Thursday, September 5, 2013

Homework's benefits questioned in new study | OregonLive.com

Homework's benefits questioned in new study | OregonLive.com:

Homework's benefits questioned in new study



A study published this summer, "Nonacademic Effects of Homework in Privileged, High-Performing High Schools," asserts that current homework practices in such schools "sustain students' advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement, and well-being."
The study's three authors include Mollie Galloway, assistant professor of educational leadership at Lewis & Clark College's Graduate School of Education and Counseling, who says by email:
"As parents, we often make assumptions that homework is good for our kids. We assume it promotes learning, responsibility, study skills, and other positive behaviors. The research on homework is less rosy. There is no evidence that homework at the elementary level enhances student achievement, and at the middle and high school level, our study suggests that too much homework can, in fact, have detrimental physical, mental, and social impacts." 

The study, which Galloway conducted with Jerusha Conner of Villanova University and Denise Pope of Stanford University, used data from online and paper surveys of 4,317 students at 10 high-performing high schools in communities with a median household income of more than $90,000 per year. 
Homework help
Here are some local resources for homework help.
Answerland(featuring Oregon librarians)Beaverton City Library
The students answered questions about homework load, homework usefulness, stress, physical health, time for other activities/endeavors, behavioral engagement (for example, how often they tried as hard as they could in school), and demographic and achievement information.
On average, students said they spent a little over three hours a night on homework, work that they generally found "somewhat" but not "very" useful for learning the material. Most of the 
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