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TITLE: |
The Motivational Benefits of Homework: A Social-Cognitive
Perspective |
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SOURCE: |
Theory into Practice 43 no3 189-96 Summ 2004 |
ABSTRACT
This article argues that, as a pedagogical practice, homework plays a critical,
long-term role in the development of children's achievement motivation.
Homework provides children with time and experience to develop positive beliefs
about achievement, as well as strategies for coping with mistakes,
difficulties, and setbacks. This article reviews current research on
achievement motivation and examines the ways parents and teachers encourage or
inhibit the development of adaptive beliefs about learning. It then integrates
the literature on homework and achievement motivation and shows that homework's
motivational benefits, while not named as such, have
been in evidence for some time. Finally, the article argues that homework is a
vital means by which children can receive the training they need to become
mature learners.
HOMEWORK--TASKS THAT TEACHERS assign to students that
are meant to be completed during out-of-school
hours--persists as a controversial aspect of children's schooling. Beliefs
about the value of homework and concerns over the quantity assigned have
fluctuated, both as a function of advances in educational research and concerns
about the
Critics who condemn homework point to the fact that
research on the topic has produced inconsistent findings and argue that its
impact on achievement, especially in elementary school, is, at best, unclear.
If, in the lower grades, homework contributes little or not at all to academic
achievement, then why engage in a practice that can promote conflict between
parents and children and interfere with development in other domains, such as
athletics and the arts (Wildman, 1968)? Why burden overstretched working
parents and low-income parents, who are likely to have access to fewer
resources to help their children? Perhaps the best recourse is to minimize or
eliminate homework altogether.
The purpose of this article is to argue that, as a
pedagogical practice, homework plays a critical, long-term role in the
development of children's achievement motivation. More specifically, homework
assignments provide children with the time and experience they need to develop
beliefs about achievement and study habits that are helpful for learning,
including the value of effort and the ability to cope with mistakes and
difficulty. Skills such as these develop neither overnight, nor in a vacuum.
Rather, they are fostered over years through daily interactions with parents
and teachers, whose own beliefs and attitudes about learning and education have
a profound influence on children's developing beliefs about their intellectual
abilities (Sigel, McGillicuddy-DeLisi, & Goodnow, 1992). In this context,
the singular focus on grades and test scores as the primary test of homework's
effectiveness is short-sighted. If our goal is to prepare children for the
demands of secondary schooling and beyond, we need to pay as much attention to
the development of skills that help children take initiative in their learning
and maintain or regain their motivation when it wanes.
I begin with a brief overview of advances in research
on achievement motivation that have provided us with a deeper understanding of
how students' beliefs about achievement influence their performance in school.
I pay specific attention to the ways parents and teachers encourage or inhibit
the development of adaptive beliefs about learning. I then turn to the
literature on homework, and show that its motivational benefits, while not
named as such, have been in evidence for some time. Finally, I argue that
homework is a vital means by which children can receive the training they need
to become mature learners.
Motivational Factors in Learning
Over the past 25 years, advances in social cognition
have contributed to a much deeper understanding of achievement motivation in
children and youth (Weiner, 1994). We no longer view achievement motivation as
an inner need or drive that individuals have in greater or weaker strengths.
Instead, achievement motivation is now best understood as a collection of
beliefs, attitudes, and emotions that influence students' performance in
school. These include students' explanations for the causes of success and
failure, their personal expectancies and standards for performance, confidence
in their ability to do well, and beliefs about the nature of
intelligence--innate or changeable (Eccles, 1993).
The social cognitive approach to the study of
achievement motivation relies heavily on attribution theory, which argues that
students come to perceive that success and failure in school can result
primarily from effort (or lack of it), ability (or lack of it), and external
factors, such as luck or task ease/difficulty (Weiner, 1994). These
attributions vary in the extent to which they are perceived as internal/external,
stable, and controllable. Effort, for example, tends to be perceived as
internal, controllable, and unstable; while ability tends to be viewed as
internal, stable, and uncontrollable.
Further, attributions are linked to specific emotions,
which in turn, predict future achievement behavior. For example, a student who
believes she failed a math test because she waited until the last minute to
study (lack of effort) will likely feel embarrassed. This embarrassment will
lead her to study in advance of the next test. In contrast, if a student
believes he failed the math test because he is not good at math (lack of
ability), he will probably feel incompetent and ashamed, and as a result, see little purpose in studying hard for the next math quiz.
The promise of this theoretical approach to children's
motivation to learn lies in the implication that negative attitudes, or more
precisely, maladaptive beliefs about learning, can be manipulated by careful
intervention. For example, research has shown that children who are susceptible
to learned helplessness--the tendency to fall apart in the face of difficulty
or challenge--tend to believe that mistakes are a sign of low ability, a stable
quality of the self over which they have no control. Yet when trained to view
mistakes as the result of lack of effort, children adopt more positive ways of
dealing with academic difficulty, such as taking more time to check their work
and asking the teacher for help (Diener & Dweck, 1978).
