homework

At the same time as a group of French parents and teachers have called for a two-week boycott of homework (despite the fact that homework is officially banned in French primary schools), and just after the British government scrapped homework guidelines, a large long-running British study came out in support of homework.

The study has followed some 3000 children from preschool through (so far) to age 14 (a subset of around 300 children didn’t attend preschool but were picked up when they started school). The latest report from the Effective Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education Project (EPPSE), which has a much more complete database to call on than previous studies, has concluded that, for those aged 11-14, time spent on homework was a strong predictor of academic achievement (in three core subjects).

While any time spent on homework was helpful, the strongest effects were seen in those doing homework for 2-3 hours daily. This remained true even after prior self-regulation was taken into account.

Of course, even with such a database as this, it is difficult to disentangle other positive factors that are likely to correlate with homework time — factors such as school policies, teacher expectations, parental expectations. Still, this study gives us a lot of data we can mull over and speculate about.

For example, somewhat depressingly, only a quarter of students (28%) said they were sometimes given individualized work, and many weren’t impressed by the time it took some teachers to mark and return their homework (only 68% of girls, and 75% of boys, agreed that ‘Most teachers mark and return my homework promptly’), or with the standards of the work required (49% of those whose family had no educational qualifications, 34% of those whose family had school or vocational qualifications, and 30% of those whose family had higher qualifications, agreed with the statement that ‘teachers are easily satisfied’ — suggesting among other things that teachers of less privileged students markedly underestimate their students’ abilities). Also depressingly, over a third (36%) agreed with the statement that ‘pupils who work hard are given a hard time by others’ (again, this breaks down into quite different proportions depending on the student’s background, with 46% of those in the lowest ‘Home Learning Environment’ agreeing with the statement, decreasing steadily through the ranks to finally reach 27% (still too high!) among those in the highest HLE).

One supposed benefit of homework that has been much touted, especially by those who are in the ‘homework for the sake of homework’ camp, is that of teaching self-regulation (although it can, and has, be equally argued that, by setting useless homework, teachers weaken self-regulation). While the present study did find social-behavioral benefits associated with homework, which would seem to support the former view, these benefits were only seen in relation to behavior at age 14, not to any changes between 11 and 14. In other words, homework wasn’t affecting change over time. This would seem to argue against the idea that doing homework teaches children how to manage their own learning.

Another interesting (of the many) key findings of the report concerns children who ‘succeed against the odds’ — that is, they do better than expected considering their socioeconomic or personal circumstances. Parents of these children tend to engage in ‘active cultivation’ — reading and talking to them when young, providing them with many and wide-ranging learning experiences throughout their childhood, supporting and encouraging their learning. Such support tended to be lacking for those children who did not transcend their circumstances, whose parents often felt helpless about parenting and about education.

In view of my last blog post, I would also like to particularly note that ‘good’ students tended to have a strong internal locus of control, while ‘poor’ students tended to feel helplessness, and had the belief that the ability to learn was an inborn talent (that they didn’t possess).

But education providers shouldn’t simply blame the parents! Teachers, too, are important, and those students who succeeded against the odds also attributed part of their success to supportive and empowering teachers, while those disadvantaged students who didn’t succeed mentioned the high number of supply teachers and disorganized lessons.

There is also a role for peers, and for extracurricular activities — families with academically successful children tended to value extracurricular activities, while those with less successful students viewed them, dismissively, as ‘fun’, rather than of any educational value.

You can download the full report at https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-RR202  or see the summary at http://www.ioe.ac.uk/newsEvents/62517.html

There’s a lot of controversy about the value of homework, for understandable reasons. And the inconsistent findings of homework research point to the fact that we can’t say, simplistically, that all children of [whatever age] should do [so many] hours of homework. Because it rests on the quality and context of the homework, and the interaction with the individual. Homework may be an effective strategy, but it is one that is all too often carried out ineffectively.

Homework for the sake of homework is always a bad idea, and if the teacher can’t articulate what the purpose of the homework is (or that purpose isn’t a good one!), then they shouldn’t set it.

So what are good purposes for homework?

The most obvious is to perform tasks that can’t, for reasons of time or resources, be accomplished in the classroom. But this, of course, is less straightforward than it appears. Practice, for example, would seem to be a clear contender, but optimally distributed retrieval practice (i.e., testing — see also this news report and this) is usually best done in the classroom. Projects generally require time and resources beyond the classroom, but parts of the project may well require school resources or group activity or teacher feedback.

Maybe we should turn this question around: what are classrooms good for?

