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Important new study of homework

7/5/2016

 
There's plenty of research on homework and the very brief version of the findings is probably well known to readers of this blog: homework has a modest effect on the academic achievement of older students, and no effect on younger students (Cooper et al, 2006).

In a way, this outcome seems odd. Practice is such an important part of certain types of skill, and much of homework is assigned for the purpose of practice. Why doesn't it help, or help more?

One explanation is that the homework assigned is not of very good quality, which could mean a lot of different things and absent more specificity sounds like a homework excuse. Another, better explanation is that practice doesn't do much unless there is rapid feedback, and that's usually absent at home. 

A third explanation is quite different, suggesting that the problem may lie in measurement. Most studies of homework efficacy have used student self-report of how much time they spend on homework. Maybe those reports are inaccurate. 

A new study indicates that this third explanation merits closer consideration. 

The researchers (Rawson, Stahovich & Mayer, in press) examined homework performance among three classes of undergraduate engineering students taking their first statics course. The homework assigned was typical for this sort of course; the atypical feature was that students were asked to complete their homework with Smartpens. These function like regular ink pens, but when coupled with special paper, they record time-stamped pen strokes.

The researchers were able to gather objective measures of time spent on homework, as well as other performance metrics.
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A few of these measures proved interesting. For example, students who completed a lot of homework within 24 hours of the due date tended to earn lower course grades.

But the really interesting finding was a significant correlation of course grade and time spent on homework as measured by the Smartpen (r = .44) in the face of NO correlation between course grade and time spent on homework as reported by the students (r = -.16).

The relationship between homework and course grades is not the news. This is a college course and no matter what the format, it's only going to meet a few hours each week, and students will be expected to do a great deal of work on their own.

The news is that students were poor at reporting their time spent on homework; 88% reported more than the Smartpen showed they had actually spent. The correlation of actual time and reported time ranged from r = .16 to r = .35 for the three cohorts. 

In other words, with such a noisy measure of time spent on homework, there was little hope of observing a reliable relationship of homework with a course outcome. This finding ought to call into question much of the prior research on homework. 

Please don't take this blog posting as an enthusiastic endorsement of homework. For one thing, this literature seems pretty narrow in focusing solely on academic performance outcomes, given that many teachers and parents have other goals for homework such as increased self-directedness. For another thing, even if it were shown the certain types of homework led to certain types of improvement in academic outcomes, that doesn't mean every school and classroom ought to assign homework. That decision should be made in the context of broader goals.

But if teachers are going to assign homework, researchers should investigate its efficacy. This study should make us rethink how we interpret existing research in this area.
Jane
7/5/2016 06:20:57 pm

Could it be that students were including rereading time as homework time? The pen wouldn't record this and we wouldn't expect it to have much impact on achievement.

Elizabeth
7/8/2016 12:03:33 am

Agreed. If I'm reading this correctly, the time recorded by the Smartpen only covers the actual time spent making marks, not on thinking and reading time which I would think would take far longer. For me as a parent and a teacher it is frustrating that so much emphasis is placed on homework. In my opinion, it is time which could be spent on other equally important pursuits such as household responsibilities, exercise, and creative play.

Don Crawford link
7/6/2016 01:08:27 pm

The quality of how students practice (in terms of corrective feedback) makes a huge difference in the efficacy of something simple like math facts practice. Then when you consider that most homework isn't even in the realm of practicing already learned material, but usually is in the form of copying down information, there is little doubt that such "homework" would not prove beneficial.

Bill Thomas
7/7/2016 03:25:21 pm

Having taught in both elementary and middle schools, both title one, I stopped giving homework years ago. Many simply refused to do the work. The parents were often of little help. Many students didn't see the point and I couldn't convince them. Grades were not motivating for most students. Many were street smart, and simply copied someone else's work.

So I do the best I can when they are in front of me.

Helen
8/2/2016 09:50:27 am

That's funny. I've always thought homework was given in grade school for the parents as a reminder that it is not the school system's responsibility to educate a child. Most kids I know would not touch a <a href="http://domyhomeworkfor.me/calculus-homework-help">calculus homework help</a> assignment unless the parents feel guilt for not following directions or turning in an assignment on-time. It also serves the very important purpose of letting parents know what is actually going on in school week to week. If you have ever asked a 7 year old how their day went or what they did you often won't get much of an answer because (in my opinion) kids live in the moment and don't waste their time with wanting to recount their day. But alas I guess homework serves in part to have them recount their day, providing them a very important skill of being able to stop and consider that history is important, even if it happened just a few scant hours earlier.


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    The goal of this blog is to provide pointers to scientific findings that are applicable to education that I think ought to receive more attention.

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