Origins of Achievement Beliefs
Children's beliefs about learning and achievement
develop in the multiple contexts of their homes, schools, and the broader
culture (Rogoff, 1990). We know, for example, that parents' and teachers'
beliefs about learning have a profound influence on the development of
children's own beliefs about what it takes to do well in school, as well as
their efforts to learn and apply themselves (Stipek & Gralinski, 1991).
Phillips (1987) studied children's assessments of their own ability in a group
of very accomplished, high achieving elementary students. Although all were
exemplary students, some had surprisingly low perceptions of their abilities.
Their parents, Phillips discovered, had rather low opinions of their children's
skills. These children's beliefs about their abilities were predicted more
reliably from their parents' evaluations than by their own (excellent)
objective record of achievement.
Schools and teachers are similarly influential in the
development of students' beliefs about achievement. The effects of low
expectations, communicated subtly by teachers (e.g., by not allowing enough
time to respond to a question) or by the school structure (e.g., through
placement in lower tracks), results in lower achievement and lower
self-assessments of ability (Oakes, 1985). Importantly, children as young as 5
are able to interpret what teachers think about their abilities from their
teachers' emotions. For example, when a teacher shows anger in the face of a
disappointing grade, children correctly take this to mean that the teacher
believes they did not try hard enough (low effort). In contrast, when a teacher
expresses pity at a low grade, children assume, again correctly, that the
teacher believes the student does not have the ability to do any better (low
ability).
Findings such as these must figure prominently in any
discussion about eliminating homework for children whose parents are poor,
because such reasoning runs the risk of communicating to these children and
their parents that the school believes they are incapable of helping their
children. I return to this point later.
Homework and Academic Achievement
A great deal of research evidence now demonstrates that
academic achievement is positively related to homework completion (Cooper, Lindsey,
Nye, & Greathouse, 1998). For example, Keith and Cool (1992) found that,
regardless of students' ability or prior coursework, the amount of time they
devote to homework increases their achievement.
Cooper's extensive program of research on the academic
benefits of homework has demonstrated that, across urban, suburban, and rural
students, homework exerts its greatest influence in higher rather than lower
grades (Cooper, Valentine, Nye, & Lindsey, 1999). More specifically, in
middle and high school (Grades 6-10), there is a
positive association between the amount of homework that students complete and
their grades. In the lower grades (Grades 2-4), however, this relationship is
negative. This finding, coupled with research showing that students' emotions
are depressed when they are engaged in homework (Leone & Richards, 1989),
has led some to argue that homework can indeed be detrimental in elementary
school. Others argue that if homework does not foster achievement, or worse, has a negative effect on grades, it may make sense to
minimize or eliminate the practice altogether (Kralovec & Buell, 1991).
In fact, a careful examination of homework's benefits
for elementary school students suggests that a much more complex and nuanced
interplay of factors is at work. Researchers have found that, because of their
limited cognitive capacity, younger children tend to have less effective study
habits and are less able to focus and avoid distraction than older children
(Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2001). Teachers also use homework differently at
different levels of schooling. A 2000 survey found that both elementary and
secondary school teachers report that they assign homework in order to foster
study and time management skills. However, elementary school teachers believe
more strongly in homework's value for the purpose of training students on how
to study and use their time well.
This implies that for elementary level teachers, the
content of homework may be less important than the opportunity it provides to
foster long-term time management skills, the effects of which would not be
evident in younger children's school grades (Muhlenbruck, Cooper, Nye, &
Lindsey, 2000).
As mentioned earlier, the development of such skills
occurs in the larger context of home and school. Parents--teachers' partners in
their children's learning--play a critical role in the development of their
children's beliefs about and approaches to homework.
Parent Involvement and the Development of
Adaptive Achievement Beliefs
Parents socialize their children for learning in two
fundamental ways. Through their cognitive socialization practices, they help
foster their children's intellectual development by guiding their learning
(Rogoff, 1990). They participate with their children in a variety of activities
(reading, visiting the library) and daily household tasks (tidying up and
putting groceries away). Through their motivational socialization practices,
they influence the development of attitudes that foster school success, including
a belief in the value of effort and a tolerance for mistakes and setbacks
(Bempechat, Drago-Severson, & Boulay, 2002).
Parent involvement takes different forms. Their overt
behavior (e.g., going to parent-teacher nights and other school events), their
personal investment (e.g., showing that they enjoy the child's school and their
interactions with school personnel), and cognitive/intellectual support (e.g.,
helping with homework) serve to communicate to children that education is
valued at home (Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994). In general, parents across
social class and ethnic groups are willing to help their children with
homework, and believe that doing so is part of their job as parents
(Delgado-Gaitan, 1992). Not only do parents tend to believe that they can have
a positive influence on their children's intellectual development, they also
perceive that teachers expect them to help their children with the assignments
they send home (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2001).
