how did robin measure the amount of homework

Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement?

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how did robin measure the amount of homework

Educators should be thrilled by these numbers. Pleasing a majority of parents regarding homework and having equal numbers of dissenters shouting "too much!" and "too little!" is about as good as they can hope for.

But opinions cannot tell us whether homework works; only research can, which is why my colleagues and I have conducted a combined analysis of dozens of homework studies to examine whether homework is beneficial and what amount of homework is appropriate for our children.

The homework question is best answered by comparing students who are assigned homework with students assigned no homework but who are similar in other ways. The results of such studies suggest that homework can improve students' scores on the class tests that come at the end of a topic. Students assigned homework in 2nd grade did better on math, 3rd and 4th graders did better on English skills and vocabulary, 5th graders on social studies, 9th through 12th graders on American history, and 12th graders on Shakespeare.

Less authoritative are 12 studies that link the amount of homework to achievement, but control for lots of other factors that might influence this connection. These types of studies, often based on national samples of students, also find a positive link between time on homework and achievement.

Yet other studies simply correlate homework and achievement with no attempt to control for student differences. In 35 such studies, about 77 percent find the link between homework and achievement is positive. Most interesting, though, is these results suggest little or no relationship between homework and achievement for elementary school students.

Why might that be? Younger children have less developed study habits and are less able to tune out distractions at home. Studies also suggest that young students who are struggling in school take more time to complete homework assignments simply because these assignments are more difficult for them.

These recommendations are consistent with the conclusions reached by our analysis. Practice assignments do improve scores on class tests at all grade levels. A little amount of homework may help elementary school students build study habits. Homework for junior high students appears to reach the point of diminishing returns after about 90 minutes a night. For high school students, the positive line continues to climb until between 90 minutes and 2½ hours of homework a night, after which returns diminish.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what's going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Opponents of homework counter that it can also have negative effects. They argue it can lead to boredom with schoolwork, since all activities remain interesting only for so long. Homework can deny students access to leisure activities that also teach important life skills. Parents can get too involved in homework -- pressuring their child and confusing him by using different instructional techniques than the teacher.

My feeling is that homework policies should prescribe amounts of homework consistent with the research evidence, but which also give individual schools and teachers some flexibility to take into account the unique needs and circumstances of their students and families. In general, teachers should avoid either extreme.

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Homework: What does the Hattie research actually say?

This is an excellent book. It is an attempt to distil the key messages from the vast array of studies that have been undertaken across the world into all the different factors that lead to educational achievement. As you would hope and expect, the book contains details of the statistical methodology underpinning a meta-analysis and the whole notion of ‘effect size’ that drives the thinking in the book. There is a discussion about what is measurable and how effect size can be interpreted in different ways. The key outcomes are interesting, suggesting a number of key factors that are likely to make the greatest impact in classrooms and more widely in the lives of learners.

My main interest here is to explore what Hattie says about homework. This stems from a difficulty I have when I hear or read, fairly often, that ‘research shows that homework makes no difference’. It is cited as a hard fact in articles such as this one by Tim Lott in the Guardian: Why do we torment kids with homework? Even though Tim is talking about his 6 year old, and cites research that refers to ‘younger kids’, too often the sweeping generalisation is applied to all homework for all students. It bugs me and I think it is wrong.

I have written about my views on homework under the heading ‘Homework Matters: Great Teachers set Great Homework’ . I’ve said that all my instincts as a teacher (and a parent) tell me that homework is a vital element in the learning process; reinforcing the interaction between teacher and student; between home and school and paving the way to students being independent autonomous learners. Am I biased? Yes. Is this based on hunches and personal experience? Of course. Is it backed up by research……? Well that is the question.

So, what does Hattie say about homework?

Helpfully he uses Homework studies as an example of the overall process of meta-analyses, so there is plenty of material. In a key example, he describes a study of five meta-analyses that capture 161 separate studies involving over 100,000 students as having an effect size d= 0.29. What does this mean? This is the best typical effect size across all the studies, suggesting:

improving the rate of learning by 15% – or advancing children’s learning by about a year
65% of effects were positive
35% of effects were negative
average achievement exceeded 62% of the levels of students not given homework.

However, there are other approaches such as the ‘common language effect’ (CLE) that compares effects from different distributions. For homework a d= 0.29 effect translates into a 21% chance that homework will make a positive difference. Or, from two classes, 21 times out of a 100, using homework will be more effective. Hattie then says that terms such as ‘small, medium and large’ need to be used with caution in respect of effect size. He is ambitious and won’t accept comparison with 0.0 as a sign of a good strategy. He cites Cohen as suggesting with reason that 0.2 is small, 0.4 is medium and 0.6 is large and later argues himself that we need a hinge-point where d > 0.4 is needed for an effect to be above average and d > 0.6 to be considered excellent.

OK. So what is this all saying. Homework, taken as an aggregated whole, shows an effect size of d= 0.29 that is between small and medium? Oh.. but wait… here comes an important detail. Turn the page: The studies show that the effect size at Primary Age is d = 0.15 and for Secondary students it is d = 0.64! Well, now we are starting to make some sense. On this basis, homework for secondary students has an ‘excellent’ effect. I am left thinking that, with a difference so marked, surely it is pure nonsense to aggregate these measures in the first place?

Hattie goes on to report that other factors make a difference to the results: eg when what is measured is very precise (eg improving addition or phonics), a bigger effect is seen compared to when the outcome is more ephemeral. So, we need to be clear: what is measured has an impact on the scale of the effect. This means that we have to throw in all kinds of caveats about the validity of the process. There will be some forms of homework more likely to show an effect than others; it is not really sensible to lump all work that might be done in between lessons into the catch-all ‘homework’ and then to talk about an absolute measure of impact. Hattie is at pains to point out that there will be great variations across the different studies that simply average out to the effect size on his barometers. Again, in truth, each study really needs to be looked at in detail. What kind of homework? What measure of attainment? What type of students? And so on…. so many variables that aggregating them together is more or less made meaningless? Well, I’d say so.

Nevertheless, d= 0.64! That matches my predisposed bias so I should be happy. q.e.d. Case closed. I’m right and all the nay-sayers are wrong. Maybe, but the detail, as always, is worth looking at. Hattie suggests that the reason for the difference between the d=0.15 at primary level at d=0.64 at secondary is that younger students can’t under take unsupported study as well, they can’t filter out irrelevant information or avoid environmental distractions – and if they struggle, the overall effect can be negative.

At secondary level he suggests there is no evidence that prescribing homework develops time management skills and that the highest effects in secondary are associated with rote learning, practice or rehearsal of subject matter; more task-orientated homework has higher effects that deep learning and problem solving. Overall, the more complex, open-ended and unstructured tasks are, the lower the effect sizes. Short, frequent homework closely monitored by teachers has more impact that their converse forms and effects are higher for higher ability students than lower ability students, higher for older rather than younger students. Finally, the evidence is that teacher involvement in homework is key to its success.

So, what Hattie actually says about homework is complex. There is no meaningful sense in which it could be stated that “the research says X about homework” in a simple soundbite. There are some lessons to learn:

The more specific and precise the task is, the more likely it is to make an impact for all learners. Homework that is more open, more complex is more appropriate for able and older students. Teacher monitoring and involvement is key – so putting students in a position where their learning is too complex, extended or unstructured to be done unsupervised is not healthy. This is more likely for young children, hence the very low effect size for primary age students.

All of this makes sense to me and none of it challenges my predisposition to be a massive advocate for homework. The key is to think about the micro- level issues, not to lose all of that in a ridiculous averaging process. Even at primary level, students are not all the same. Older, more able students in Year 5/6 may well benefit from homework where kids in Year 2 may not. Let’s not lose the trees for the wood! Also, what Hattie shows is that educational inputs, processes and outcomes are all highly subjective human interactions. Expecting these things to be reduced sensibly into scientifically absolute measured truths is absurd. Ultimately, education is about values and attitudes and we need to see all research in that context.

PS. If you are reading this from Sweden, Tack för läsning. Låt mig veta era tankar om denna fråga.

Update : Note that Hattie himself has commented on this blog post: https://teacherhead.com/2012/10/21/homework-what-does-the-hattie-research-actually-say/comment-page-1/#comment-536

(Slides from a Teach First session on homework are here: Teach First Homework )

See also Setting Great Homework: The Mode A:Mode B approach.

