students. Yes, there is disagreement on whether homework is necessary, or even truly beneficial, because not everyone agrees on what is important for students, and therefore what constitutes a positive or improved outcome. If test scores are important to you as a measure of success or learning, then homework, done right, is worth doing. If what you value in education or childhood can’t be measured through tests, then it isn’t.

Most of us in the classroom, however, have little choice in whether we assign homework, but fortunately there is a lot of research providing strong evidence that, when used appropriately, homework benefits measurable student achievement. To make sure that the homework you’re assigning is appropriate, follow these 4 guidelines, drawn from Marzano & Pickering’s “The Case For and Against Homework”, and Cooper’s suggestions from 1989:

Design homework to maximize the chances that students will actually complete it (this seems like a no-brainer). For example, make sure that homework is at the appropriate level of difficulty: students should be able to “complete homework assignments independently with relatively high success rates, but they should still find the assignments challenging enough to be interesting”.
Involve parents in appropriate ways (for example, as a sounding board to help students summarise what they learned from the homework) and give clear guidelines about their expected role in homework. Parents shouldn’t be expected to act as teachers or to police students' homework completion.
Carefully monitor the amount of homework assigned so that it is appropriate to students' age levels and does not take too much time away from other home activities.
First up, the age of the student. The take home message is, the older the child, the greater the effect!
- For elementary/primary kids its only real benefit seems to be in developing good study habits and creating that home-school link. But with older children there start to be real gains in test scores as a result of homework.
  Next, the time students spend doing homework:
- 5-10 mins per subject for grade 4, increasing up to a MAXIMUM of 1.5-2 hours per night for 12th grade
- Over 2 hours per night becomes destructive
And, most importantly, assign purposeful homework. It needs to be instructionally driven, not a policy driven. So, it’s assigned because it will actually help student learning, not just because it’s something that is expected by the school or the parents.
Legitimate purposes for homework include
- introducing new content,
- practicing a skill or process that students can do independently but not fluently,
- elaborating on information that has been addressed in class to deepen students' knowledge, and providing opportunities for students to explore topics of their own interest.

What to do in your classroom

Let’s start with that final recommendation, as it is really the most important and a is starting point for everything that follows.

Assign purposeful homework

We suggest thinking about purpose in two ways:

Purposeful for the learning of individual students
Purposeful for the learning of the whole class

Class Purpose

Individual Purpose

Key words here are differentiation and individualization. Think about what each student needs in order to improve and assign homework to help them to do that.

Individualisation can be tough to manage, but structuring your homework around goal setting can be a good way to make it sustainable. This way students are responsible for knowing what they need to work on and, as they get older, they can be more involved in identifying what work from class could be brought home to help them work on achieving those goals.

Differentiation is something every teacher needs to be doing on a daily basis, so bring it into the homework you assign. Use the ability or interest groupings that you already have in place for class time as a structure for your homework tasks.

The time students have to work with you, ask you questions, unpick misunderstandings, and build skills is valuable and limited. You can maximize that time by using homework to introduce new content and ideas that you will then build on in class time - called the flipped classroom model. You can introduce any new idea this way, from social studies, to maths concepts and skills, grammar, writing genres and so on. Setting homework to watch or read something, then discuss it with a care-giver or friend helps students to tune in and be ready to take their learning further when they have you there to help them.

These resources below can be a helpful starting point for pre-made introductory resources:

Or go one step further and make your own, using flipped classroom tools like Edpuzzle, or one of the many similar tools listed here.

Click to open and download this resource as a PDF file

We hope you have enjoyed this episode, and please feel free to download our printable resource to use during school discussions.

We would also love to hear from you on how homework works, or doesn’t work, for you. How are these recommendations working out for you in the classroom?

Reach out to us in the comments, or on social media to get tips, advice and support from your colleagues around the world.

Sarah & Katierose