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Stanford research shows pitfalls of homework

A Stanford researcher found that students in high-achieving communities who spend too much time on homework experience more stress, physical health problems, a lack of balance and even alienation from society. More than two hours of homework a night may be counterproductive, according to the study.

Education scholar Denise Pope has found that too much homework has negative effects on student well-being and behavioral engagement. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

A Stanford researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.

“Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good,” wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .

The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students’ views on homework.

Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.

Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.

“The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students’ advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being,” Pope wrote.

Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.

Their study found that too much homework is associated with:

• Greater stress: 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.

• Reductions in health: In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.

• Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits: Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were “not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills,” according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.

A balancing act

The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.

Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as “pointless” or “mindless” in order to keep their grades up.

“This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points,” Pope said.

She said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.

“Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development,” wrote Pope.

High-performing paradox

In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. “Young people are spending more time alone,” they wrote, “which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities.”

Student perspectives

The researchers say that while their open-ended or “self-reporting” methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for “typical adolescent complaining” – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.

The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

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Associations of time spent on homework or studying with nocturnal sleep behavior and depression symptoms in adolescents from Singapore

• Sing Chen Yeo, MSc Sing Chen Yeo Affiliations Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Program in Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore Search for articles by this author
• Jacinda Tan, BSc Jacinda Tan Affiliations Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Program in Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore Search for articles by this author
• Joshua J. Gooley, PhD Joshua J. Gooley Correspondence Corresponding author: Joshua J. Gooley, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders Program, Duke-NUS Medical School Singapore, 8 College Road, Singapore 117549, Singapore Contact Affiliations Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Program in Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore Search for articles by this author

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2020.04.011

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The Impact of Sleep on Learning and Memory

By Kelly Cappello, B.A.

For many students, staying awake all night to study is common practice. According to Medical News Today , around 20 percent of students pull all-nighters at least once a month, and about 35 percent stay up past three in the morning once or more weekly.

That being said, staying up all night to study is one of the worst things students can do for their grades. In October of 2019, two MIT professors found a correlation between sleep and test scores : The less students slept during the semester, the worse their scores.

So, why is it that sleep is so important for test scores? While the answer seems simple, that students simply perform better when they’re not mentally or physically tired, the truth may be far more complicated and interesting.

In the last 20 years, scientists have found that sleep impacts more than just students’ ability to perform well; it improves their ability to learn, memorize, retain, recall, and use their new knowledge to solve problems creatively. All of which contribute to better test scores.

Let’s take a look at some of the most interesting research regarding the impact of sleep on learning and memory.

How does sleep improve the ability to learn?

When learning facts and information, most of what we learn is temporarily stored in a region of the brain called the hippocampus. Some scientists hypothesize that , like most storage centers, the hippocampus has limited storage capacity. This means, if the hippocampus is full, and we try to learn more information, we won’t be able to.

Fortunately, many scientists also hypothesize that sleep, particularly Stages 2 and 3 sleep, plays a role in replenishing our ability to learn. In one study, a group of 44 participants underwent two rigorous sessions of learning, once at noon and again at 6:00 PM. Half of the group was allowed to nap between sessions, while the other half took part in standard activities. The researchers found that the group that napped between learning sessions learned just as easily at 6:00 PM as they did at noon. The group that didn’t nap, however, experienced a significant decrease in learning ability [1].

How does sleep improve the ability to recall information?

Humans have known about the benefits of sleep for memory recall for thousands of years. In fact, the first record of this revelation is from the first century AD. Rhetorician Quintilian stated, “It is a curious fact, of which the reason is not obvious, that the interval of a single night will greatly increase the strength of the memory.”

In the last century, scientists have tested this theory many times, often finding that sleep improves memory retention and recall by between 20 and 40 percent. Recent research has led scientists to hypothesize that Stage 3 (deep non-Rapid Eye Movement sleep, or Slow Wave Sleep) may be especially important for the improvement of memory retention and recall [2].

How does sleep improve long-term memory? 

Scientists hypothesize that sleep also plays a major role in forming long-term memories. According to Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley, MRI scans indicate that the slow brain waves of stage 3 sleep (deep NREM sleep) “serve as a courier service,” transporting memories from the hippocampus to other more permanent storage sites [3].

How does sleep improve the ability to solve problems creatively?

Many tests are designed to assess critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills. Recent research has led scientists to hypothesize that sleep, particularly REM sleep, plays a role in strengthening these skills. In one study, scientists tested the effect of REM sleep on the ability to solve anagram puzzles (word scrambles like “EOUSM” for “MOUSE”), an ability that requires strong creative thinking and problem-solving skills.

In the study, participants solved a couple of anagram puzzles before going to sleep in a sleep laboratory with electrodes placed on their heads. The subjects were woken up four times during the night to solve anagram puzzles, twice during NREM sleep and twice during REM sleep.

The researchers found that when participants were woken up during REM sleep, they could solve 15 to 35 percent more puzzles than they could when woken up from NREM sleep. They also performed 15 to 35 percent better than they did in the middle of the day [4]. It seems that REM sleep may play a major role in improving the ability to solve complex problems.

So, what’s the point?

Sleep research from the last 20 years indicates that sleep does more than simply give students the energy they need to study and perform well on tests. Sleep actually helps students learn, memorize, retain, recall, and use their new knowledge to come up with creative and innovative solutions.

It’s no surprise that the MIT study previously mentioned revealed no improvement in scores for those who only prioritized their sleep the night before a big test. In fact, the MIT researchers concluded that if students want to see an improvement in their test scores, they have to prioritize their sleep during the entire learning process. Staying up late to study just doesn’t pay off.

Interested in learning more about the impact of sleep on learning and memory? Check out this Student Sleep Guide .

Author Biography

Kelly Cappello graduated from East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies in 2015. She is now a writer, specialized in researching complex topics and writing about them in simple English. She currently writes for Recharge.Energy , a company dedicated to helping the public improve their sleep and improve their lives.

• Mander, Bryce A., et al. “Wake Deterioration and Sleep Restoration of Human Learning.” Current Biology, vol. 21, no. 5, 2011, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.01.019.
• Walker M. P. (2009). The role of slow wave sleep in memory processing. Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 5(2 Suppl), S20–S26.
• Walker, Matthew. Why We Sleep. Scribner, 2017.
• Walker, Matthew P, et al. “Cognitive Flexibility across the Sleep–Wake Cycle: REM-Sleep Enhancement of Anagram Problem Solving.” Cognitive Brain Research, vol. 14, no. 3, 2002, pp. 317–324., doi:10.1016/s0926-6410(02)00134-9.

Posted on Dec 21, 2020 | Tagged: learning and memory

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