The Case for (Quality) Homework

Janine Bempechat

Any parent who has battled with a child over homework night after night has to wonder: Do those math worksheets and book reports really make a difference to a student’s long-term success? Or is homework just a headache—another distraction from family time and downtime, already diminished by the likes of music and dance lessons, sports practices, and part-time jobs?

Allison, a mother of two middle-school girls from an affluent Boston suburb, describes a frenetic afterschool scenario: “My girls do gymnastics a few days a week, so homework happens for my 6th grader after gymnastics, at 6:30 p.m. She doesn’t get to bed until 9. My 8th grader does her homework immediately after school, up until gymnastics. She eats dinner at 9:15 and then goes to bed, unless there is more homework to do, in which case she’ll get to bed around 10.” The girls miss out on sleep, and weeknight family dinners are tough to swing.

Parental concerns about their children’s homework loads are nothing new. Debates over the merits of homework—tasks that teachers ask students to complete during non-instructional time—have ebbed and flowed since the late 19th century, and today its value is again being scrutinized and weighed against possible negative impacts on family life and children’s well-being.

Are American students overburdened with homework? In some middle-class and affluent communities, where pressure on students to achieve can be fierce, yes. But in families of limited means, it’s often another story. Many low-income parents value homework as an important connection to the school and the curriculum—even as their children report receiving little homework. Overall, high-school students relate that they spend less than one hour per day on homework, on average, and only 42 percent say they do it five days per week. In one recent survey by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a minimal 13 percent of 17-year-olds said they had devoted more than two hours to homework the previous evening (see Figure 1).

Recent years have seen an increase in the amount of homework assigned to students in grades K–2, and critics point to research findings that, at the elementary-school level, homework does not appear to enhance children’s learning. Why, then, should we burden young children and their families with homework if there is no academic benefit to doing it? Indeed, perhaps it would be best, as some propose, to eliminate homework altogether, particularly in these early grades.

On the contrary, developmentally appropriate homework plays a critical role in the formation of positive learning beliefs and behaviors, including a belief in one’s academic ability, a deliberative and effortful approach to mastery, and higher expectations and aspirations for one’s future. It can prepare children to confront ever-more-complex tasks, develop resilience in the face of difficulty, and learn to embrace rather than shy away from challenge. In short, homework is a key vehicle through which we can help shape children into mature learners.

The Homework-Achievement Connection

A narrow focus on whether or not homework boosts grades and test scores in the short run thus ignores a broader purpose in education, the development of lifelong, confident learners. Still, the question looms: does homework enhance academic success? As the educational psychologist Lyn Corno wrote more than two decades ago, “homework is a complicated thing.” Most research on the homework-achievement connection is correlational, which precludes a definitive judgment on its academic benefits. Researchers rely on correlational research in this area of study given the difficulties of randomly assigning students to homework/no-homework conditions. While correlation does not imply causality, extensive research has established that at the middle- and high-school levels, homework completion is strongly and positively associated with high achievement. Very few studies have reported a negative correlation.

As noted above, findings on the homework-achievement connection at the elementary level are mixed. A small number of experimental studies have demonstrated that elementary-school students who receive homework achieve at higher levels than those who do not. These findings suggest a causal relationship, but they are limited in scope. Within the body of correlational research, some studies report a positive homework-achievement connection, some a negative relationship, and yet others show no relationship at all. Why the mixed findings? Researchers point to a number of possible factors, such as developmental issues related to how young children learn, different goals that teachers have for younger as compared to older students, and how researchers define homework.

Certainly, young children are still developing skills that enable them to focus on the material at hand and study efficiently. Teachers’ goals for their students are also quite different in elementary school as compared to secondary school. While teachers at both levels note the value of homework for reinforcing classroom content, those in the earlier grades are more likely to assign homework mainly to foster skills such as responsibility, perseverance, and the ability to manage distractions.

Most research examines homework generally. Might a focus on homework in a specific subject shed more light on the homework-achievement connection? A recent meta-analysis did just this by examining the relationship between math/science homework and achievement. Contrary to previous findings, researchers reported a stronger relationship between homework and achievement in the elementary grades than in middle school. As the study authors note, one explanation for this finding could be that in elementary school, teachers tend to assign more homework in math than in other subjects, while at the same time assigning shorter math tasks more frequently. In addition, the authors point out that parents tend to be more involved in younger children’s math homework and more skilled in elementary-level than middle-school math.

In sum, the relationship between homework and academic achievement in the elementary-school years is not yet established, but eliminating homework at this level would do children and their families a huge disservice: we know that children’s learning beliefs have a powerful impact on their academic outcomes, and that through homework, parents and teachers can have a profound influence on the development of positive beliefs.

How Much Is Appropriate?

Harris M. Cooper of Duke University, the leading researcher on homework, has examined decades of study on what we know about the relationship between homework and scholastic achievement. He has proposed the “10-minute rule,” suggesting that daily homework be limited to 10 minutes per grade level. Thus, a 1st grader would do 10 minutes each day and a 4th grader, 40 minutes. The National Parent Teacher Association and the National Education Association both endorse this guideline, but it is not clear whether the recommended allotments include time for reading, which most teachers want children to do daily.

For middle-school students, Cooper and colleagues report that 90 minutes per day of homework is optimal for enhancing academic achievement, and for high schoolers, the ideal range is 90 minutes to two and a half hours per day. Beyond this threshold, more homework does not contribute to learning. For students enrolled in demanding Advanced Placement or honors courses, however, homework is likely to require significantly more time, leading to concerns over students’ health and well-being.

Notwithstanding media reports of parents revolting against the practice of homework, the vast majority of parents say they are highly satisfied with their children’s homework loads. The National Household Education Surveys Program recently found that between 70 and 83 percent of parents believed that the amount of homework their children had was “about right,” a result that held true regardless of social class, race/ethnicity, community size, level of education, and whether English was spoken at home.

Learning Beliefs Are Consequential

As noted above, developmentally appropriate homework can help children cultivate positive beliefs about learning. Decades of research have established that these beliefs predict the types of tasks students choose to pursue, their persistence in the face of challenge, and their academic achievement. Broadly, learning beliefs fall under the banner of achievement motivation, which is a constellation of cognitive, behavioral, and affective factors, including: the way a person perceives his or her abilities, goal-setting skills, expectation of success, the value the individual places on learning, and self-regulating behavior such as time-management skills. Positive or adaptive beliefs about learning serve as emotional and psychological protective factors for children, especially when they encounter difficulties or failure.

Motivation researcher Carol Dweck of Stanford University posits that children with a “growth mindset”—those who believe that ability is malleable—approach learning very differently than those with a “fixed mindset”—kids who believe ability cannot change. Those with a growth mindset view effort as the key to mastery. They see mistakes as helpful, persist even in the face of failure, prefer challenging over easy tasks, and do better in school than their peers who have a fixed mindset. In contrast, children with a fixed mindset view effort and mistakes as implicit condemnations of their abilities. Such children succumb easily to learned helplessness in the face of difficulty, and they gravitate toward tasks they know they can handle rather than more challenging ones.

Of course, learning beliefs do not develop in a vacuum. Studies have demonstrated that parents and teachers play a significant role in the development of positive beliefs and behaviors, and that homework is a key tool they can use to foster motivation and academic achievement.

Parents’ Beliefs and Actions Matter

It is well established that parental involvement in their children’s education promotes achievement motivation and success in school. Parents are their children’s first teachers, and their achievement-related beliefs have a profound influence on children’s developing perceptions of their own abilities, as well as their views on the value of learning and education.

Parents affect their children’s learning through the messages they send about education, whether by expressing interest in school activities and experiences, attending school events, helping with homework when they can, or exposing children to intellectually enriching experiences. Most parents view such engagement as part and parcel of their role. They also believe that doing homework fosters responsibility and organizational skills, and that doing well on homework tasks contributes to learning, even if children experience frustration from time to time.

Many parents provide support by establishing homework routines, eliminating distractions, communicating expectations, helping children manage their time, providing reassuring messages, and encouraging kids to be aware of the conditions under which they do their best work. These supports help foster the development of self-regulation, which is critical to school success.