Contrary to popular practice, the simple regurgitation of information, from teacher to student, is not what classrooms are best used for. Such information is more efficiently absorbed from texts or videos or podcasts — which students can read/watch/listen to as often as they need to. No, there are five main activities for which classrooms are best suited:

• Group activities (including class discussion)
• Activities involving school resources (such as science experiments — I am using ‘classroom’ broadly)
• Praxis (as seen in the apprenticeship model — a skill or activity is modeled by a skilled practitioner for students to imitate; the practitioner provides feedback)
• Motivation (the teacher engages and enthuses the students; teacher and peer feedback provides on-going help to stay on-task)
• Testing (not to put students under pressure to perform on tests that will decide their future, but because retrieval practice is the best strategy for learning there is — that is, testing needs to be done in a completely different way, and with students and teachers understanding that these tests are for the purposes of learning, not as a judgment on ability)

All of this is why the flipped classroom model is becoming so popular. I’m a great fan of this, although of course it needs to be done well. Here’s some links for those who want to learn more about this:

An article on flipped classrooms, what they are and some teachers’ and students’ experiences. http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/03/31/20120331arizona-school-online-flipping.html

A case study of ‘flipped classroom’ use at Byron High School, where math mastery has jumped from 30% in 2006 to 74% in 2011 according to the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments. http://thejournal.com/articles/2012/04/11/the-flipped-classroom.aspx

A brief interview with high school chemistry teacher Jonathan Bergmann, who now helps other teachers ‘flip’ their classrooms, and is co-author of a forthcoming book on the subject. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/the-flip-classwork-at-home-homework-in-class/2012/04/15/gIQA1AajJT_story.html

But there's one reason for all the argument on the homework issue that doesn't get a lot of airtime, and that is that there is no clear consensus on what school is for and what students should be getting out of it. And maybe part of the reason for that is that, for some people (some teachers, some education providers and officials), they don’t want to articulate what they believe school is all about, because they know many people would be outraged by their opinions. But if you think some people are going to be appalled, maybe you should rethink your thoughts!

Now of course different individuals are going to want different things from education, but until all parties can front up and lay out clearly exactly what they think school is for, then we’re not going to be able to construct a system and a curriculum that teaches effectively and reliably across the board.

Which is not to say I think we'd all agree. But if people openly and honestly put their agenda on the table, then we could openly state what particular schools are for, and different guidelines and assessment tools could be used appropriately.

But first and and most important: everyone (students, teachers, and parents) needs to realize that, notwithstanding the role of genes, intelligence and learning ‘talents’ are far from fixed. ((I’ve talked about this on a number of occasions, but if you want to read more about this, and the importance of self-regulation, from another source, check out this blog post at Scientific American.) If a child is not learning, it is a failure of a number of aspects of their situation, but it is not (absent severe brain damage), because the child is too stupid or lazy. (On which subject, you might like to read a great article in the Guardian about 'Poor economics'.)

What I think about homework is that we should get away completely from this homework/classwork divide. What we need to do is decide what work the student needs to do (to fulfil the articulate purpose), and then divide that into work that is most effectively (given the student's circumstances) done in the classroom and work that is best done in the student's own time and at their own pace.

So what do you think?

This post is the third part in a four-part series on how education delivery is changing, and the set of literacies required in today’s world. Part 1 looked at the changing world of textbooks; Part 2 looked at direct instruction/lecturing. This post looks at computer learning.

The use of computers in schools and for children at home is another of those issues that has generated a lot of controversy. But like e-readers, they’re not going back in the box. Indeed, there’s apparently been a surge of iPads into preschool and kindergarten classrooms. There are clear dangers with this — and equally clear potential benefits. As always, it all depends how you do it.

But the types of guidance and restrictions needed are different at different ages. Kindergarten is different from elementary is different from middle grade is different from high school, although media reports (and even researchers) rarely emphasize this.

Media reports last year cited two research studies as evidence that home computers have a negative effect on student achievement, particularly for students from low-income households. One involved 5^th to 8^th students in North Carolina ; the other Romanian students aged 7 to 22.

The Romanian study concerned low-income families who won government vouchers for the purchase of a personal computer. The study found that, although there was an increase in computer skills and fluency and even an apparent increase in general cognitive ability, academic performance (in math, English, and Romanian) was negatively affected. Use of the computers was mostly focused on games, at the expense of doing homework and reading for pleasure (and watching TV).

Interestingly, children with parents who imposed rules on computer use were significantly less skilled and fluent on the computer, but no better on homework or academic achievement. On the other hand, those who had parents who imposed rules on homework retained the benefits in terms of computer skills, and the negative impact on academic achievement was significantly reduced.

