Homework Effectiveness, Parent Involvement, And ELL Students

Homework was designed so students would go home and practice what it is they learned in class and the concept would then be reinforced. However, many would agree that homework, no longer serves this purpose. For example, “we pay almost no attention to how to improve its design and content...Homework remains an orphan child of the educational excellence movement.” (Source B) Despite this article, arguing against a homework decrease, the author agrees that homework doesn’t have the same educational purpose as it was designed to. Teachers and parents don’t pay any attention as to how to improve homework in order to make it beneficial to the student and not just busy work. Also, students may chose to take tougher classes that require more homework, but it does not mean that homework is boosting their achievement. (Source C) Higher achieving

Gonida and Kai S. Cortina (2014) examine the beliefs and values of parents and how this affects their students achievement. There is little research that has been done that studies the motivation of homework completion, and there is even less research that has been done that studies parental involvement in homework. Gonida and Cortina (2014) claim that there are two types of behavioral stances children can take towards learning—mastery and performance. A learning orientation towards mastery is the preferred orientation that students need to develop in order to achieve academic success (Gonida and Cortina, 2014, p. 379). The study closely examined parent’s educational experience as well as their values towards learning. Gonida and Cortina (2014) analyzed their results and “indicated that both parent goals for the child’s achievement and parent beliefs about child academic efficacy do matter in what type of involvement they will adopt in the context of homework” (p. 389). In other words, the perceived support and beliefs of the parents are unconsciously passed on to the child, thus affecting their academic

As an active member of the school board we have been curious on how important a child’s homework from grade K-12 is to parents and the positive and negative outcomes on a student academically when parents actively involve themselves in their child’s homework. The school board fears that if parents are too involved child’s k-12 homework, it might have a more negative effect on students academically than a positive effect and cause tension between a parent and their child, causing the child to hold back on asking for help with their homework. The school has been trying to come up with ways to help more students achieve in school so parental involvement in children’s homework has been a highly discussed conversation with the K-12 school boards throughout several states in the recent years. Despite the concerns recent studies have shown that parent involvement in children’s homework can be very beneficial and help students succeed in school in many different ways and even help better prepare them for college as opposed to a parent not being involved. Parental involvement in children’s homework could be the missing key to success for children’s education.

Homework can be an important factor in helping students achieves and in helping them develop effective work habits. Other researchers state that homework helps students develop responsibility and life skills and the ability to manage tasks and that it provides experiential learning, increased motivation, opportunities to learn to cope with difficulties and distractions, and academic benefits (Corno and Xu 2004; Coutts 2004; Xu and Corno 1998). Responsibility and accountability are essential in everyone’s life. I believe that students need to have the responsibility of completing homework outside of class time.

Homework is often taken for granted as part of “sound education endeavour” (p131 textbook ), but does doing homework really help students learn and improve their academic achievements? Teachers, parents and students have been greatly concerned with the great debate surrounding the purpose, design and efficacy of homework (Collier, 2007 – See Costley).

Experts have conducted substantial research on homework, trying to determine its benefits on scores and long-term achievement. On one hand, advocates for homework, such as Robert Marzano and Debra Pickering, say that assigning appropriate homework raises test scores of average students by up to 23 percent compared to average students that were not assigned homework. Although this may be true, even they admit that inappropriate homework is of little to no benefit (Marzano and Pickering). But what is appropriate

While the primary reason for assigning homework is to aid and reinforce instruction, there is growing evidence that the practice of homework can have additional benefits including managing distraction, self-efficacy, and perceived responsibility for learning (Bembenutty, 2009). While these self-regulation tasks, such as time management, setting goals, effort and persistence in completing difficult tasks, and self-monitoring one's performance, are important to academic success, they are also vitally important life skills, especially for successful professional writers, athletes, artists, and scientists. (Ramdass and Zimmerman, 2011). Other benefits include long-term academic benefits such as better study skills, as well as nonacademic benefits such as greater self -direction and more independent problem-solving. In addition, parents tend to have a great appreciation of and involvement in

Many teens have goals for what they want to do later in life. Whether it may be getting the job they want, getting accepted to the college of their choice, earning scholarships, or even being able to provide for a family later in life, all of these things stem from what they are doing right now in high school. Recently in American public schools specifically, there has been a lot of push-back on homework, saying that homework is not needed. Data produced in a study by The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), shows that at age 17, twenty-seven percent of children were assigned less than an hour of homework in 2008, which decreased to twenty-six percent in 2012. In 2008, twelve percent of children were assigned homework to complete, but did not do it, which decreased to eleven percent of students in 2012. The amount of homework being assigned is decreasing, but the amount of children doing this homework is decreasing with it. This trend, however, should not be occurring if those same children want to not only reach their goals, but exceed them. Homework is a necessary part of school and should be utilized by teachers and worked on by kids.