Self-regulation involves a number of skills, such as the ability to monitor one’s performance and adjust strategies as a result of feedback; to evaluate one’s interests and realistically perceive one’s aptitude; and to work on a task autonomously. It also means learning how to structure one’s environment so that it’s conducive to learning, by, for example, minimizing distractions. As children move into higher grades, these skills and strategies help them organize, plan, and learn independently. This is precisely where parents make a demonstrable difference in students’ attitudes and approaches to homework.

Especially in the early grades, homework gives parents the opportunity to cultivate beliefs and behaviors that foster efficient study skills and academic resilience. Indeed, across age groups, there is a strong and positive relationship between homework completion and a variety of self-regulatory processes. However, the quality of parental help matters. Sometimes, well-intentioned parents can unwittingly undermine the development of children’s positive learning beliefs and their achievement. Parents who maintain a positive outlook on homework and allow their children room to learn and struggle on their own, stepping in judiciously with informational feedback and hints, do their children a much better service than those who seek to control the learning process.

A recent study of 5th and 6th graders’ perceptions of their parents’ involvement with homework distinguished between supportive and intrusive help. The former included the belief that parents encouraged the children to try to find the right answer on their own before providing them with assistance, and when the child struggled, attempted to understand the source of the confusion. In contrast, the latter included the perception that parents provided unsolicited help, interfered when the children did their homework, and told them how to complete their assignments. Supportive help predicted higher achievement, while intrusive help was associated with lower achievement.

Parents’ attitudes and emotions during homework time can support the development of positive attitudes and approaches in their children, which in turn are predictive of higher achievement. Children are more likely to focus on self-improvement during homework time and do better in school when their parents are oriented toward mastery. In contrast, if parents focus on how well children are doing relative to peers, kids tend to adopt learning goals that allow them to avoid challenge.

Homework and Social Class

Social class is another important element in the homework dynamic. What is the homework experience like for families with limited time and resources? And what of affluent families, where resources are plenty but the pressures to succeed are great?

Etta Kralovec and John Buell, authors of The End of Homework, maintain that homework “punishes the poor,” because lower-income parents may not be as well educated as their affluent counterparts and thus not as well equipped to help with homework. Poorer families also have fewer financial resources to devote to home computers, tutoring, and academic enrichment. The stresses of poverty—and work schedules—may impinge, and immigrant parents may face language barriers and an unfamiliarity with the school system and teachers’ expectations.

Yet research shows that low-income parents who are unable to assist with homework are far from passive in their children’s learning, and they do help foster scholastic performance. In fact, parental help with homework is not a necessary component for school success.

Brown University’s Jin Li queried low-income Chinese American 9th graders’ perceptions of their parents’ engagement with their education. Students said their immigrant parents rarely engaged in activities that are known to foster academic achievement, such as monitoring homework, checking it for accuracy, or attending school meetings or events. Instead, parents of higher achievers built three social networks to support their children’s learning. They designated “anchor” helpers both inside and outside the family who provided assistance; identified peer models for their children to emulate; and enlisted the assistance of extended kin to guide their children’s educational socialization. In a related vein, a recent analysis of survey data showed that Asian and Latino 5th graders, relative to native-born peers, were more likely to turn to siblings than parents for homework help.

Further, research demonstrates that low-income parents, recognizing that they lack the time to be in the classroom or participate in school governance, view homework as a critical connection to their children’s experiences in school. One study found that mothers enjoyed the routine and predictability of homework and used it as a way to demonstrate to children how to plan their time. Mothers organized homework as a family activity, with siblings doing homework together and older children reading to younger ones. In this way, homework was perceived as a collective practice wherein siblings could model effective habits and learn from one another.

In another recent study, researchers examined mathematics achievement in low-income 8th-grade Asian and Latino students. Help with homework was an advantage their mothers could not provide. They could, however, furnish structure (for example, by setting aside quiet time for homework completion), and it was this structure that most predicted high achievement. As the authors note, “It is . . . important to help [low-income] parents realize that they can still help their children get good grades in mathematics and succeed in school even if they do not know how to provide direct assistance with their child’s mathematics homework.”

The homework narrative at the other end of the socioeconomic continuum is altogether different. Media reports abound with examples of students, mostly in high school, carrying three or more hours of homework per night, a burden that can impair learning, motivation, and well-being. In affluent communities, students often experience intense pressure to cultivate a high-achieving profile that will be attractive to elite colleges. Heavy homework loads have been linked to unhealthy symptoms such as heightened stress, anxiety, physical complaints, and sleep disturbances. Like Allison’s 6th grader mentioned earlier, many students can only tackle their homework after they do extracurricular activities, which are also seen as essential for the college résumé. Not surprisingly, many students in these communities are not deeply engaged in learning; rather, they speak of “doing school,” as Stanford researcher Denise Pope has described, going through the motions necessary to excel, and undermining their physical and mental health in the process.

Fortunately, some national intervention initiatives, such as Challenge Success (co-founded by Pope), are heightening awareness of these problems. Interventions aimed at restoring balance in students’ lives (in part, by reducing homework demands) have resulted in students reporting an increased sense of well-being, decreased stress and anxiety, and perceptions of greater support from teachers, with no decrease in achievement outcomes.

What is good for this small segment of students, however, is not necessarily good for the majority. As Jessica Lahey wrote in Motherlode, a New York Times parenting blog, “homework is a red herring” in the national conversation on education. “Some otherwise privileged children may have too much, but the real issue lies in places where there is too little. . . . We shouldn’t forget that.”

My colleagues and I analyzed interviews conducted with lower-income 9th graders (African American, Mexican American, and European American) from two Northern California high schools that at the time were among the lowest-achieving schools in the state. We found that these students consistently described receiving minimal homework—perhaps one or two worksheets or textbook pages, the occasional project, and 30 minutes of reading per night. Math was the only class in which they reported having homework each night. These students noted few consequences for not completing their homework.

Indeed, greatly reducing or eliminating homework would likely increase, not diminish, the achievement gap. As Harris M. Cooper has commented, those choosing to opt their children out of homework are operating from a place of advantage. Children in higher-income families benefit from many privileges, including exposure to a larger range of language at home that may align with the language of school, access to learning and cultural experiences, and many other forms of enrichment, such as tutoring and academic summer camps, all of which may be cost-prohibitive for lower-income families. But for the 21 percent of the school-age population who live in poverty—nearly 11 million students ages 5–17—homework is one tool that can help narrow the achievement gap.

Community and School Support

Often, community organizations and afterschool programs can step up to provide structure and services that students’ need to succeed at homework. For example, Boys and Girls and 4-H clubs offer volunteer tutors as well as access to computer technology that students may not have at home. Many schools provide homework clubs or integrate homework into the afterschool program.

Home-school partnerships have succeeded in engaging parents with homework and significantly improving their children’s academic achievement. For example, Joyce Epstein of Johns Hopkins University has developed the TIPS model (Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork), which embraces homework as an integral part of family time. TIPS is a teacher-designed interactive program in which children and a parent or family member each have a specific role in the homework scenario. For example, children might show the parent how to do a mathematics task on fractions, explaining their reasoning along the way and reviewing their thinking aloud if they are unsure.

Evaluations show that elementary and middle-school students in classrooms that have adopted TIPS complete more of their homework than do students in other classrooms. Both students and parent participants show more positive beliefs about learning mathematics, and TIPS students show significant gains in writing skills and report-card science grades, as well as higher mathematics scores on standardized tests.

Another study found that asking teachers to send text messages to parents about their children’s missing homework resulted in increased parental monitoring of homework, consequences for missed assignments, and greater participation in parent-child conferences. Teachers reported fewer missed assignments and greater student effort in coursework, and math grades and GPA significantly improved.

Homework Quality Matters

Teachers favor homework for a number of reasons. They believe it fosters a sense of responsibility and promotes academic achievement. They note that homework provides valuable review and practice for students while giving teachers feedback on areas where students may need more support. Finally, teachers value homework as a way to keep parents connected to the school and their children’s educational experiences.

While students, to say the least, may not always relish the idea of doing homework, by high school most come to believe there is a positive relationship between doing homework and doing well in school. Both higher and lower achievers lament “busywork” that doesn’t promote learning. They crave high-quality, challenging assignments—and it is this kind of homework that has been associated with higher achievement.

