Should students/kids do homework?

What is the purpose of homework? Is it to reinforce the lessons learned in school, provide extra practice or teach study skills? The answer varies depending on the age and academic level of the student, as do the research findings on the impact of homework.

Elementary school:

The overall goal for elementary school students is to learn how to learn in a social setting and develop a love of learning. Neither of these goals are content-specific, and neither of them rely on homework. 

Studies on homework indicate that the relationship between homework and achievement (academic progress) in elementary school is minimal at best (r=0; Cooper et al. 1989), and detrimental at worst (r=-0.4; Cooper et al. 2006).

There is one study (Welsh et al. 1986) that indicates that science homework in elementary school correlates with greater achievement. This is most likely the case because science is not highly emphasized in elementary school, with many elementary school teachers not having a high comfort level with science and therefore not including science lessons regularly in their classrooms. Therefore, overall, elementary school students are not exposed to very much science, so having science homework may be one of the rare times they encounter the subject. Some exposure through homework, is better than no exposure when it comes to achievement. 

In other words, if our students are getting the information and material in school, there is no need to reinforce that material at home, since that reinforcement doesn't help them learn the material. However, if they are not being taught something at school, teaching it at home through homework, does help them learn those topics. 

So, should our elementary students be doing some homework? What if they like sitting down at home to do homework? Keeping in mind that every student is different, for the gross majority of students, sitting down at home to do homework is not helpful and can actually be detrimental. If your child occasionally comes home excited to work on something from school, great. But if homework becomes a daily event, it can have negative long-term consequences in the form of a loss of interest in learning, in behavior and participation in school, and in academic success. Evidence shows that these young kids, who sit down for even just 30-60 min of homework a night, every night, get burnt out and don't do as well later in school. 

For these young students, the best thing you can do as a parent for their long-term academic success is to encourage them to play and be active. In fact, there is a direct positive correlation between a child’s physical activity and their performance in school. If a young student spends the evening sitting and focusing on school work, they will spend more school time fidgeting and not learning. If they spend their evenings engaging their brains in creative free-play and/or unstructured physical activity, which also engages their brains, they have a greater well of attention for school work, during school hours. Note that I mention "unstructured" physical activity. If the child is involved in structured sports multiple times a week, these structured activities do not provide the same brain challenge as running around the backyard making up games with friends, and therefore doesn't confer the same level of benefit.

But, what about reading?! Reading is arguable one of the most important content-related skills young students learn. Research clearly shows that reading at home is key to students not only learning to read, but learning to love reading.  However, reading should be presented as something everyone does in the family as fun, and never as a chore - never done as "homework." When the teachers say the students should be doing xx min of reading a day, reading becomes a chore and not a normalized part of their life. Instead of telling kids they need to read for school or because their teacher said so, make it a daily priority to engage in this lovely and enjoyable activity. 

If your child isn't into reading, don’t push it. Early reading (before kindergarten) has no long-term correlation with academic success. Early readers and late readers all end up around the same level by the end of elementary school. So, keep offering it in a positive light and if the don’t want to do it, don’t make them because the negative feelings they have towards reading will grow.

Middle school:

There seems to be a slight advantage for older middle school students (US grades 7&8) to engage in homework (r=0.07, Cooper et a.l 1989). At this age, students are starting to learn how to learn on their own. The goal of homework for these students should be focused on this goal, instilling the skills for learning outside the formal classroom, as opposed to strictly reinforcing content knowledge. To promote learning how to learn, homework should focus on gathering knowledge independently, book reports, science projects... as opposed to content specific. These grades should be independent from in-class content assessment, to keep the focus on learning rather than content.

High school:

There is a clear advantage for older students to regularly do homework (r=0.25, Cooper et al. 2006). This achievement was higher for subjects like math and science (Fan et al 2017). Students at this level should be able to learn some of the material on their own, outside of class. Therefore homework can be content focused and assessed during testing.

Higher education:

Gone are the days where we are under the illusion that a professor lecturing in front of the class for an hour is an effective way of teaching. In this setting, students only leave the course knowing about 10-15% of the course material. So why waste their time and mine, with so little content retained? But when the classroom is flipped, with content learned independently prior to the class session, and applied to solve a problem I designed to challenge the student's content knowledge, students will retain up to 45% of the content of the course. Therefore, my role as a professor is not as a teacher, but as a facilitator. I provide an organized set of materials that help students apply the knowledge they gain on their own. In other words, at this age, students are learning the content independently, through readings and videos. 

This evidence-based method of learning relies on students knowing how to learn outside of class, a skill they need to start to acquire in late middle school, perfect in high school and apply in college.

References:

Fan, Huiyong, Xu, Jianzhong, Cai, Zhihui, He, Jinbo and Fan, Xitao. Homework and students' achievement in math and science: A 30-year meta-analysis, 1986-2015. (2017) Educational Research Review.

Harris Cooper, Jorgianne Civey Robinson, Erika A Patall, Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research, 1987–2003. (2006) Review of Education Research

Harris Cooper, Jorgianne Civey Robinson, Erika A Patall. Homework and students' achievement (1989). 

W.W. Welch, H.J. Walberg, B.J. Fraser. Predicting elementary science learning using national assessment data. (1986). Journal of Research in Science Teaching.