Homework, or a homework assignment, is a set of tasks assigned to students by their
teachers to be completed outside the classroom. Common homework assignments may
include required reading, a writing or typing project, mathematical exercises to be
completed, information to be reviewed before a test, 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.
Contents
1 Purposes
2 Effects
2.1 Academic performance
2.2 Non-academic
2.3 Health and daily life
2.4 Time use
2.5 Benefits
3 History
3.1 United States
3.2 United Kingdom
3.3 Spain
4 Criticism
5 Notes and references
5.1 Citations
5.2 Works
5.2.1 Effectiveness of homework
5.2.2 Homework and non-academic effects
5.2.3 Other
6 Further reading
7 External links
Purposes
A child completing their homework
The basic objectives of assigning homework to students often align with schooling
in general. However, teachers have many purposes for assigning homework, including:
[1][2][3]
reinforcing skills taught in class
extending skills to new situations
preparing for future class lessons
engaging students in active learning
developing time management and study skills
promoting parent-student communications
encouraging collaboration between students
fulfilling school/district policies
demonstrating a rigorous school program to others
punishing a student or a class
Effects
Academic performance
Senegalese child doing homework
Homework research dates back to the early 1900s. However, no consensus exists on
the general effectiveness on homework.[4] Results of homework studies vary based on
multiple factors, such as the age group of those studied and the measure of
academic performance.[5]
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.[6]
Homework has not been shown to improve academic achievements for grade school
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.[7]
Among teenagers, students who spend more time on homework generally have higher
grades, and higher test scores than students who spend less time on homework.[6]
Large amounts of homework cause students' academic performance to worsen, even
among older students.[6] 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.[8]
Low-achieving students receive more benefit from doing homework than high-achieving
students.[9] However, school teachers commonly assign less homework to the students
who need it most, and more homework to the students who are performing well.[9] 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.[10]
Non-academic
The amount of homework given does not necessarily affect students' attitudes
towards homework and various other aspects of school.[5]
Epstein (1988) found a near-zero correlation between the amount of homework and
parents' reports on how well their elementary school students behaved. Vazsonyi &
Pickering (2003) studied 809 adolescents in American high schools, and found that,
using the Normative Deviance Scale as a model for deviance, the correlation was r =
0.28 for white students, and r = 0.24 for African-American students. For all three
of the correlations, higher values represent a higher correlation between time
spent on homework and poor conduct.[11]
Bempechat (2004) 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.[12]
Their students were more likely to have negative perceptions about homework and
were less likely to ascribe the development of such skills to homework.[12] Leone &
Richards (1989) found that students generally had negative emotions when completing
homework and reduced engagement compared to other activities.
Tanzanian student doing her homework in a school bus before getting home
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.[13] Studies on the relation
between homework and health are few compared to studies on academic performance.
[14][15]
Cheung & Leung-Ngai (1992) 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 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.[16]
Homework can cause tension and conflict in the home as well as at school, and can
reduce students' family and leisure time. In the Cheung & Leung-Ngai (1992) 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.[17] Kohn (2006) argued that homework can create family conflict and reduce
students' quality of life. The authors of Sallee & Rigler (2008), both high school
English teachers, reported that their homework disrupted their students'
extracurricular activities and responsibilities. However, Kiewra et al. (2009)
found that parents were less likely to report homework as a distraction from their
children's activities and responsibilities. Galloway, Conner & Pope (2013)
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 nationally representative
survey of American 15- to 17-year olds, conducted in 2003, found an average of 50
minutes of homework each weekday.[18]
A 2019 Pew Research Center review of Bureau of Labor Statistics' 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.[19]
A 2019 nationally representative survey of 95,505 freshmen at U.S. colleges,
conducted by the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, 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.[20]
Galloway, Conner & Pope (2013) 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 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.[21] 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.[21]
History
Japanese students doing homework, c. 1915
Hearing the Homework; Yrjö Ollila
United States
Historically, homework was frowned upon in American culture. With few students able
to pursue higher education, and with many children and teenagers needing to
dedicate significant amounts of time to chores and farm work, 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.[10]
Complaints from parents were common at all levels of society.[10] In 1880, Francis
Amasa Walker convinced the school board in Boston to prohibit teachers from
assigning math homework under normal circumstances.[10] In 1900, journalist Edward
Bok railed against schools assigning homework to students until age 15.[10] 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.[10] Others looked at the
new child labor laws in the United States and noted that school time plus homework
exceeded the number of hours that a child would be permitted to work for pay.[10]
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.[10] In 1901, the
California legislature passed an act that effectively abolished homework for anyone
under the age of 15.[10] 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.[10]
In the 1950s, with increasing pressure on the United States to stay ahead in the
Cold War, homework made a resurgence, and children were encouraged to keep up with
their Russian counterparts.[10] 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 until the mid-1990s, when the Cold War
ended.[10] At that time, American schools were overwhelmingly in favor of issuing
some homework to students of all grade levels.[22] Homework was less favored after
the end of the Cold War.[10]
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.[23]
Spain
In 2012, a report by the OECD 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.[24]
Criticism
Homework can take up a large portion of a student's free time and lead to stress,
despair, anger, and sleep disorders among children, as well as arguments among
families.
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, homework—described in
the study as "an educational ritual"—has little to no influence on academic
performance.[25]
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.[25][26] 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.[27]
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.[28] 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.[29][30] Homework without professional feedback
from the teacher has little effect on the learning success of students.[31]
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.[28] Children may feel overwhelmed when they have too much homework, which
can negatively affect children's natural curiosity and thirst for knowledge.[32]
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.[33] The study also showed that homework can
lead to anxiety and emotional exhaustion among children.[33]