Student views about homework

1

• Student views about homework
• Toby Leonard
• Eleanor Scott
• Jessica Hollis
• Nima Habibzadeh
• Lauren Danbury
• Alice Ward

2

• What are we doing and why?
• Our goal was to investigate what types of
  homework is being set across different subjects
  and how effective this homework is in improving
  the learning of students.
• We also wanted to look at the different attitudes
  to homework, looking at different areas of
  ability, to determine how students and teachers
  feel about the usefulness of homework tasks.

3
So what did we do?

• In our first meeting, we met Mary Kellett, from
  the Open University. We worked with her for a
  morning and had a session talking about
  observational skills and what is successful when
  designing a questionnaire. This was useful
  because it gave us a really good idea of what we
  were hoping to achieve.
• We spoke to her about what we should do in our
  project, how it would be effective and what would
  get the best results. Such as interviews,
  questionnaires and attitude surveys.

4
Designing the questionnaire

• We sat around a table with Mary, Mrs Weston and
  the group and discussed open and closed
  questions, different types of bias and also what
  answers we were looking for. From this, we then
  knew what type of questions to ask. We decided to
  use multiple choice type questions, inviting
  students to circle answers so it would be easier
  to analyse the data from these pre-set
  categories. We also asked them to write down the
  name of any specific subjects they get most and
  least homework in. We thought that this would
  give us the most accurate results.

5
Who we would ask?

• We wanted to get a really strong sample of
  students, across the different key stages and
  abilities
• We decided that we would ask 80 pupils to fill in
  the questionnaires for us, and then we would take
  a smaller sample of students to interview in more
  detail. We would ask the highest and lowest
  ability teaching sets in years 7,8,9 and 10, as
  we felt 11, 12 and 13 would be concentrating
  mainly on coursework.

6
Pilot survey

• From here, we left Mary for a few weeks and
  worked on our own, finishing the questionnaire,
  designed a pilot survey and posted it to a tutor
  group to make sure it made sense and there were
  no ambiguities. From this pilot we made some
  alterations to improve the accessibility of it
  and ensure we got accurate results.

7
Questionnaires

• When these changes were made, we photocopied the
  questionnaires in different colours indicating
  year group and wrote on the top of the sheet, the
  higher and lower ability teaching set within year
  groups. We went to the different classes and gave
  out questionnaires to ten students in each of
  these classes. All these questionnaires were
  given out and filled in anonymously to ensure
  confidentiality and to get a more honest result
  from the students. From there we began to analyse
  our findings.

8
Results

• When we got the questionnaires back, we did a
  master sheet for all the individual year groups
  which gave us an idea of what year groups get the
  most homework and separated SATs from GCSEs and
  KS3 and KS4. We then did a master sheet for
  ability and this showed us whether students of a
  specific standard get more or less homework
  because of this. We did this by tallying each
  question to see how many people thought the same
  thing.

9
Graphing

• From these results, we graphed them by ability
  and displayed these results side by side to
  compare the difference between higher and lower
  ability. Because we thought this would make more
  sense than age group. This way, you can measure
  it through ability across the school. We chose
  not to do it by age group because we decided it
  would have been obvious that year 7s would get
  less homework than a year 10.

10
The Results

11
Results Q1 On average how much homework do you
do on a weekday?

• Lower ability students spend less time on
  homework (64 spend 30 minutes or less per week
  day night where as 17 are doing between 1 and 3
  hours a week day night).
• It is a different picture with the higher
  ability students as they spend more time on their
  homework (37 spend 30 or less per week day night
  where as 26 are spending between 1 and 3 hours a
  week day night).

All Percentages are rounded to the nearest
whole number.
12
Q2 On average how much homework do you do in a
whole week?

• 88 of the lower ability students spend less
  than 5 hours on homework in a week. 5 of
  students do between 7 and 14 hours of homework
  per week.
• Again with this information we see a different
  view with the higher ability, 55 do less than 5
  hours on homework a week rather than 15 do
  between 7 and 14 hours of homework per week.

