Student Name

2009

Research on students\u27 voices and perspectives regarding homework is absent from the literature. This qualitative case study explored the perspectives of 5th and 6th grade students and ten teachers\u27 perceptions regarding homework completion. The literature review revealed 3 trends in homework, including support homework, support against homework, and homework reform. However, most of this research considers the adults\u27 perspective. The researcher administered 46 questionnaires and conducted 12 in depth interviews using a stratified purposive sample and extreme case sampling. The questionnaires and interviews educed the participants\u27 perceptions and practices regarding homework. The students represented 4 distinct groups: English language learners, general education, gifted and talented, and special education. The teachers instruct 5th and 6th grade. The researcher analyzed the data using critical pedagogy framework, constant comparison method and a transcript based analys...

2000

Homework issues are complex and often qualitative, but we ignore at our students' peril the ways homework can support learning.

…, 2010

The popular press has reported the following about students' homework practices: (a) students spend too much time doing homework, (b) parents are opposed to and frustrated with homework practices, (c) parents are uncertain whether and how to help with homework, and (d) there is minimal communication between teachers and parents about homework. To determine whether these assertions are accurate, this study reviewed existing research and surveyed hundreds of parents of middle school children about homework practices using the Parental Attitudes About Homework questionnaire. Overall, present findings are more positive than those stemming from the popular press and even previous research. It was found that although students spend 60-90 minutes per day on homework, parents generally perceived homework amounts as appropriate, reported that homework does not interfere with other activities, and felt thankful that homework was assigned. Most parents were also involved with their children's homework and felt well qualified to help. In line with the popular press, however, parents reported minimal communication about homework between home and school.

The Reading Teacher, 2011

2007

Homework has been a perennial topic of debate in education, and attitudes toward it have been cyclical (Gill & Schlossman, 2000). Throughout the first few decades of the 20th century, educators commonly believed that homework helped create disciplined minds. By 1940, growing concern that homework interfered with other home activities sparked a reaction against it. This trend was reversed in

American Journal of Education, 2000

Over the course of the twentieth century, sparks flew regularly whenever professionals, politicians, and parents addressed the topic of homework in the schools. Passions were many, and extreme positions were customary. At different points in time, radically different viewpoints prevailed. In the discourse about homework, the tendency was to portray it as either all good or all bad-savior or destroyer of schools, children, and families. In the past two decades, homework has been lauded as inherently good by educators and politicians from all points on the ideological spectrum. After A Nation at Risk (1983) and What Works? (1986) identified insufficient homework as a major source of our educational woes, schools began to vie with one other to require more and more homework at earlier and earlier ages. School district policies requiring homework in the early grades, sometimes even beginning in kindergarten, have now become commonplace for the first time in our history.' In contrast, between 1900 and 1940, the nation's leading educational scholars waged a crusade to abolish homework (Gill and Schlossman 1996). They decried homework as harmful to children, unfair to parents, intrusive to families, and ineffective in improving academic achievement. In numerous localities, homework was abolished from many or all grades of the public schools. The high tide of antihomework sentiment among scholars was captured in the pioneer Encyclopedia of Educational Research (1941), in which the distinguished psychologist, Henry Otto, concluded that "the benefits of assigned homework are too small to counterbalance the disadvantages." 2 Opposition to homework was de rigueur among "progressive" educators, who exercised a near monopoly

2007

Homework has been a perennial topic of debate in education, and attitudes toward it have been cyclical (Gill & Schlossman, 2000). Throughout the first few decades of the 20th century, educators commonly believed that homework helped create disciplined minds. By 1940, growing concern that homework interfered with other home activities sparked a reaction against it. This trend was reversed in the late 1950s when the Soviets' launch of Sputnik led to concern that U.S. education lacked rigor; schools viewed more rigorous homework as a partial solution to the problem. By 1980, the trend had reversed again, with some learning theorists claiming that homework could be detrimental to students' mental health. Since then, impassioned arguments for and against homework have continued to proliferate.

2011

Most of the research conducted about homework is based on adults' perspectives. This case study explored the perspectives of 5th and 6th grade students in comparison with 10 teachers' perceptions about homework. The author administered questionnaires and conducted in depth interviews using a stratified purposive sample and extreme case sampling; which educed the participants' perceptions and practices about homework. The students' represented 4 distinct groups: English Language Learners, general education, gifted and talented and special education. The teachers' instruct 5th and 6th grade. The results of the study indicate that students do not complete their homework because they find it too hard, boring, or they do not understand it. Interestingly, students think that worksheets are hard and boring. However, they are not against homework! This book should benefit teachers, parents, school administrators and staff developers. It would also help develop homework p...

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 2003

IN the 1980s and 1990s, few issues related to schooling were as universally endorsed as homework. Educators, parents, and policymakers of all political and pedagogical stripes insisted that homework is good and more is better-a view that was promoted most visibly in A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) and What Works (U.S. Department of Education, 1986). 1 Indeed, never in the history of American education was there a stronger professional and public consensus in favor of homework (see Gill & Schlossman, 1996; Gill & Schlossman, 2000). Homework has been touted for academic and character-building purposes, and for promoting America's international competitiveness (see,