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Does Homework Work? August 27, 2020 | Volume 15 | Issue 24 Table of Contents
Denise Pope
For students and educators participating in distance learning these days, it may be hard to distinguish homework assignments from any kind of school-assigned work that is done at home. In fact, between March and June 2020, "homework" varied considerably: Some schools assigned weekly packets of work to be completed at home in lieu of any online lessons, while other schools decided to eliminate "homework" altogether for students who participated in online lessons for several hours each day. Though we conducted the following research on homework prior to the pandemic, our findings offer implications for all kinds of assignments done at home—both during remote learning and once students return to classrooms.
In a student survey conducted over the last decade (from 2009 to 2020) by Challenge Success, a nonprofit that I cofounded based on my research at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education, we asked over 200,000 middle and high school students from high-performing schools, "Right now in your life, what, if anything, causes you the most stress?" One of the most common responses was one word: "Homework."
The cultural narrative about homework generally focuses on how much homework students are doing. It's treated as a Goldilocks problem: When is it too little? When is it too much? When is it just right? Having too much homework is certainly part of the problem when it comes to student stress levels. In fact, of the more than 50,000 high school students that Challenge Success surveyed from October 2018 to January 2020, 56 percent of students said they had too much homework. In that same sample, students reported doing an average of 2.7 hours of homework per weeknight and 3.0 hours on weekends.
However, the amount of homework alone doesn't tell the whole story. The type of homework students receive can also be a source of stress, our survey shows. For instance, when students perceive homework to be boring or repetitive, or if they feel it is too advanced or confusing, they are likely to be stressed, regardless of the amount of assigned work. In addition, students are often stressed about how well they do on their homework, particularly because homework completion and quality are usually factored into students' course grades.
Given the stress from homework that so many students report, we updated our previous homework white paper with an extensive review of the current literature on homework and its benefits. Based on this review, we found that the relationship between time spent on homework and academic achievement is nuanced and complex. In elementary school, there is very little, if any, evidence that time spent on homework in most subject areas has a positive effect on achievement. (A notable exception is reading for pleasure, which is associated with achievement. One 2013 study found that the influence of reading for pleasure is powerful for children's cognitive development, especially in terms of vocabulary (Sullivan & Brown, 2013.)
In middle and high school, there is a slight positive relationship between time spent on homework and grades and test scores in the recent research. However, those benefits are complicated by various factors and limitations, including whether the homework was interesting to the students, how much effort they put into it, and the level of difficulty and purpose of the assignment. Furthermore, several studies found diminishing returns on the value of homework once a student exceeds a certain amount of time spent on it (Cooper, 1989, 2007).
To make homework work for students and educators, we recommend taking a close look at the quality and purpose of the assignments by asking five questions. These questions apply whether learning is happening primarily at school, at home, or a hybrid of the two.
As educators consider the changes they need to make to their curriculum and pedagogy this fall, particularly how to make up for lost learning over the spring and summer and how to prioritize essential skills and understandings, the questions above can help streamline assignments, increase student engagement, and alleviate some of the stress that so many students are experiencing right now.
To further explore the research mentioned above and to see more tips for designing effective homework, you can download the Challenge Success homework white paper.
Cooper, H. (1989). Synthesis of research on homework. Educational Leadership, 47(3), 85–91.
Cooper, H. (2007). The battle over homework: Common ground for administrators, teachers, and parents. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Sullivan, A. & Brown, M. (2013). Social inequalities in cognitive scores at age 16: The role of reading. Centre for Longitudinal Studies. Retrieved from https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CLS-WP-2013-10.pdf
Denise Pope is a cofounder of Challenge Success and a senior lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, where she specializes in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods, and service learning. She is the author of "Doing School": How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students (Yale University Press, 2003) and coauthor with Maureen Brown and Sarah Miles of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids (John Wiley & Sons, 2015).
More on This Topic: Repurposing Homework in the New Normal
ASCD Express, Vol. 15, No. 24. Copyright 2020 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.
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