Journal #4

Question: Is mathematics homework beneficial to students' academic achievement in the secondary level?

Eren, Ozkan, and Daniel J. Henderson. "Are We Wasting Our Children's Time By Giving Them More Homework?." Economics Of Education Review 30.5 (2011): 950-961. Education Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 10 Oct. 2014.

This article begins by telling us that homework was never as important as it was today. Many people believe that it is only harmful to students' mental and physical health. Many argue that teachers believe that students benefit from more homework, and almost all students will achieve more with extra math homework (pg. 2). To do this study eighth graders were administered cognitive tests in math, and teachers were asked questions about how much homework is assigned in their class weekly. The amount of homework assigned is decided by the individual teacher (pg. 2). The study concluded that having assigned math homework significantly helps math test scores, but having additional assigned math homework helped very little or not at all (pg. 11).

This article is mainly looking at mathematics, while my other articles, except my first, looked at other school subjects (I recently narrowed my topic down to only mathematics). My first article not only looked at the final grade in a 10th grade mathematics class, but also their scores on a standardized test. The part of my article that discussed mathematics looked at final grades, and so does this article. All three of this articles agree that math homework is beneficial to academic achievement. The only difference is the level of the homework assigned. The first article says that math homework was beneficial, but not significantly. The second article said math homework could increase a student's final grade up an entire letter. This article says math homework increases test scores, but an abundance of math homework does not.

Until I find research that tells me otherwise, I am set on the conclusion that math homework does help students' academic achievement. There are many different standards to what my conclusion applies to, but in the basic sense, math homework is beneficiary. From this article and my first article, it seems that math homework is used best in certain circumstances. For example, it is not how long a student spends on homework, but how the homework relates to the topic being addressed. Also, like the article said, people think that the more math homework that is assigned, the more it will benefit the student, but this study proved that that was not the case. Many will still argue that students spend most of their days in school, and do not need to be having an extended school day working on homework. It also hurts their mental and physical health. This is true, but like the article says, additional math homework that is assigned negatively affects students. As of right now, I am at the conclusion that, used to its best ability, math homework is beneficial to students' academic achievement.

Although I said I am temporarily at a conclusion, I still have a lot of questions about this topic. This article stated that "too much" homework negatively affects students. How do we know what "too much" homework is? Is a standard amount of homework a worksheet a day, and additional homework is another worksheet or book work? What if the homework assigned is a heavy load, but the teacher still considers it a "normal" amount? For the most part, I know that math homework is beneficial. Now I need to research what makes it beneficial or not to students.