Transcript Student views on homework, by Toby Leonard, Eleanor Scott, Jessica Hollis, Nima Habibzadeh, Lauren Danbury Alice Ward young person (16+)

Student views about homework
Toby Leonard
Eleanor Scott
Jessica Hollis
Nima Habibzadeh
Lauren Danbury
Alice Ward
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.
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.
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 preset 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 7’s would get less homework than a year 10.
The Results
Results Q1: On average how much homework do
you do on a weekday?
30
25
20
Low er
15
Higher
10
5
0
0-30mins
30-1hour
1-2hours
2-3hours
3-4 hours
4hours+
* All Percentages are rounded to the nearest
whole number.
• 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).
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.
40
35
30
25
Low er
20
Higher
15
10
5
0
0-5 hours
5-7hours
7-10hours 10-14hours
14hours+
• 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.
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.
30
25
20
Low er
15
Higher
10
5
OP
T
AL
L
LA
NG
AM
A
DR
DT
IT
DB
T
EN
G
SC
I
MS
HU
AR
T
MA
TH
0
• 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
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
Lower N=52
HigherN=37
Not at all 1
Not at all 1
2
2
3
3
4
4
5
5
6
6
7
7
8
8
9
9
10 Totally on topic
10 Totally on topic
Q7: How far do you agree : I am given
enough time to complete and hand in homework
for the deadline.
Higher
Low er
Strongly
strongly agree
disagree
Strongly agree
agree
agree
disagree
strongly
disagree
Strongly
agree
Strongly
agree
agree
disagree
not sure
not sure
agree
disagree
not sure
strongly
disagree
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.
not
sure
disagree
strongly
disagree
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
Q8: I understand every piece of homework I am
given
strongly
disagree
Low er
Strongly
agree
Strongly
agree
agree
agree
not sure
disagree
Higher
strongly
disagree
not
sure
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
agree
disagree
not sure
agree
disagree
strongly
disagree
Strongly
agree
Strongly
agree
not
sure
disagree
strongly
disagree
32% of higher ability students
do not understand some of
their homework with 16%
unsure
Overall this shows that of all the students we
surveyed only 39% feel that they regularly
understand their homework
Q9: Will it help your learning if your homework is
marked, with improvements and further targets?
Higher
Low er
Not Sure
Not Sure
No
Yes
No
Yes
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.
Q10: How valuable is homework to you?
Low er
Very
Higher
valuable
not at all
Very
not
valuable
not
valuable
don’t
know
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.
valuable
not at all
don’t
know
54% of higher ability
students feel that
homework is of little
value, with 21% feeling it
was of value. 24% were
unsure.
Q11: Do you use your homework diary?
sometimes
8
9
se
fu
l1
0
U
Ve
ry
yes
7
sometime
s
Higher
6
yes
Low er
5
rarely
4
Alw ays
N
rarely
never
3
never
2
Alw ays
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
se
fu
l1
Higher
ot
U
Low er
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.
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 don’t 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?
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?
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