Those who have studied the effects of homework on
academic achievement have discussed its non-academic benefits (Warton, 2001),
its intermediary effects on motivation (Cooper et al., 1998), and its impact on
the development of proximal student outcomes (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2001) and
general personal development (Epstein & Van Voorhis, 2001). In one form or
another, all of these researchers are speaking to the development of adaptive
motivational skills--including responsibility, confidence, persistence, goal
setting, planning, and the ability to delay gratification--all of which
students need increasingly as they progress through middle school to high
school and beyond. Mounting research suggests that these skills are fostered
through interactions with parents, as a result of the ways they socialize their
children's intellectual and motivational skills. Put another way, parent
involvement is a key ingredient in the development of beliefs and attitudes
that help to foster academic achievement.
For example, Grolnick has suggested that children whose
parents support their intellectual development may develop a certain level of
comfort and familiarity with school-like tasks (Grolnick & Slowiaczek,
1994). This, in turn, may foster beliefs that school-related activities are
controllable, which facilitates the development of adaptive beliefs about the
causes of success and failure. Relatedly, Cooper and his colleagues (1998)
examined the relationship between student and parent beliefs and attitudes
about homework and academic achievement in elementary and secondary school. At
all ages, children's attitudes about homework were positively associated with
parents' attitudes. And, in the higher grades, students' attitudes about
homework were directly predicted by their parents' attitudes, which were positively
and directly related to their children's school performance.
For some students in this study, the lack of a positive
effect of homework on achievement may have been the result of their parents'
own negative attitudes. In one study of urban and suburban fifth through ninth
graders, most students reported that they were not happy while they worked on
homework, and most reported that they did their homework alone (Leone &
Richards, 1989). However, if they did their homework in the presence of a parent,
the effect was more positive and their achievement greater.
More recently, in a test of the effectiveness of
homework on academic achievement, Cooper, Lindsey, and Nye (2000) found that
parents who had positive attitudes about homework facilitated its completion by
helping in ways that promoted understanding, but were not so intrusive as to
hinder its eventual completion. Similarly, Keith and Cool (1992) found that
parent involvement (as measured through educational aspirations, communication about
school and school events, home structure, and participation in school
activities) had a significant positive effect on student achievement in several
subject areas. Importantly, this effect was facilitated through
homework--parents who are more involved encourage children to do more homework
and reading at home (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2001). In addition, they model for
their children appropriate ways to deal with confusion, manage their time, and
plan effectively for future assignments. In other words, when parents teach
their children how to break a complicated project down into manageable pieces,
they communicate the extent to which school outcomes are within the child's
control.
Further, when parents understand what teachers are
requiring of their children, they then influence the ways students come to
judge the difficulty of different assignments, the extent to which they will
need to manage their time in order to meet deadlines, and appreciate that there
are times when a more attractive activity needs to be deferred or abandoned in
order to complete homework. Modeling and otherwise providing guidelines for how
homework can be completed are critical ways parents help children regulate
their time and develop their motivational skills, including goal setting,
planning, persistence, and delay of gratification (Hoover-Dempsey et al.,
2001). Delay of gratification, for example, may be easier when students have an
intrinsic interest in the assignment (Bembenutty, 1999). Yet it is precisely
when intrinsic interest is low that students need to be able to fall back on a
repertoire of beliefs and strategies that will see them through difficulty and
setbacks. Rather than assume that students will pick up these strategies as
they need them, we must recognize that these strategies should be taught and
fostered over many years. And parent involvement is vital to the development of
these strategies.
Overall, the research suggests that assigning homework
in the early school years is beneficial more for the valuable motivational
skills it serves to foster in the long term, than for short-term school grades.
Undoubtedly, parents are in a greater position to influence their children when
they are younger than when they are older (Xu & Corno, 1998). In the early
years, when parents' attitudes about homework are positive, they can lay the
foundation for students' positive attitudes later, which are related to their
grades (Cooper, Lindsey, & Nye, 2000).
What about low-income parents, who may not have either
the time or the resources to be involved in ways that promote academic
achievement? Does homework serve to make an already unequal educational playing
field even more so? What about middle-income families where both parents work?
Is it fair to ask them, after a full day's work, to add homework supervision to
the many tasks they need to complete in the evening? I argue below that the
educational needs of all children are best met by policies that facilitate, not
eliminate, parent involvement.
Social Class and Homework
There was a time when educational researchers believed
that children at risk for school failure--those living in poverty, in single
parent households, whose parents themselves have low levels of education, or
speak English as a second language--were being done a disservice by parents who
neither cared about nor were involved in their education. This "deficit
model" approach (Glazer & Moynihan, 1963) to the persistent problem of
underachievement gave way to a more sophisticated understanding of the ways
child-rearing strategies are influenced by parents' own culture and ethnicity.