What constitutes high-quality homework? Assignments that are developmentally appropriate and meaningful and that promote self-efficacy and self-regulation. Meaningful homework is authentic, allowing students to engage in solving problems with real-world relevance. More specifically, homework tasks should make efficient use of student time and have a clear purpose connected to what they are learning. An artistic rendition of a period in history that would take hours to complete can become instead a diary entry in the voice of an individual from that era. By allowing a measure of choice and autonomy in homework, teachers foster in their students a sense of ownership, which bolsters their investment in the work.

High-quality homework also fosters students’ perceptions of their own competence by 1) focusing them on tasks they can accomplish without help; 2) differentiating tasks so as to allow struggling students to experience success; 3) providing suggested time frames rather than a fixed period of time in which a task should be completed; 4) delivering clearly and carefully explained directions; and 5) carefully modeling methods for attacking lengthy or complex tasks. Students whose teachers have trained them to adopt strategies such as goal setting, self-monitoring, and planning develop a number of personal assets—improved time management, increased self-efficacy, greater effort and interest, a desire for mastery, and a decrease in helplessness.

Excellence with Equity

Currently, the United States has the second-highest disparity between time spent on homework by students of low socioeconomic status and time spent by their more-affluent peers out of the 34 OECD-member nations participating in the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) (see Figure 2). Noting that PISA studies have consistently found that spending more time on math homework strongly correlates with higher academic achievement, the report’s authors suggest that the homework disparity may reflect lower teacher expectations for low-income students. If so, this is truly unfortunate. In and of itself, low socioeconomic status is not an impediment to academic achievement when appropriate parental, school, and community supports are deployed. As research makes clear, low-income parents support their children’s learning in varied ways, not all of which involve direct assistance with schoolwork. Teachers can orient students and parents toward beliefs that foster positive attitudes toward learning. Indeed, where homework is concerned, a commitment to excellence with equity is both worthwhile and attainable.

In affluent communities, parents, teachers, and school districts might consider reexamining the meaning of academic excellence and placing more emphasis on leading a balanced and well-rounded life. The homework debate in the United States has been dominated by concerns over the health and well-being of such advantaged students. As legitimate as these worries are, it’s important to avoid generalizing these children’s experiences to those with fewer family resources. Reducing or eliminating homework, though it may be desirable in some advantaged communities, would deprive poorer children of a crucial and empowering learning experience. It would also eradicate a fertile opportunity to help close the achievement gap.

Janine Bempechat is clinical professor of human development at the Boston University Wheelock College of Education and Human Development.

An unabridged version of this article is available here .

For more, please see “ The Top 20 Education Next Articles of 2023 .”

This article appeared in the Winter 2019 issue of Education Next . Suggested citation format:

Bempechat, J. (2019). The Case for (Quality) Homework: Why it improves learning, and how parents can help . Education Next, 19 (1), 36-43.

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Relationship Between Students’ Prior Academic Achievement and Homework Behavioral Engagement: The Mediating/Moderating Role of Learning Motivation

Susana rodríguez.

1 Department of Psychology, University of A Coruña, A Coruña, Spain

José C. Núñez

2 Department of Psychology, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain

Antonio Valle

Carlos freire, maría del mar ferradás, carolina rodríguez-llorente.

The interest of assigning homework is frequently discussed due to its alleged low impact on student achievement. One of the current lines of research is to emphasize the quality of student homework engagement rather than the amount of time spent on homework. The aim of this study was to determine (a) the extent to which students’ prior achievement affects their homework engagement (i.e., time spent, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done), and (b) how students’ intrinsic motivation toward homework may mediate or moderate the relationship between prior achievement and the homework engagement variables. A large sample of students from the first 4 years of Secondary Education ( N = 1899) completed questionnaires. The results showed that intrinsic motivation partially mediates, but does not moderate, the effect of prior achievement on the three variables related to homework engagement (time spent, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done). These results highlight the importance of considering both students’ current level of achievement and their motivation toward homework engagement when assigning homework.

Introduction

Homework assignment is used regularly as an instructional strategy to optimize students’ learning and academic achievement ( Cooper et al., 2006 ; Ramdass and Zimmerman, 2011 ). In general, there seems to be a positive relationship between homework and academic achievement ( Trautwein et al., 2006 ; Núñez et al., 2015b ; Fan et al., 2017 ), although this relationship will vary in magnitude and direction depending on variables such as students’ age, the amount of time spent, the management of that time, the motivational orientation or cognitive engagement, as well as the quality of parental involvement, or the quality of the teacher-assigned homework.

Current academic achievement, in turn, seems to be associated with student engagement in the future performance of homework. Moreover, based on the responses of a broad sample of students aged between 9 and 16 years old, Regueiro et al. (2015) found that prior achievement was significantly related both to students’ subsequent motivation to do homework (i.e., intrinsic motivation, interest, and perception of utility) and to their homework engagement (time spent on homework, homework time management, amount of homework done).

This relationship between prior achievement and homework engagement can be explained by different pathways, external (through parental or teacher involvement) and internal (different levels of knowledge, expectations of future achievement, perceived competence, motivation, etc.). From this point of view, students with good prior achievement may also meet the internal and external conditions that lead to favorable personal homework engagement, whereas if prior achievement is not good, the external and internal conditions will certainly not be as favorable for good homework engagement. Thus, for example, when family involvement becomes more controlling and there is lower motivational and emotional support ( Núñez et al., 2015c , 2017 ; Regueiro et al., 2017a ), teachers develop low expectations about the students’ engagement and future achievement ( Kloomok and Cosden, 1994 ; Pitzer and Skinner, 2017 ; Zhu et al., 2018 ), and the students develop more negative expectations about their competence and future performance, and become discouraged and cease to engage progressively. These unfavorable affective-motivational conditions, in turn, are an added handicap to the already poor personal conditions (low academic achievement) when facing the next learning experiences ( Ben-Naim et al., 2017 ). All of this often leads to a new academic failure, either partial ( Klassen et al., 2008 ) or generalized to the entire academic area ( Shifrer, 2016 ).

The present study analyzes the mediator or moderator role of intrinsic motivation regarding the effect of prior achievement on student homework engagement (time spent on homework, homework time management, and amount of homework done). Although there is abundant information available with regard to student engagement, the same cannot be said regarding the area of homework. The data from this study can contribute to better understanding the way in which past achievement can condition students’ future homework engagement.

Prior Achievement and Motivation

Motivational variables determine student homework engagement; that is, students’ reasons for doing homework significantly influence their degree of engagement (e.g., time spent, optimization of that time, and amount of homework done) and their academic achievement ( Pan et al., 2013 ).

However, the nature of the relationship between motivation and academic achievement is bi-directional, such that the latter is also a significant antecedent of relevant motivational factors in the academic field such as self-concept or self-efficacy ( Marsh et al., 2005 ; Schöber et al., 2018 ). From this viewpoint, students’ learning failures, experienced not so much due to their skills as to their lack of motivation, lead them to developing beliefs of lack of competence, which, in turn, lead to low expectations of achievement and, as a consequence, low homework engagement and poor school performance. Therefore, the data derived from past research suggest including students’ prior achievement as an important variable to understand their homework engagement ( Cool and Keith, 1991 ; Trautwein et al., 2002 ; Zimmerman and Kitsantas, 2005 ; Fast et al., 2010 ; Chen et al., 2013 ; Garon-Carrier et al., 2016 ).

A study carried out by Hong (2001) pointed out that high-performing students are more self-motivated to do homework than low-performing students. As a result, students who have already been successful in tasks like homework, compared to less successful students, feel more confident to perform tasks successfully in the future. Believing in their capabilities to achieve set goals influences students’ motivation and effort to learn and, therefore, their engagement ( Schunk and Ertmer, 2000 ; Ormrod, 2003 ). In addition, academic achievement also maintains a positive relationship with other motivational variables, such as interest in the homework and the perception of its usefulness ( Wigfield and Cambria, 2010 ).

