The Role of Homework in education

Represented by Jiayi LiuEduc 100W

Mar. 27

Content

• The real aim of doing homework in education • Misunderstandings and misusages of homework• How much should homework count in the whole

grade • What amount of homework is suitable for students

to promote learning• The impacts of homework from academic, social and

political perspectives• How to make a change to the current homework

pattern and what kind of changes should we make

Current Condition

Parents’ survey

• Around half (46.37%) of the parents surveyed think the amount of time their child spends doing homework is too much

• More than half (60.12%) of the students spend more than one hour per night to do homework reported by their parents

Students’ survey• On average, the vast majority

of students (over 90%) spend more than an hour a night completing homework

• When this information is viewed by grade level it becomes apparent that a large number of students in grades 6 12 are spending between ‐one to three hours a night on homework

Current Condition

Teachers’ survey• Most staff were in agreement that homework should be assigned at least two times per week with honors and AP teachers more frequently stating that it should be given every night.•A large portion of teachers in grades 6 to 8 seemed to feel that homework should not take more than twenty minutes •This response did not seem to align with the student and parent response for actual time it takes to complete assignments in middle school.

Homework Myth

• With so much homework assigned, students nowadays are stressed out and not benefit as much as their teachers expect them to do from the homework

• Many problems are also caused by the heavy work, i.e. cheating, procrastination, learning inefficiency, family relationship, etc.

• A large amount of homework are pointless, just means of busy work, i.e. transcriptions, math arithmetic questions

• Teachers tend to account homework for a part of the whole course grade with up to 40 percent, which forces students to do the homework

• Studies showed no strong correlation between homework average and standardized test scores

Question #1

• what do you think is the real aim of doing homework in education?

Question #2

• How do you feel about these misusages of homework and what do you think is the cause of this phenomenon?

Homework Guidelines• homework should advance a spirit of learning,

which is to say if you are going to have homework at all, it must be about promoting real learning

• make homework be more student-directed. Kids tend to learn better when they have a say in what they have done

• homework should promote a balanced schedule, which means that kids should also have a chance to chill out and enjoy their time of just being kids beyond homework

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZONH4B-qCAs

Questions #3

• Based on the guideline, how much homework do you think is too much?

• To be more specific, what percentage of whole course do you think should homework account for? Or in other words, what do you think the course grade should be made up of?

Homework and Family

• Studies showed that a lot of families are lack of communications and family time, which may be the main cause of the bad family relationship.

• The indirect cause may be too much workloads that our children have after school

• Homework becomes a barrier between parents and children, shorten the time they could spent together

Question #4

• Homework is considered as the intersection between schools and families, but there are voices said that family relationship are worse due to the appearance of homework.

• What do you think is the impact of homework on students and their families? Does homework really ruined students’ family lives?

Question #5

• French president had abolished the homework of schools and promised to shorten the school days. Finland students also do not have homework after school.

• What do you think about these education policies? Do you think the Canada government should also make some changes to the current homework pattern?

Question #6

• Like we mentioned above, if we need to change the current homework condition, what suggestions can you make?

Thank you for listening and participating!