[Maths-Education] Homework

[Laurinda Brown]

Coursework - the work done on the course - homework - the work done at 
home. I do reading, writing, thinking, planning at home and do not 
consider these activities work. Living, growing, learning ...

Dylan seems strongly against homework) which I take to be the 
institutionalised form). I suppose what I'm interested in personally is 
when homework does not feel like work (chore?) but learning. Children 
when they are learning do not count time. How do we learn? A girl in a 
class I recently visited had filled three pages of her exercise book 
and written 'I'm beginning to like maths now' at the end of the 
writing. How does that happen? When the work of the course or classwork 
is about learning it seems reasonable that this activity will be 
carried on at home - in fact how would we stop it?

Rather than thinking about the negatives and taking positions related 
to 'vanishingly small' effects (what was the population? etc etc) I am 
interested in studying how mathematics teaching (and any school 
subject's teaching and learning) can be for/subordinate to students' 
learning. Experience says that homework is then part of that culture of 
learning because how could you possibly separate the home and the 
school?

Because the majority position at the moment is differently conceived - 
homework is good for the soul? about practice/drill/routine because 
there is no time in class to do this? etc seems no reason to make the 
strong statements at the end of the message below. There is no right or 
wrong here - no black and white - homework is not wrong in and of 
itself - I find myself reacting quite strongly to such soundbites at 
the moment. Comprehensives have failed. Homework is an unproductive 
exercise. Maths teachers ... The problem is that what is working gets 
masked by this and we end up forgetting that people and systems develop 
and to consider what the conditions are  that they develop in? We are 
currently trying to attract people into teaching by telling them that 
schools have failed? The right hand does not know what the left hand is 
doing. Where the learning of students between home and school is 
seamless studying those patterns would be interesting and sharing case 
studies of practice.

Laurinda Brown


On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 18:38:50 +0000 Dylan Wiliam 
<dylan.wiliam@kcl.ac.uk> wrote:

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> Susan Hallam (when she was at the Institute of Education, and to where she
> has recently, I believe, returned) wrote a review of the research on
> homework with Richard Cowan:
> 
> Hallam, S. & Cowan, R. (1998, August) What do we know about homework? A
> literature review. Paper presented at British Educational Research
> Association 24th annual conference held at Queen's University Belfast.
> 
> I don't know if it was ever published elsewhere.
> 
> As I recall, its broad conclusion supported Peter Gill's hypothesis, namely
> that of the three kinds of homework (preparing for future learning,
> consolidating previous learning, or independent project), the most commonly
> used (consolidating previous learning) is the least effective, while
> preparing for future learning (ie what independent schools in the UK still
> tend to call 'prep') was the most effective. However, all the effects were
> vanishingly small. Getting students to do homework (and getting teachers to
> mark it!) is just an incredibly expensive and generally unproductive
> public-relations exercise.
> 
> Dylan
> 
> Dylan Wiliam                  School of Education
>                               King's College London
>                               Franklin-Wilkins Building (Waterloo Bridge Wing)
>                               Waterloo Road
> Tel: +44 (0)20 7 848 3153     London SE1 8WA
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> 
> http://www.kcl.ac.uk/education
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----------------------
Laurinda Brown
Laurinda.Brown@bristol.ac.uk

0117-9287019