Motivation and Behavioral Engagement

The expectancy-value theory ( Eccles et al., 1984 ; Wigfield and Eccles, 2000 ) is especially appropriate to explain the motivational aspects of behavior regarding homework ( Trautwein and Köller, 2003 ). It indicates that students are more willing to engage in homework they perceive as emotionally rewarding and valuable, and where their effort is rewarded.

As shown in their work Ben-Eliyahu et al. (2018) , we think about motivation as a pre-existing learner characteristic that produces engagement and self-regulated learning as part of engagement process. Schunk and Mullen (2012) describe this commitment as “the manifestation of students’ motivation.” Like various authors, Pekrun and Linnenbrink-Garcia (2012) suggest that commitment is a mediator between emotion and achievement, whereas Ainley (2012) argues that motivation leads to achievement through commitment. For other authors, motivation is a predictor of engagement ( Lazowski and Hulleman, 2016 ) and, for Ben-Eliyahu et al. (2018) , motivation triggers commitment. In previous studies, it was also found that different forms of motivation predict commitment ( Patall et al., 2016 ; King and Datu, 2017 ).

Research suggests that students’ type of motivation for a task is significantly related to their engagement ( Ryan and Deci, 2000 ). There is evidence indicating that many students do homework for extrinsic reasons, such as getting good grades, for their desire to please or to avoid punishment ( Walker et al., 2004 ). However, this kind of motivation is associated with low levels of engagement, learning, and achievement ( Vallerand et al., 1997 ). On another hand, students who perform homework driven by intrinsic reasons tend to show high levels of persistence, creativity, achievement, positive emotions, interest, and engagement ( Flink et al., 1992 ; Bouffard et al., 2001 ; Coutts, 2004 ). Motivation is therefore considered a very influential variable in the process of doing homework and, specifically, in students’ homework behavioral engagement ( Xu and Corno, 1998 ; Corno, 2000 ).

Goal of This Study

Homework assignment without taking into account the diversity of the classroom is a habitual practice. This instructional strategy ends up being successful for some students, but is clearly inappropriate for others. Homework assignment should be adapted to the needs and potentials of the students. Otherwise, rather than helping them to develop, homework assignment progressively undermines their motivation and interest. In the present study, prior achievement and all that this entails (knowledge, perceived competence, expectations, etc.) were considered to constitute a potential determinant of student homework engagement (in terms of amount of time spent on homework, time management, and the amount of teacher-assigned homework done). In addition, we expect to answer the question of whether motivation mediates or moderates the relationship between prior achievement and homework engagement.

Therefore, we examined (a) the extent to which students’ prior achievement conditions their homework engagement, and (b) how students’ interest in doing homework (i.e., intrinsic motivation) may mediate and/or moderate that relationship. The initial hypotheses are as follows:

simple (1) Firstly, although the relation between time spent on homework and subsequent student achievement is clearly inconsistent ( Cooper et al., 2006 ; Trautwein et al., 2006 ; Trautwein, 2007 ; Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2009 ; Dettmers et al., 2009 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ; Núñez et al., 2015a , c ), previous research argues that prior achievement significantly influences students’ academic engagement (e.g., Trautwein et al., 2002 ; Chen et al., 2013 ; Garon-Carrier et al., 2016 ). Under these precedents, it was hypothesized that the relationship between prior achievement and student homework behavioral engagement would be positive and statistically significant, suggesting that high-performing students would spend more time on homework, better optimize that time, and would do more teacher-assigned homework than low-performing students.
simple (2) Secondly, some data suggest that prior academic achievement positively influences students’ academic motivation ( Valentine and Dubois, 2005 ; Schöber et al., 2018 ). In turn, students’ motivation is positively associated with the time spent on homework ( Dettmers et al., 2009 ; Regueiro et al., 2015 ), the amount of homework done ( Regueiro et al., 2017b ), the management of homework time ( Núñez et al., 2015a ), and academic achievement ( Valle et al., 2016 ). Therefore, we hypothesized that the relationship between prior achievement and student homework behavioral engagement would be partially mediated by students’ intrinsic motivation. In this way, intrinsic motivation would act as a mediator if the influence of prior achievement on student homework behavioral engagement were conditioned, at least partially, by the influence of students’ motivation. As well as the direct effect, the indirect effect of prior achievement on the variables of student behavioral engagement would also be positive (indicating that higher prior achievement is related to higher intrinsic motivation and greater student behavioral engagement).

Whereas mediation attempts to explain how and why certain effects occur, moderation provides information about when such effects will take place. In statistical terms, there is moderation when the interaction between the independent variable (in our case, prior achievement) and the third variable (intrinsic motivation) significantly affects the dependent variable (student behavioral engagement in homework). As there are no data from previous studies that have addressed this issue, we will not offer any hypothesis about the moderator role of intrinsic motivation. The question to explore here will be: is the effect of prior achievement on student homework behavioral engagement significantly different (e.g., in intensity or direction) as a function of students’ motivational level?

Materials and Methods

Participants.

Participants were 1899 students (51.2% girls) of Compulsory Secondary Education (CSE) from 17 schools of four provinces in the north of Spain, of which 13 are public schools and 4 are subsidized. In terms of distribution by grade, 28.5% are enrolled in 1st grade of CSE (7th grade), 25.2% are in 2nd grade of CSE (8th grade), 22.2% are in 3rd grade of CSE (9th grade), and 24.1% are in 4th grade of CSE (10th grade). Participants’ age ranged between 12 and 16 years.

Instruments

The variables time spent on homework, homework time management, amount of homework done, and homework intrinsic motivation were measured with several items of the Homework Survey (e.g., Núñez et al., 2015a , b , c ; Valle et al., 2015a , b , 2018 ).

Time Spent on Homework

The students responded to two items (usually/during a typical week) with the following general formulation: “How much time do you usually spend each day on homework?” with the response options 1 = less than 30 min , 2 = 30 min to 1 h , 3 = 1 h to an hour and a half , 4 = 1 h and a half to 2 h , 5 = more than 2 h . The reliability is acceptable (α = 0.78).

Amount of Homework Done

This information was obtained from students through their responses to two items related to the amount of teacher-assigned homework usually done. The two items were worded as follows: “Some students complete all their homework, and others only complete some of it. What about you? How much of your homework do you do…? (usually/during a typical week).” The students chose an answer from a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( I didn’t do any of my homework ) to 5 ( I did all my homework ). The reliability is acceptable (α = 0.82).

Homework Time Management

This was evaluated through the response to two items worded as follows: “Students often spend a lot of time doing homework, although most of the times, they don’t use that time properly, as they waste it (e.g., talking on the phone, being distracted by intrusive thoughts, procrastinating). And you, how do you manage the time you spend doing your homework (usually/during a typical week)?,” on which they were requested to rate their level of perceived quality of homework time management on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( I don’t optimize it at all: “I am continually distracted by everything” ) to 5 ( I optimize it completely: I concentrate, and until I finish doing homework, I don’t think about anything else ). The reliability is acceptable (α = 0.77).

Intrinsic Motivation for Homework

Interest in learning by doing homework was assessed by students’ responses to eight items ( e.g., “I enjoy doing homework, because it allows me to learn more and more”; “Doing homework helps me understand what is being taught in class” and “Doing homework helps prepare me for the next day’s lesson/develop good self-discipline/learn how to plan my time or to be more responsible” ), which were rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 ( totally false ) to 5 ( completely true ). The reliability is acceptable (α = 0.86).

Prior Achievement

Prior achievement was evaluated according to the average academic grades obtained in the last year in Spanish, Math and foreign language (English). These grades were ranged from 1 to 5 (1 = insufficient, 2 = sufficient, 3 = good, 4 = notable, 5 = outstanding).

The procedure employed in this investigation followed the ethical standards of the Helsinki Declaration and was approved by the Research and Teaching Ethics Committee of the University of A Coruña. First of all, the prior written informed consent was obtained from the management team and the teaching staff of the participating schools. Subsequently, the written informed consent was obtained from the participants and their parents or legal guardians. Data collection was carried out during school hours. The instruments were administered by staff who collaborated in the research.