13
Q4 Which subject do you get the most homework in?

• Maths is clearly giving a higher number of
  homework than all subjects in both higher and
  lower ability as you can see from the graph.
• English despite being a core subject is
  perceived by the students in both ability groups
  as giving the least amount of homework out of
  all the subjects, moreover science, being another
  core subjects is relatively low compared to
  humanities that is getting higher amount of
  homework, bearing in mind we need the core
  subjects the most, to achieve future goals

14
Q6- In your opinion how relevant is your homework
to what you are learning in lesson?

• On a 10 point scale 58 of lower ability
  students rate the relevance of their homework as
  5 or less compared to high ability students.
• 42 of lower ability students rate the relevance
  of their homework as 6 or more compared to 65 of
  higher ability students

15
Q7 How far do you agree I am given enough
time to complete and hand in homework for the
deadline.
54 of Higher ability students tended to agreed
that they had enough time to complete homework,
with 29 feeling they did not get enough time
Lower ability students tended to be not sure as
to whether they felt that they got enough time to
complete homework. 32 of lower ability students
felt that they had enough time, but the majority
were unsure or felt they did not.
16
Q8 I understand every piece of homework I am
given
32 of higher ability students do not understand
some of their homework with 16 unsure
36 of lower ability students do not understand
some pieces of their homework With 32 unsure,
which shows that 68 of lower ability students
are not fully understanding their homework
Overall this shows that of all the students we
surveyed only 39 feel that they regularly
understand their homework
17
Q9 Will it help your learning if your homework
is marked, with improvements and further targets?
These graphs clearly speak for themselves,
students of all abilities want homework marked
with improvements and targets. 58 of students
felt that this would help their learning.
18
Q10 How valuable is homework to you?
54 of higher ability students feel that homework
is of little value, with 21 feeling it was of
value. 24 were unsure.
53 of lower ability students feel that homework
is of little value, with only 23 feeling it was
of value. Its interesting that 23 were unsure of
its value.
19
Q11 Do you use your homework diary?
Overall it seems that students are using their
homework diaries with 48 of lower ability using
theirs and 74 of higher using theirs. This is a
massive difference between the abilities and
appears to be something that needs addressing.
When asked how useful they felt the diaries
were, the lower ability students tended to lean
towards not useful, with higher ability really
varied. When you take this into account of
students understanding of homework, it is
interesting to note that those who do not
understand their homework tend to be those
students who are not using their planners, or
finding them useful. This could be that they are
not using them properly, and so not
understanding, or that lower ability students are
not understanding before they put their homework
in, and therefore not understanding it when they
get home.
20
Main Conclusions

• The main conclusions that we have drawn are
• Lower ability students tend to spend less time on
  their homework, but feel that they need more time
  to complete it.
• Lower ability students feel that they do not
  understand their homework, and this seems to link
  with why they dont tend to find all homework
  useful or valuable, or want to spend time on it.
• It was surprising to see that most higher ability
  students do their homework at school, how can
  lower ability students be encouraged to do this
  also?
• The maths department seems be to giving out the
  most homework, but other core subjects are not
  giving enough. This is interesting when looking
  at GCSE results, as Maths are making great
  improvements.
• There is a clear divide between how students feel
  towards homework and their ability, except when
  looking at how all students feel about the
  validity of homework. It would seem that students
  of all abilities need to be more engaged with
  homework, to feel that it is relevant and useful
  to them.
• It would also seem evident that the school is
  providing facilities for students to complete
  homework at school, but lower ability are not
  using them, would it be more beneficial to have
  these sessions staffed within departments to help
  lower ability students with their understanding?

21
Areas for discussion

• How can lower ability students be more engaged in
  homework?
• How can departments link homework to lessons to
  ensure that it is relevant?
• Are higher ability students spending too much
  time on or given too much homework? Are lower
  ability students given enough?
• How can the diary be improved to ensure all
  students feel it is a valuable resource that can
  help them?
• What is in place to help students who do not
  understand their homework? How might this be
  improved?

22
Thank you

• We have looked at all the data we could, and we
  could have continued to analyse it in many
  different ways.
• It is important to note that all students are not
  going to be eager about all aspects of homework,
  but as a school we need to continue to try and
  portray that homework is a valuable and crucial
  tool for learning.
• Thank you