Additionally, there was some evidence that younger children showed the biggest gains in general cognitive ability.

Similarly, the North Carolina study (pdf) found that students who gained access to a home computer between 5th and 8th grade tended to show a persistent decline in reading and math test scores. But these results are very specific and shouldn’t be generalized. Those who already had computers prior to the 5^th grade scored significantly above average, and showed improvement over time.

An Italian study also found positive benefits of computer ownership - PISA achievement significantly correlated with 15-year-olds' use of computers at home as an educational tool. However, there seemed to be an optimal level, with the effect becoming smaller the more often they used the computer and even becoming negative if they used school computers almost every day.

The North Carolina and Romanian studies indicate that the problem appears to be when computer use knocks out more beneficial activities such as doing homework and reading for pleasure. It's unsurprising that this might be more likely to occur among children and adolescents who gain ready access to a computer after many years of "deprivation".

In Britain the e-Learning Foundation has recently come out claiming that over a million children will perform significantly worse on exams (an average grade lower) because they don’t have internet access at home. This idea is based on research showing that students who use revision materials on the internet to help them revise have an advantage over those students who don’t have access to such materials. Surely no surprise there! And no contradiction to the previous research. There is undoubtedly a lot of very good educational material on the internet, and even if you have a good teacher, getting a different take on things can help you understand more fully. If you have a poor teacher, this is even more true!

So it all comes down to how computers are being used (and what their use is knocking out, for there is only so much time in the day). Bearing on this point, two programs in the U.S. have with some apparent success introduced computers into disadvantaged homes in such a way that they support a more effective home-learning environment and thus improve academic achievement.

There’s also an argument that laptops have shown little benefit in general because the schools in which they’re used have, by and large, good teachers and good students. But the true value of laptops is for those without access to good teachers. For ten years, computers have been placed into brick walls in public places in hundreds of villages and slums in India, Cambodia and Africa, with apparently very successful results.

An extension of the project has involved British grandparents, many of them retired teachers, volunteering their time to talk, using Skype, to children in the slums and villages of India. From this has developed the model of a Self-organized learning environment (Sole), where children work in self-organized groups of four or five, exploring ideas using computers, the exploration triggered (but not constrained) by questions set by teachers.

I must admit, while I applaud this sort of thing, I have to shake my head at the surprise that this sort of activity is effective, and the comment that the students “maintain their own order”. My children had a Montessori education in their early years — in Montessori schools children habitually “self-organize” and teach themselves (with of course the teachers’ guidance, and the use of the resources provided).

But of course, it helps to have the right resources. Five years gathering data from math-tutoring programs has revealed how 10th and 11th grade students use a help button, which offers progressively more in-depth hints and eventually gives the answer to the question. Basically, most students (70-75%) strenuously resist seeking help, even after several errors. When they do eventually give in and ask for a hint, they do so only because they have given up trying to solve the problem and are aiming to cheat — 82% of those using the hint tool didn’t stop to read it, just clicked through all the hints to get to the answer.

Most recently, then, the researchers changed a geometry tutoring program so that the help tool would encourage students to reflect on their problem-solving strategies — for example, by opening a help window if a student seems to be guessing, or doesn’t seem to reading the hints. In pilot studies, the new help tutor significantly improved students’ help-seeking behavior.

But perhaps these children wouldn’t so misunderstand the use of the help button if they’d been taught in a learning environment that encouraged peer-tutoring. As any teacher knows, the best way to learn something is to teach it!

Teachable Agents software allows students to customize a virtual agent and teach it mathematics or science concepts. The agent questions, misunderstands, and otherwise learns realistically. Pilot studies of these programs have included kindergarten through to college.

Additionally, the virtual agent always explains how it came to an answer, and this seems to transfer to the student-teachers, helping them learn how to reason.

But I'd like to note (because it sounds a wonderful program) that you don’t need fancy software to harness the power of peer-tutoring. The Learning Community Project (English translation) operates in nearly 600 rural schools in Mexico and is planned to go into nearly 7000 rural and urban schools. In this model, students choose a learning project and explore it, guided by adult tutors. They then formally present the results of their inquiry to fellow students, tutors, and parents. When they have developed mastery in an area, they tutor other students who are exploring that area. The learning of students and the training of tutors builds a fund of common knowledge that is available in the community of neighboring schools.

But anyway, the message seems clear, if rather obvious: computers and the internet can be a very positive tool for learning, but, as with books and lectures, there are right ways and wrong ways of implementing these delivery systems.

In the next and lash post in this series, I'll discuss what literacy means in today's world, and the new  learning models that are being developed.

[Update: Note that some links have been removed as the linked article is no longer available]