Data Analysis

The data were analyzed with the SPSS 22 program. Twelve students were eliminated because they had a large amount of missing data or presented outlier values. No significant amount of missing data was found in any of the variables. The missing values were treated through the multiple imputation procedure. Prior to the study of the hypotheses, as preliminary analysis, we analyzed the correlation matrix and the distribution of the variables included in the study (prior achievement, intrinsic motivation, time spent on homework, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done). With the help of the PROCESS ( Hayes, 2013 ) module implemented in the SPSS, we analyzed whether intrinsic motivation mediated and/or moderated the effect of prior achievement on the three variables of student behavioral engagement considered. Figure 1 shows the mediation and moderation schema corresponding to hypotheses.

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A simple mediation and moderation conceptual models of intrinsic motivation (IM) in the effect of prior achievement (PACH) on student behavioral engagement in homework (SBEH).

Gender and age (grade) were included in the design to statistically control for their potential effect. The effect sizes were calculated with Cohen’s (1988) d : d < 0.20 = minimum effect size; d > 0.20 < 0.50 = small effect size; d > 0.50 < 0.80 = medium effect size; d > 0.80 = large effect size.

Descriptive Statistics

In Table 1 are summarized the descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations corresponding to the variables included in the study. The variables included in the study were significantly correlated, and the skewness and kurtosis data suggested an acceptable normal distribution. According to the relationship between the variables, we observed that: (i) females, compared to males, tended to spend more time on homework, reported better time optimization, and they did more assigned homework, had higher intrinsic motivation toward homework, as well as higher academic achievement; (ii) students’ motivation and interest and homework engagement decreased as they progressed through the school grades (7th to 10th grade); (iii) prior achievement had a significant and positive relationship with intrinsic motivation and student behavioral homework engagement; (iv) and homework time spent, homework time management, and amount of homework done were positively interrelated and positively related to intrinsic motivation.

Descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis) and Pearson correlation matrix.

Mediation Analysis

In Table 2 are summarized the results of the mediation analysis of the intrinsic motivation of the effect of prior achievement on student homework behavioral engagement (homework time spent, homework time management, and amount of homework performed).

Summary of the mediation model.

Mediation Model (Dependent Variable: Homework Time Spent)

The data obtained suggested that homework intrinsic motivation almost completely mediated the effect of prior achievement on homework time spent. Specifically, whereas the indirect effect of prior achievement on homework time spent was positive and statistically significant ( b = 0.034, p < 0.001, d = 0.274), the direct effect was minimal ( b = 0.054, p < 0.05), with a small effect size ( d = 0.119). The overall effect was b = 0.088 ( p < 0.001, d = 0.193). The mediational model explained 9% of the variability of the time spent on homework. The data also showed that gender was related to the prediction of time spent on homework ( b = 0.366, p < 0.001), although the effect size was small ( d = 0.332). Grade was not a predictor in this model.

Mediation Model (Dependent Variable: Homework Time Management)

Intrinsic motivation acted like a partial mediator of the effect of prior achievement on homework time management (indirect effect: b = 0.049, p < 0.001), although it had a small effect size ( d = 0.323). Prior achievement also maintained a statistically significant but small direct effect on homework time management ( b = 0.149, p = 0.001), ( d = 0.186). The overall effect was almost intermediate ( b = 0.198, p < 0.001, d = 0.486), explaining a total of 16.7% of the variability of homework time management. Gender and grade significantly predicted homework time management, although the effect size was minimal (no effect) (see Table 2 ).

Mediation Model (Dependent Variable: Amount of Homework Done)

The data provided by the mediational analysis indicated that intrinsic motivation was a partial mediator of the effect of prior achievement on amount of homework done (indirect effect: b = 0.042, p < 0.001), with a small effect size ( d = 0.323). The direct effect was intermediate ( b = 0.237, p < 0.001, d = 0.729), and the total effect was large ( b = 0.279, p < 0.001, d = 0.841). The model explained 30.9% of the variability of the amount of homework done. Gender and grade were significant predictors, although whereas gender was hardly a predictor ( d = 0.145), grade had an intermediate effect size ( d = 0.588) (see Table 2 ).

Moderation Analysis

Table 3 provides a summary of the moderation analysis of the intrinsic motivation of the effect of prior achievement on student homework behavioral engagement. The data derived from the analysis shows that intrinsic motivation does not have a moderating effect either in the relationship between prior achievement and time spent on homework ( b = 0.002, p > 0.05, d = 0.003) or with homework time management ( b = -0.004, p > 0.05, d = 0.007). This means that the effect of prior achievement on these two variables is of the same sign and intensity at any level of intrinsic motivation. However, a small moderator effect was observed in the relationship between prior achievement and amount homework done ( b = -0.062, p < 0.01, d = 0.153). As can be observed in the last three rows of Table 3 , depending on the level of intrinsic motivation, the effect size of prior achievement on amount of homework done was different in intensity (but not in direction). In general terms, the greater the intrinsic motivation, the lower the effect of prior achievement, and vice versa.

Summary of the moderation of intrinsic motivation of the effect of prior achievement on student homework behavioral engagement (interaction effects).

Doing homework is an instructional strategy frequently used by the vast majority of teachers, from all educational stages and all the countries belonging to the OECD. However, in the last report of this international organism, some concern was expressed about using this instructional strategy, as the data seem to indicate that countries using less homework are obtaining better achievement in PISA. They also indicated that the use of this strategy is negatively associated with children’s mental health. However, it is clear from the reviewed literature that the most rigorous studies suggest that such claims are not entirely true because other variables must be taken into account besides the time spent on homework, both extrinsic to the student (family involvement, teacher involvement) and those related to the students (level of prior knowledge, motivation, attitude, effort, self-regulation skills in the process of doing homework, etc.).

In this line, the present investigation sought to shed some light on this issue, focusing on the relative importance of the level of prior achievement in student homework engagement. Specifically, first, we studied the predictive capacity of prior achievement in student homework engagement in terms of the amount of time spent weekly, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done. Secondly, we analyzed in greater depth how that relationship might be mediated, moderated, or both, by students’ intrinsic motivation (i.e., intention to engage in homework in order to learn and progress academically). The interest of the work was formulated in terms that if this relationship were significant, student’s current level of achievement should be taken into account by teachers when elaborating and assigning homework. And if motivation mediated or moderated the relationship, it should also be known and taken into account at this time. The main reason is that, if the hypotheses of the study were correct, the unadapted assignment of homework would be an inappropriate instructional strategy, partly responsible for students’ ambiguous relationship with achievement, and even for adverse consequences.

The results confirmed the first and second hypotheses, but not the third one entirely. These results will be discussed below in detail.

In the first hypothesis, we expected that the relationship between prior achievement and student behavioral engagement would be positive. The data partially confirmed this hypothesis. In particular, as expected, high-performing students, compared to low-performing ones, managed homework time better (although the effect size is small) and did more teacher-assigned homework (with an almost large effect size). On the contrary, the amount of time spent on homework was barely explained by students’ prior achievement (the size of the effect is practically non-existent). These results are in the line of those obtained in other studies, which also found that the amount of time spent on homework is of little interest ( Trautwein, 2007 ; Dettmers et al., 2009 ; Regueiro et al., 2015 ).

The second hypothesis was also confirmed. In particular, it was found that the relationship between prior achievement and student homework behavioral engagement is partially mediated by students’ intrinsic motivation, indicating that higher prior achievement is related to higher intrinsic motivation and greater student behavioral engagement. As in other studies, the data from this research indicate that students’ motivation is positively associated, on the one hand, with academic achievement ( Valle et al., 2016 ) and, on the other, with student homework engagement: the time spent on homework ( Dettmers et al., 2009 ; Regueiro et al., 2015 ), homework time management ( Núñez et al., 2015a ), and the amount of teacher-assigned homework done ( Regueiro et al., 2017b ). This research found that the greater the prior achievement, the higher is students’ motivation and, finally, the greater their homework engagement. However, the amount of variance explained in each of the three variables of engagement is substantially different. Whereas only 9% of the time spent doing homework and 16.7% of time management are explained, 30.9% of the amount of teacher-assigned homework done is explained. But, while the data from this study refer to the importance of prior achievement and intrinsic motivation in the explanation of student homework engagement, they also raise some questions such as, for example, what personal variables are responsible for the amount of the remaining variance? what relevance do the family and school contexts have?