Can you agree that lately “homework” is being largely misguided? Can you agree that “homework” is being abused without producing its primary intended results? I highly urge you on behalf of all students operating through this system; change is needed. The current use of homework may be contributing to the decline in the motivation of students; therefore, interfering with their academic potential. Evidently, there has been an abundance of research which shows how homework is detrimental to a teen’s self-confidence, social skills, overall health, and most importantly their attitude towards school.

In recent years there has been a growing “No Homework” movement in North America. Educators, parents and guardians believe that the school system is overloading students as young as four years old with an excessive amount of homework. However, homework has been an essential part of a student's academic life. In a study that was conducted by Harvey Foley he examined if the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. The research results from Harvey Foley’s study reveals how homework is a beneficial resource to students. There are a number of ways in which students have benefitted from homework like developing good personal habits such as time management, to teaching students to use their resources. Ultimately, homework is an effective resource for both the students, educators and parents.

When the twentieth century began, we viewed the mind as a muscle that could be strengthened through mental exercise. Since this exercise was done at home, homework was viewed favorably. During the 1940s, the emphasis in education shifted from drills to problem solving. Currently, homework is required by all that leads to academic success. Required. That word seems to scare many and stress all. There is nothing worse than watching a child struggle to accomplish a task that is required for completion. Stress will overcome them, and the depression overwhelms their body, causing them to stop trying and experience anxiety. It is difficult to help students who have this problem. They feel as though giving up is all they can do, and they can accept the poor grade. Furthermore, there is a limit on everything; however, homework is breaking through those limits. Homework for elementary school students is higher than ever. Teachers should be teaching children to have a balance of play and school, but it is becoming harder to balance this because of all of this schoolwork. Even for the people participating in sports, it is hard to have that balance of school, work, sports, and family time. Learning what benefits a student in school should be a priority; however, this is not being brought to teachers’ attention. Although teachers believe homework benefits students, it denies them from expanding their academic abilities as it impacts the amount of time spent participating in activities

For the longest time, homework was perceived as being beneficial to students. Harris Cooper, a psychology professor, found that when students did homework, their performance transcended (Reilly 2). He also researched how homework affects a student’s score, noting “that homework is also thought to improve study habits, attitudes toward school, self-discipline, inquisitiveness and independent problem-solving skills” (2-3). When students develop these skills early, they can utilize them for when they go to college or get a full-time job. A limited amount of homework is argues to be beneficial for children, however, they should not go beyond the amount that is

The effectiveness of homework has been put to test by many psychologists. Between the years of 1987 and 2007 studies led by Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and director of Duke's Program in Education, showed that homework had a positive impact on students’ academic achievements to an extent. The study showed that once homework became overloading it was no longer healthy or effective (4). Those who believe in the effectiveness of homework can argue that homework only becomes overloading if the

The previous studies have analyzed both student and teacher perspective; the article written by Fox (2016) from School Community Journal describes the way parental involvement can influence academic success. This study helps fill the gap in literature from previous studies that did not look into parent perspectives. In the study Fox mentions that homework can be viewed very differently depending on the age, ability, and socioeconomic status of the student. (2016). The study was conducted by interviewing six families in the same community. The researcher was curious about what occurs in the homes of these families during homework time. All parent participants in this study were mothers. The researcher found that in every case homework was

When deciding to write this essay, thoughts of my childhood emerged with good and bad emotions on homework. I decided to pursue this topic because of my personal experiences with homework from myself and with my daughter. Recently when having a conference with my daughter’s teacher, she mentioned that homework would no longer be a part of the school’s curriculum. I for one felt relieved at this notion due to my job and school work demand, but then wondered how I would know how my child was doing with her school work. During the parent teacher conference I was notified this change came about with the majority of the student body not doing well on their homework assignments and parents complaining about how homework alone was bring down their child’s grade. While hearing what the teacher was saying, I came to question of how can teachers help parents help students?