Many studies have shown that, across ethnic groups, low-income parents care
deeply about their children's intellectual development, and employ rich and
varied means to encourage both a love of learning and a deep value for
education (Ogbu, 1995).
Like their middle-income peers, many low-income parents
provide a daily structure and place for homework completion, clearly
communicate expectations and standards for both social behavior and academic
performance, stay abreast of due dates for homework assignments and tests, and
share stories of their own occupational difficulties, which they believe their
children can avoid by doing well in school. They also help with homework, even
if they have difficulty understanding it, and visit the school when possible
(Delgado-Gaitan, 1992).
The notion that homework
"punishes students in poverty for being poor" (Kralovec & Buell,
1991) is disingenuous at best and would have us feel sorry for, rather than
challenge, low-income students to do their best. Further, both anecdotal
and research evidence suggests that low-income parents (and their teachers)
want their children to be challenged and prepared for the increasingly
competitive world of work. Homework is an integral part of this preparation. To
minimize or eliminate homework on the seemingly well-intentioned, but flawed
assumption, that poor parents would be grateful to have less to do with their
children's education is to do a great disservice to these parents and their
children. Such a policy would communicate that teachers feel sorry for these
parents and believe that they lack the competence to help their children. The
low expectations conveyed by this view would serve, ultimately, to suppress
academic achievement.
Quite to the contrary, teachers want parents to be
involved, in part because this makes them feel supported in their work.
Importantly, when parents are involved in their children's schoolwork, teachers
are less likely to hold to stereotypes of low-income parents as uninterested in
their children's education (Epstein & Van Voorhis, 2001). Further, when
homework is carefully designed to elicit parent involvement, even parents with
little formal schooling make substantive contributions to their children's
learning (Epstein & Van Voorhis, 2001). Epstein has described her TIPS
(Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork) homework design as an interactive
program where students involve their families in carefully designed and clearly
explained homework assignments. For example, the language arts homework
assignments require students to engage in such activities as reading the
writing prompts out loud, discussing the topic with members of their family,
and taking notes on their family's reactions to their story. Across subject
areas, innovative programs such as TIPS foster more parent involvement, greater
completion of homework, and higher achievement (Van Voorhis, 2001).
As previous research has shown, homework is a critical means
of communicating standards and expectations (Natriello & McDill, 1986).
Regardless of social class, teachers' standards for homework completion improve
academic performance, something that Catholic educators have realized for some
time. Catholic schools are institutions where the poorest children in the
At the other end of the social class spectrum, many
middle-class parents complain that their children's elementary school homework
is stressful for the whole family, robbing parents and children of
opportunities to pursue other family activities and interfering with children's
extracurricular interests. Some parents report feeling resentful that their own
limited time to relax is taken up by their children's homework (Xu & Corno,
1998), while others report that they routinely send notes to their children's
teachers explaining that they do not allow their children to finish homework
that they feel takes too much time (Bempechat, 2000). In short, they feel sorry
for their children when they have challenging homework. These are often the
same parents who will later demand an exacting course of study from their
children's high school teachers, in order for their children to be as well
prepared as possible for the increasingly competitive college application
process.
Many parents do not realize that, in advocating for
little or no homework, homework that is not "stressful," or homework
that does not become "their" homework, their children will pay the
price in the long run in lack of preparedness for the academic demands and
obstacles that will eventually come their way. These parents, in effect, rob
their children of countless opportunities to develop adaptive learning beliefs
and behaviors. Parents who actively protest a school's homework policy on the
grounds that it is too demanding run the risk of communicating to their
children both low expectations and a belief that they lack the ability to rise
to a teacher's standards. This can serve to undermine children's confidence and
developing beliefs about themselves as effective learners. Parents who are not
supportive of teachers' homework policies will communicate their
dissatisfaction to their children, who are likely to take on their parents' negative
attitudes (Epstein & Van Voorhis, 2001).
Conclusion
As they progress through elementary to secondary and
post-secondary schooling, the tasks teachers require of their students become
increasingly complex. For many students, mistakes, confusion, and academic
struggle become a common aspect of learning. Children need to know that their
teachers and parents believe in their ability to acquire knowledge and master
new skills, especially when they are confronted with setbacks. Despite concerns
and outright objections from some parents, teachers need to maintain
appropriate standards of performance for their students through homework
requirements. Under the guidance of adults who challenge their intellectual
growth, homework provides students with the training they need to develop
adaptive achievement beliefs and behaviors. All children, rich and poor, need
to be pushed, not pitied, as they struggle to become mature learners.
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ADDED MATERIAL
Janine Bempechat is a senior research associate at the
Center for the Study of Human Development,