This document discusses the role of homework in education. It summarizes surveys of parents, students, and teachers which found that most students spend 1-3 hours per night on homework. This contradicts teachers' beliefs that homework should take less time. The document also discusses misunderstandings around homework, such as the belief it promotes learning and standardized test scores. Guidelines are presented for making homework more effective and reducing stress, such as making it more student-directed and ensuring time for other activities. The impact of excessive homework on family relationships is also examined. Overall, the document questions current homework practices and whether changes should be made.

1. The Role of Homework in
education
Represented by Jiayi Liu
Educ 100W
Mar. 27

2. Content
• The real aim of doing homework in education
• Misunderstandings and misusages of homework
• How much should homework count in the whole
grade
• What amount of homework is suitable for students to
promote learning
• The impacts of homework from academic, social and
political perspectives
• How to make a change to the current homework
pattern and what kind of changes should we make

3. Current Condition
Parents’ survey
• Around half (46.37%) of the
parents surveyed think the
amount of time their child
spends doing homework is
too much
• More than half (60.12%) of
the students spend more
than one hour per night to
do homework reported by
their parents
Students’ survey
• On average, the vast majority
of students (over 90%) spend
more than an hour a night
completing homework
• When this information is
viewed by grade level it
becomes apparent that a large
number of students in grades
6‐12 are spending between
one to three hours a night on
homework

4. Current Condition
Teachers’ survey
• Most staff were in agreement that homework should
be assigned at least two times per week with honors
and AP teachers more frequently stating that it should
be given every night.
•A large portion of teachers in grades 6 to 8 seemed to
feel that homework should not take more than twenty
minutes
•This response did not seem to align with the student
and parent response for actual time it takes to
complete assignments in middle school.

5. Homework Myth
• With so much homework assigned, students nowadays are
stressed out and not benefit as much as their teachers expect
them to do from the homework
• Many problems are also caused by the heavy work, i.e.
cheating, procrastination, learning inefficiency, family
relationship, etc.
• A large amount of homework are pointless, just means of
busy work, i.e. transcriptions, math arithmetic questions
• Teachers tend to account homework for a part of the whole
course grade with up to 40 percent, which forces students to
do the homework
• Studies showed no strong correlation between homework
average and standardized test scores

6. Question #1
• what do you think is the real aim
of doing homework in education?

7. Question #2
• How do you feel about these
misusages of homework and
what do you think is the cause of
this phenomenon?

8. Homework Guidelines
• homework should advance a spirit of learning,
which is to say if you are going to have homework
at all, it must be about promoting real learning
• make homework be more student-directed. Kids
tend to learn better when they have a say in what
they have done
• homework should promote a balanced schedule,
which means that kids should also have a chance
to chill out and enjoy their time of just being kids
beyond homework
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZONH4B-
qCAs

9. Questions #3
• Based on the guideline, how much homework
do you think is too much?
• To be more specific, what percentage of whole
course do you think should homework
account for? Or in other words, what do you
think the course grade should be made up of?

10. Homework and Family
• Studies showed that a lot of families are lack
of communications and family time, which
may be the main cause of the bad family
relationship.
• The indirect cause may be too much
workloads that our children have after school
• Homework becomes a barrier between
parents and children, shorten the time they
could spend together

11. Question #4
• Homework is considered as the intersection
between schools and families, but there are
voices said that family relationship are worse
due to the appearance of homework.
• What do you think is the impact of homework
on students and their families? Does
homework really ruined students’ family lives?

12. Question #5
• French president had abolished the
homework of schools and promised to shorten
the school days. Finland students also do not
have homework after school.
• What do you think about these education
policies? Do you think the Canada government
should also make some changes to the current
homework pattern?

13. Question #6
• Like we mentioned above, if we need
to change the current homework
condition, what suggestions can you
make?

14. Thank you for listening and
participating!