A REVIEW OF THE HOMEWORK LITERATURE DOCX

Title	A REVIEW OF THE HOMEWORK LITERATURE
Author	Malcolm John Ferris
Pages	1
File Size	39.2 KB
File Type	DOCX
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A REVIEW OF THE HOMEWORK LITERATURE Author: - Malcolm John Ferris M.Ed. Historical Background to Homework Homework has been a contentious area of discourse for over a century moving in and out of favour globally within different decades (Gill & Schlossman 2004; Hallam 2004a). In more recent times the topic of homework continues to arouse emotions (Cooper 2001; Kohn 2006; Bennett and Kalish 2006). Despite years of discussion into the pros and cons of homework a definitive consensus as to how it improves learning appears to be unsubstantiated. In a positive light homework has been deemed valuable for improving children's achievement and attitudes towards independent learning. Alternatively, homework has been cited as an activity that can affect children's personal health and overall wellbeing which may induce alienation towards study (Gill & Schlossman 2004). Objections towards homework can be traced to the early part of the twentieth century. For example, within the USA parents lobbied educational institutions against homework due to emerging research findings that found no correlation between homework and academic achievement (Ibid). Moreover, rather than increase achievement, homework was viewed by some as an activity that could have the opposite effect due to its alleged disruption to personal health, home exercise, play and family bonding (Ibid). Similar concerns emerged within the United Kingdom, for example in 1929 an article was released in the Times Educational Supplement which reported a need for homework to offer significant educational value against the interruptions it placed on family life (Hallam 2004b). Homework and Academic Achievement Bennett and Kalish (2006) and Kohn (2006) collectively criticise homework claiming there is a lack of evidence linking homework to increased academic achievement. Their publications portray children as the recipients or erratic and insipid homework that fails to embrace their individual needs and abilities. Both inform of the difficulties that parents can encounter when monitoring and supporting their children's homework, such as the family tensions that can arise from parents having to coerce their children to complete homework, parents lack of knowledge to assist and not always knowing what the homework is supposed to achieve. What can be deduced from these authors' theoretical perspective is that homework appears to be paradoxical in its nature; if the purpose of homework cannot be definitively established 1...