curriculum, learning and teaching

The Homework Conundrum

Brett D McLeod tackles an emotive topic

Homework. We have all had it, and are familiar with the many emotions associated with it. From triumph to exasperation and even despair, this gamut of feelings is something we have all experienced as students, and those who are parents inevitably encounter them once more through their children. Perhaps this is why homework can be such an emotive topic.

Invariably, as a school year gets underway and expectations regarding homework unfold, teachers and administrators are fitfully confronted by parents irritated by the struggles and complaints of their children with homework. These complaints are often not without merit, and herein in lies the conundrum. How do schools strike the right balance between homework and the personal needs of their students?

Research has revealed that too much homework can be detrimental to young people. In such instances, opportunities for play, socialization, and family time suffer. Even student health can be negatively impacted when homework becomes a source of constant anxiety, stress, and chronic fatigue – as it can with some students (Ossala, 2015). This may be especially true in international schools with cultures that have very high expectations of their progeny in terms of academic success.

Still, the finding of most studies is that homework is statistically linked to improved academic achievement (Cooper, Robinson, and Patall, 2006). Additionally, supporters contend that homework encourages independent learning, promotes responsibility as well as good work and study habits, and ultimately supports students in developing the character traits necessary for success in life (Cooper, 2010). So, how exactly can these tensions be reconciled? Through transparency, discussion, data, and communication.

At the very outset of a new school year, schools should broach the subject of homework by way of a formal presentation. Yes, it means additional work on the part of

administrators, but the understanding discerned from such a discussion will help protect their time and that of their faculty from the likelihood of difficult homework-related meetings later. Honestly acknowledging the dissonance that exists about homework, and recognizing its risks as well as its benefits, can lead to the type of informed and balanced resolution school communities seek.

Naturally, some will remain intractable in their views. They will argue that homework is an unnecessary imposition on children who have already spent their day at school learning. Others will claim that the amounts of homework prescribed are insufficient. But having an opportunity to be heard, and being exposed to the views of others, can often lead to conciliation, especially when the clinical salve of credible, research-based data is applied to the discourse. Indeed, the role of such data in helping establish a position upon which a majority can agree cannot be overstated.

No less important for amelioration is the need to educate parents and students on how to manage homework responsibly and effectively. Assuming that students and parents know how to do this instinctively is erroneous. Knowing how to establish a regular study routine, how to plan and prioritize assignments, and how to assist children without interfering or completing assignments for them, are skills. They need to be learned and developed. The provision of information and workshops would help to realize these skills.

Guidance making clear how much time a child should spend on homework is similarly essential to communicate. Schools often advance this information in handbooks. Posting the same on their websites, and emailing periodic reminders, would likewise prove advantageous. Adding that teachers are approachable and ready to assist in the event a child is experiencing frustration or angst because of home assignments would also ease the possibility of consternation, as would emphasizing that too much homework and outside tuition risks student burnout, thus inadvertently sabotaging the academic outcomes expected and sought.

The objection to homework from opponents might also be lessened by calling it something more germane, like home- or focused- practice. The word ‘work’ for many suggests drudgery, tedium. Add the prefix ‘home’, and it is doubly charged and unappealing. Homework should be called exactly what it is and is meant to be: practice, and focused practice at that. It should reinforce material covered in class, extend it realistically in terms of each student’s capability, and focus on what is both meaningful to, and needed by, the learner. After all, what benefit is there in assigning a student work that he or she has already mastered unless it is as review for an impending examination?

Finally, if schools are to lay the conundrum of homework to rest, it would behoove them to repeatedly state its intended purpose: to fortify the understanding and learning of students. Seems obvious enough but, by going one step further and conscientiously linking this with people celebrated in the fields of human endeavor, homework might yet be rendered more embraceable to those currently opposed to it.

References

Cooper, H (2010) Homework’s Diminishing Returns. The New York Times. December 12. www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/12/12/ stress-and-the-high-school-student/homeworks-diminishing-returns Cooper, H, Robinson, J C and Patall, E A (2006) Does homework improve academic achievement? A synthesis of research, 1987-2003. Review of Educational Research, 76, 1, 1-62 Ossala, A (2015) High-Stress High School, The Atlantic, www.theatlantic. com/education/archive/2015/10/high-stress-high-school/409735/

Brett D. McLeod is Elementary Assistant Principal at The International School Yangon Email: esasstprincipal@isyedu.org

At the very outset of a new school year, schools should broach the subject of homework by way of a formal presentation. Yes, it means additional work on the part of administrators, but the understanding discerned from such a discussion will help protect their time and that of their faculty from the likelihood of difficult homework-related meetings later. Honestly acknowledging the dissonance that exists about homework, and recognizing its risks as well as its benefits, can lead to the type of informed and balanced resolution school communities seek.