Teachers’ Views of Homework and Effects on Students
September 4th, 2009
What do teachers think is the primary purpose of homework? How much do they think parents should be involved? How do those attitudes effect student effort and achievement?
A group of researchers studying teachers in Switzerland (hey! a non-US study!) conducted a survey of 93 teachers of French as a second language. Their survey included scales measuring endorsement of homework as: a drill and practice activity, a motivation activity, a way to particularly help low-achieving students, and a way to establish a school-home link. In general, teachers more strongly endorsed the Drill and Practice scale and endorsed the school-home link the least. Interestingly, teachers did not appear to find the different objectives to be antagonistic, with many endorsing, for example, both drill and practice and motivation.
The survey also asked about parent participation in homework and found the majority of teachers showed support for student homework autonomy. Interestingly, there was a .29 correlation between drill and practice and endorsement of parent homework completion control (i.e., having parents monitor completion), while the correlations between parent homework completion control were negative (achievement gap r=-.12) or near-zero (school-home link and motivation) for other homework purposes. That seems a little counter-intuitive to me… wouldn’t drill and practice be most beneficial if controlled by the student?
To continue, the researchers also had students complete surveys about their effort and achievement tests, and conducted multilevel analyses to examine the effects of teacher homework attitudes on student effort. Go ahead, guess which purpose was associated with negative homework effort and achievement. Yup, drill and practice. Also, the more teachers saw homework as a school-home link and tried to involve parents, the lower their students’ homework effort and achievement.
This study definitely suggests a link between teacher homework attitudes and student outcomes. I struggle with the drill and practice debate. On one hand, I really see the need to increase students’ automaticity with basic skills… and drill and practice is a way to do that. On the other hand, does this practice actually decrease effort and achievement? We need a way to practice skills to the point of automaticity that is also motivating and interesting… educational technology anyone?
Trautwein, U., Niggli, A., Schnyder, I., & Lüdtke, O. (2009). Between-teacher differences in homework assignments and the development of students’ homework effort, homework emotions, and achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101 (1), 176-189 DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.101.1.176
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