In terms of the moderation hypothesis, the results of the analysis of this study suggest that the effect of prior achievement on the time spent on homework and on time management does not change according to students’ motivational level. This means that the relationship described above has the same force and sign whether the student is little or very intrinsically motivated to work on homework. In the case of these two variables (time spent and time management), students’ motivation only facilitates an indirect pathway through which prior achievement would influence student homework engagement. However, some moderation was observed when the dependent variable was the amount of teacher-assigned homework done. In this case, and in general terms, when intrinsic motivation is high, the effect of prior achievement on the amount of homework done is smaller than when motivation is medium or low. These results can be interpreted in the sense that the higher the motivation, the lower is the capacity of prior achievement to determine student engagement in teacher-assigned homework. These findings offer a less deterministic vision: when students’ motivation is high, homework engagement is less determined by past conditions that we cannot influence. Therefore, high intrinsic motivation seems to be an important protective factor.

Educational Implications

The results of this study have some implications for educational practice, which should be taken into account when designing and developing homework.

Firstly, we should assume that student homework engagement is determined by multiple factors that should be taken into account to ensure quality engagement. Students do not engage deeply in their homework just because it is their obligation (this may be the least powerful reason). As seen in this study, intrinsic motivation is an important determinant, mainly in terms of homework time management and the amount of teacher-assigned homework done, which in terms of the effect size, is close to large. As a result, and if only for this reason, it seems clear that it is not just is question of designing and assigning homework, but that homework and the contexts must be of quality, which invite the student to engage with them in order to learn. And it is not enough that the homework and the context are of quality, it is also necessary for students to perceive such quality so their deep engagement takes place ( Rosário et al., 2018 ). Therefore in order to motivate students, an interesting practice when assigning homework might be to consider the relevance of each task with a view to students’ learning and personal autonomy.

Also, secondly, students’ prior achievement is shown as another important determinant of student homework engagement, mainly in terms of the amount of teacher-assigned homework done, and to a lesser extent, with regard to time management. However, as confirmed in the moderation analyses, in relation to the amount of homework done, this effect decreases when intrinsic motivation is high. Thus, insofar as we can highly motivate students to do homework with a deep focus, the determining effect of prior achievement will be lower and, therefore, low-performing students will be less vulnerable.

However, even in this case, it is relevant to take this into account when developing and assigning homework to the students. In general terms, from our data, poor achievement will lead to a decrease in intrinsic motivation (less interest in deep homework engagement), which will lead to a less effective behavioral engagement. In the end, this lower engagement could contribute to subsequent lower achievement, and so on. This loop would have obvious negative consequences. Therefore, it is necessary to significantly adapt the assignment of homework to this group of students, so that, taking into account these limiting initial conditions, the homework will involve real opportunities of personal engagement and success. This will facilitate student engagement – effective engagement – and, over time, the change of direction of that negative loop that makes them so vulnerable.

As previous research suggests, homework should be adapted to students’ potential and explicitly linked to academic success, but should also be perceived as useful by learners ( Epstein and Van Voorhis, 2001 , 2012 ; Trautwein et al., 2006 ; Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2009 ; Dettmers et al., 2010 , 2011 ; Rosário et al., 2018 ). Teachers must face the challenge of linking homework characteristics to their students’ learning needs and interest. In this sense, it seems interesting that teachers explicitly state the competences and knowledge that is expected to be optimized with homework and that the instrumental, personal and/or professional use of the tasks that are sent home from the classroom are specifically agreed upon.

Limitations

Although the results seem to be consistent, this research has some limitations that should not be ignored. Firstly, given that gender and grade were relevant in the explanation of student engagement, and although their effect was statistically controlled by including them as covariates, due to the characteristics of the statistical design, the data from this study do not provide information on how gender or grade might be moderating the effects found. Further studies could primarily examine this issue of undeniable relevance.

Secondly, it could be important to analyze the hypotheses of this study using data obtained with measurement instruments other than self-report measures, as this would allow us to determine the validity of the results of the scope of this study. Thirdly, would be of undoubted interest to study the objectives of this research in younger students, from Elementary Education, as the results of this research might not be generalizable to younger ages. Finally, although the procedure to study mediation/moderation is well established with data derived from cross-sectional designs, even with simple models of mediation/moderation, like those used in this investigation, the data obtained might have differed significantly if we had chosen a longitudinal data collection strategy (or repeated measures). For the design of future studies, this issue of particular relevance should be taken into account.

Ethics Statement

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Research and Teaching Ethics Committee of the University of A Coruña, with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by the Research and Teaching Ethics Committee of the University of A Coruña.

Author Contributions

SR, AV, CF, and MF collected the data and wrote the manuscript. JN analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript. CR-L collected the data and helped revision of the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. This work was developed with the financing of the research projects EDU2013-44062-P (MINECO), EDU2017-82984-P (MEIC), and Government of the Principality of Asturias, Spain. European Regional Development Fund (Research Groups Program 2018–2020 FC-GRUPIN-IDI/2018/000199).

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Heavier Homework Load Linked to Lower Math, Science Performance, Study Says

The optimal amount of homework for 13-year-old students is about an hour a day, a study published earlier this month in the Journal of Educational Psychology suggests. And spending too much time on homework is linked to a decrease in academic performance.

Researchers from the University of Oviedo administered surveys to 7,725 Spanish secondary school students, asking about how many days per week they did homework, how much time they spent on it, how much effort they put in, and how much help they received. The students also took a test with 24 math and 24 science questions.

Students who did homework more frequently—i.e., every day—tended to do better on the test than those who did it less frequently, the researchers found. And even more important was how much help students received on their homework—those who did it on their own performed better than those who had parental involvement. (The study controlled for factors such as gender and socioeconomic status.)

The researchers also found that prior knowledge—measured by previous letter grades—was a better predictor of test performance than any homework factor.

Regarding the amount of time students spent on homework, the results were a bit more complicated.

Overall, students spent on average between one and two hours a day doing homework from all subjects.

Those who spent about 90 to 100 minutes a day on homework scored highest on the assessment—however, they didn’t outperform their peers who spent less time on homework by much. The researchers therefore determined that going from 70 minutes of homework a day to 90 minutes a day is not an efficient use of time. “That small gain requires two hours more homework per week, which is a large time investment for such small gains,” they wrote. “For that reason, assigning more than 70 minutes homework per day does not seem very efficient, as the expectation of improved results is very low.”

And after 90 to 100 minutes of homework, they found, test scores declined. The relationship between minutes of homework and test scores is not linear, but curved.

“The key is that the optimum time is about 60 or 70 minutes [of homework] a day,” Javier Suarez-Alvarez, co-lead researcher on the study, said in an interview.

The study does, of course, come with some caveats. As the researchers note, the results are not causal; they only show a correlation between homework and test scores. Also, the survey did not distinguish between math and science homework. Suarez-Alvarez said the study also brings up questions about how factors like “academic intelligence, self-concept, and self-esteem” play into academic performance.

Even so, the study offers some insights that middle school teachers may find helpful. “Our data indicate that it is not necessary to assign huge quantities of homework, but it is important that assignment is systematic and regular, with the aim of instilling work habits and promoting autonomous, self-directed learning,” the researchers write.

Or as Suarez-Alvarez put it, “Maybe it’s more important how they do the homework than how much.”

Chart: From “Adolescents’ Homework Performance in Mathematics and Science: Personal Factors and Teaching Practices,” Journal of Educational Psychology , March 16, 2015.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Curriculum Matters blog.

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Time Spent on Homework and Academic Achievement: A Meta-analysis Study Related to Results of TIMSS

[el tiempo dedicado a la tarea y al rendimiento académico: un estudio metaanalítico relacionado con los resultados de timss], gulnar ozyildirim akdeniz university, konyaalti, antalya, turkey, https://doi.org/10.5093/psed2021a30.

Received 31 August 2020, Accepted 24 May 2021

Homework is a common instructional technique that requires extra time, energy, and effort apart from school time. Is homework worth these investments? The study aimed to investigate whether the amount of time spent on homework had any effect on academic achievement and to determine moderators in the relationship between these two terms by using TIMSS data through the meta-analysis method. In this meta-analysis study, data obtained from 488 independent findings from 74 countries in the seven surveys of TIMSS and a sample of 429,970 students was included. The coefficient of standardized means, based on the random effect model, was used to measure the mean effect size and the Q statistic was used to determine the significance of moderator variables. This study revealed that the students spending their time on homework at medium level had effect on their academic achievement and there were some significant moderators in this relationship.

