Introduction
My student teaching experience in an urban, neighborhood school in Philadelphia, PA made me intrigued by the candor of adolescent students in addition to the diversity of students in a single class. Many of my students are not afraid to voice their opinions in class, and their voices are informative for me to gauge student understanding, frustrations, misconceptions, engagement, strengths, and weaknesses. Right when I think my students are not paying attention, they surprise me with a quick comment or inquisitive question. Something that has perplexed me throughout my student teaching experience is the seeming disconnect between what students say they want and their follow-up actions. On the first day of class, my students were asked to fill out an information sheet for attendance records. At the bottom of the sheet, my classroom mentor asked students to write down their plans for after high school. As I flipped through the sheets for my first takeover class I read that many of my students want to attend college in order to pursue careers in medicine, nursing, law, culinary arts, athletics, and business. Although many of my students anticipate to graduate from high school and to attend college, their classwork did not reflect their ambitions. When I entered my field placement I expected students to be able to recognize that their grades are directly influenced by the completion of their assignments both in and outside of class, yet I found that my students were surprised and offended when they received no credit on assignments they never turned in.
Homework was an area where I saw discrepancies between student desires (high grades) and student actions (completion of assignments). I noticed that many students would lose, forget, not do, or copy homework. It was rare to receive assignments from more than half of my class, and of the students who did not turn their work in, only a few of these students turned in late work for partial credit. My observations of student work habits gave me a false impression about student beliefs. I believed that the majority of my students did not see a connection between completion of assignments and their grades or they simply did not care about their grades. The connection between doing homework and my grade was something I was always cognizant of because my parents were constantly asking about my grades and about the amount of homework my teachers assigned. Therefore, when my students appeared to lack this awareness, I was taken by surprise and I no longer felt like I could relate to my students in this regard.
Moreover, an entire class period was dedicated to insure that all students could access their grades and the class website. Even with reminders, few students checked their grades and thus many students were shocked to find out that they were on the border to fail the class. Consequently, I was surprised when interim reports were distributed because I saw a completely different side of my students. My students flocked to me with questions about their grades and make-up work. By interim of the 1st marking period, 18 of my 33 students were at risk of failing (65% or below) with grades below 70%. A closer, noteworthy examination of individual students’ grades indicated that the low grades were due to students not turning in or making up missed work and not because of a lack of intellectual or ability level. This heightened my interest to explore why homework did not appear to be a motivator for my students nor did it seem to facilitate learning in the classroom. I was particularly interested in exploring, “What happens to students’ learning when a teacher uses homework to facilitate peer and self assessment?”
My graduate studies and student teaching experience have exposed me to many different views on homework ranging from the belief that homework should be eliminated to the belief that homework is essential to learning and should be assigned daily. Homework is typically defined as any tasks “assigned to students by school teachers that are meant to be carried out during non-school hours” (Cooper, 1989a, p. 7). According to Harris Cooper et al. (2006), homework has a positive influence on achievement, and there are stronger correlations for grades 7-12 than for K-6 (p. 3), however, researchers such as Kralovec & Buells (2001) claim “Homework is a black hole in the learning process, leaving teachers unaware of each student’s true educational level or progress and unable to scaffold new knowledge for the students” (p. 33). Even though there is much debate over the practice of homework, researchers universally agree that there are multiple variations of homework incorporating factors such as amount, purpose, frequency, degree of choice, degree of individualization, and social context.
The purpose of homework in my classroom is to review class material and to provide students with the chance to practice applying the new material. Homework is never intended to be busy work or punishment. If I do not cover enough material in class for students to be able to independently complete the intended homework then I save it for when the homework would serve as a review of content rather than a preview of content. In some cases I may ask students to do a section of the original homework assignment so they can review the material that was covered. My classroom mentor graded homework based on accuracy, so once I took over some of her classes I continued her established practice.
Homework was an area where I saw discrepancies between student desires (high grades) and student actions (completion of assignments). I noticed that many students would lose, forget, not do, or copy homework. It was rare to receive assignments from more than half of my class, and of the students who did not turn their work in, only a few of these students turned in late work for partial credit. My observations of student work habits gave me a false impression about student beliefs. I believed that the majority of my students did not see a connection between completion of assignments and their grades or they simply did not care about their grades. The connection between doing homework and my grade was something I was always cognizant of because my parents were constantly asking about my grades and about the amount of homework my teachers assigned. Therefore, when my students appeared to lack this awareness, I was taken by surprise and I no longer felt like I could relate to my students in this regard.
Moreover, an entire class period was dedicated to insure that all students could access their grades and the class website. Even with reminders, few students checked their grades and thus many students were shocked to find out that they were on the border to fail the class. Consequently, I was surprised when interim reports were distributed because I saw a completely different side of my students. My students flocked to me with questions about their grades and make-up work. By interim of the 1st marking period, 18 of my 33 students were at risk of failing (65% or below) with grades below 70%. A closer, noteworthy examination of individual students’ grades indicated that the low grades were due to students not turning in or making up missed work and not because of a lack of intellectual or ability level. This heightened my interest to explore why homework did not appear to be a motivator for my students nor did it seem to facilitate learning in the classroom. I was particularly interested in exploring, “What happens to students’ learning when a teacher uses homework to facilitate peer and self assessment?”
My graduate studies and student teaching experience have exposed me to many different views on homework ranging from the belief that homework should be eliminated to the belief that homework is essential to learning and should be assigned daily. Homework is typically defined as any tasks “assigned to students by school teachers that are meant to be carried out during non-school hours” (Cooper, 1989a, p. 7). According to Harris Cooper et al. (2006), homework has a positive influence on achievement, and there are stronger correlations for grades 7-12 than for K-6 (p. 3), however, researchers such as Kralovec & Buells (2001) claim “Homework is a black hole in the learning process, leaving teachers unaware of each student’s true educational level or progress and unable to scaffold new knowledge for the students” (p. 33). Even though there is much debate over the practice of homework, researchers universally agree that there are multiple variations of homework incorporating factors such as amount, purpose, frequency, degree of choice, degree of individualization, and social context.
The purpose of homework in my classroom is to review class material and to provide students with the chance to practice applying the new material. Homework is never intended to be busy work or punishment. If I do not cover enough material in class for students to be able to independently complete the intended homework then I save it for when the homework would serve as a review of content rather than a preview of content. In some cases I may ask students to do a section of the original homework assignment so they can review the material that was covered. My classroom mentor graded homework based on accuracy, so once I took over some of her classes I continued her established practice.