La tarea es una técnica instructiva común que requiere tiempo extra, energía y esfuerzo aparte del horario escolar. ¿Vale la pena hacer estas inversiones? El objetivo del estudio era investigar si el tiempo dedicado a la tarea tenía algún efecto en el rendimiento académico y determinar los moderadores de la relación entre estos dos términos mediante el uso de datos TIMSS a través del método de metaanálisis. En este estudio de metaanálisis se incluyeron los datos obtenidos de 488 hallazgos independientes de 74 países en las siete encuestas de TIMSS y una muestra de 429,970 estudiantes. Se utilizó el coeficiente de medias estandarizadas, basado en el modelo de efecto aleatorio, para medir el tamaño medio del efecto y el estadístico Q para determinar la significación de las variables moderadoras. El estudio reveló el hecho de que los estudiantes que dedican su tiempo a la tarea en el nivel medio tiene efecto en su rendimiento académico y hubo algunos moderadores significativos de esta relación.

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Cite this article as: Ozyildirim, G. (2022). Time Spent on Homework and Academic Achievement: A Meta-analysis Study Related to Results of TIMSS. Psicología Educativa, 28 (1) , 13 - 21. https://doi.org/10.5093/psed2021a30

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COMMENTS

Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement?
A little amount of homework may help elementary school students build study habits. Homework for junior high students appears to reach the point of diminishing returns after about 90 minutes a night. For high school students, the positive line continues to climb until between 90 minutes and 2½ hours of homework a night, after which returns ...
Homework: What does the Hattie research actually say?
So, what Hattie actually says about homework is complex. There is no meaningful sense in which it could be stated that "the research says X about homework" in a simple soundbite. There are some lessons to learn: The more specific and precise the task is, the more likely it is to make an impact for all learners.
Key Lessons: What Research Says About the Value of Homework
Too much homework may diminish its effectiveness. While research on the optimum amount of time students should spend on homework is limited, there are indications that for high school students, 1½ to 2½ hours per night is optimum. Middle school students appear to benefit from smaller amounts (less than 1 hour per night).
Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement?: If So, How Much Is ...
More than three fourths (78%) did not think homework interfered with family time, and nearly as many (71%) thought that it was not a source of major stress. Educators should be thrilled with these numbers. Pleasing a majority of parents regarding homework is about as good as they can hope for, even with a fair number of dissenters.
Is doing your homework associated with becoming more conscientious?
Highlights. •. More effort in students' homework is associated with a more positive development in conscientiousness. •. Effects remain stable after controlling for differences between students increasing and decreasing their homework effort. •. Associations are found for self-reported and parent-reported personality.
Academic Goals, Student Homework Engagement, and Academic Achievement
Lastly, the amount of homework done is positively related to academic achievement. The model was fit using a sample of 535 Spanish students from the last three courses of elementary school (aged 9 to 13). Findings show that: (a) academic achievement was positively associated with the amount of homework completed, (b) the amount of homework ...
The Case for (Quality) Homework
Recent years have seen an increase in the amount of homework assigned to students in grades K-2, and critics point to research findings that, at the elementary-school level, homework does not appear to enhance children's learning. ... By allowing a measure of choice and autonomy in homework, teachers foster in their students a sense of ...
Full article: Variations of homework amount assigned in elementary
A FEW YEARS ago, the APA's Monitor in Psychology featured a front-page article that examined the questionable effects of homework on students' academic achievement and its potential detrimental effect on their well-being (Weir, Citation 2016).The debate around the utility of homework is one of the oldest and most controversial debates in education (Cooper, Citation 2007), and recently ...
PDF Literature Review Homework
Overall, the typical amount of homework reported for American children was less than one hour per day. At age 9, 83 percent of students reported having less than one hour of homework per day; at ages 13 and 17, 66 and 65 percent of students, respectively, reported having less than one hour of homework per day.
Relationship Between Students' Prior Academic Achievement and Homework
Prior Achievement and Motivation. Motivational variables determine student homework engagement; that is, students' reasons for doing homework significantly influence their degree of engagement (e.g., time spent, optimization of that time, and amount of homework done) and their academic achievement (Pan et al., 2013).However, the nature of the relationship between motivation and academic ...
PDF Effect of Homework on Student Commitment, Growth and Performance Robin
between the amount of homework completed and test scores. 6 Dudley and Shawver (1991) also suggested that their sample of 170 students who completed daily homework received higher grades than the sample of 110 who did not receive daily homework. This study took place at Eastern Illinois University where an &
Does high school homework increase academic achievement?
1. Cooper, Robinson, and Patall (Citation 2006) provide a nice overview of the effects of homework on academic achievement in the education, psychology, and sociology literatures.In general, small positive effects have been found. More recently, using 1990 data from NELS and 2002 data from the Education Longitudinal Study, Maltese, Tai, and Fan (Citation 2012) found no effect of math and ...
PDF Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research
These characteristics encompassed six broad distinctions among studies: (a) the research report; (b) the research design; (c) the homework variable; (d) the sample of students; (e) the measure of achievement, and (f) the estimate of the relationship between homework and achievement.
Online Mathematics Homework Increases Student Achievement
The purpose of mathematics homework is typically to provide practice for the student. Literature reviews and meta-analyses show generally positive or neutral effects for homework on learning (Cooper, Robinson, & Patall, 2006; Maltese, Robert, & Fan, 2012).Effects due to homework are more positive in middle and high school than elementary school (reflecting greater student maturity) and ...
PROTOCOL: The relationship between homework time and academic
However, they did not look explicitly at homework time. All the above studies assumed that the correlation between homework and performance was linear, that is, that either more or less homework was better. Indeed, their reported effect size is the correlation coefficient, which is a measure of the linearity of a relationship.
Homework purposes, homework behaviors, and academic achievement
Homework quality perceived by students mediates the relationship between homework purposes, students' homework variables (i.e. homework effort and homework performance), and mathematics achievement.. 3. Methods3.1. Participants. This study is part of a large project on homework in elementary school. The project, which required several data collections, is focused on assessing sixth grade ...
Heavier Homework Load Linked to Lower Math, Science Performance, Study Says
The optimal amount of homework for 13-year-old students is about an hour a day, a study published earlier this month in the Journal of Educational Psychology suggests. And spending too much time ...
Time Spent on Homework and Academic Achievement: A Meta-analysis Study
Firstly, it was observed that the findings supported hypothesis H1 that the amount of time spent on homework had an impact on students' academic achievement (Q = 3181.056, p .000). The effect value of time spent on homework on success was calculated as d = 0.186, and it was statistically significant. This impact value showed that the amount of time spent on homework has a low and significant ...
Addressing Student Mental Health Through the Lens of Homework Stress
A valid way to evaluate and measure how homework can put stress on students is clearly necessary, as well as what factors can amplify or alleviate said stress. The "Stress around Homework" construct, as proposed by Katz et al. in their 2012 construct validation paper, offers a promising approach to addressing the issue.
Students' achievement and homework assignment strategies.
The optimum time students should spend on homework has been widely researched although the results are far from unanimous. The main objective of this research is to analyze how homework assignment strategies in schools affect students' academic performance and the differences in students' time spent on homework. Participants were a representative sample of Spanish adolescents (N = 26,543 ...
Homework
Homework has traditionally been assigned as a way to promote learning. Cooper (1989a Cooper ( , 1989b and Cooper, Robinson, and Patall (2006) reported that the benefits of homework increased with ...
PROTOCOL: The relationship between homework time and academic
However, they did not look explicitly at homework time. All the above studies assumed that the correlation between homework and performance was linear, that is, that either more or less homework was better. Indeed, their reported effect size is the correlation coefficient, which is a measure of the linearity of a relationship.
ЕГЭ
1. How did Robin measure the amount of homework students had to do? 1) By the level of difficulty of the homework. 2) By the amount of materials they were given. 3) By how long it took them to do it. 2. Sixteen per cent of primary schoolchildren … 1) had no homework. 2) spent an hour on homework. 3) spent more than an hour on homework. 3.