Journal #6

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

Hong, Eunsook, Yun Peng, and Lonnie L. Rowell. "Homework Self-Regulation: Grade, Gender, And Achievement-Level Differences." Learning And Individual Differences 19.2 (2009): 269-276. ERIC. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.

This article does research on how much time students spend on homework and then records their final grades in the class. The study consisted of both genders high schoolers in all subjects (I am only focusing on the math portion, though), and they kept a journal of how many hours a day they did homework. The study found that a low correlation was found between hours spent doing homework and grades. They also found that low achieving students can spend more time on homework than high achieving students, but still achieve close to the same grades as high achieving students (pg. 10)

This article has shown a lot of the same results that my other studies have shown. All of the studies have agreed that homework helps, but not by a lot. Two of my articles say that homework is good, but an excessive amount of homework could lead to lower student achievement. This article does state that the more time spent on homework, the higher the achievement. This article also measures the time spent on homework, while a few of my other articles measure the amount of homework completed. My first article also argues that it is not how much time is spent on homework, but the amount of homework that is assigned. Clearly these two things are similar (1 homework assignment would take less time to complete than 5 homework assignments), but it is two different tools of measurement.

This article has answered a lot of my questions I had, and agrees with my argument, to an extent. I wondered about if higher achieving students worked as hard as lower achieving students. This answered my question saying that lower achieving students spend more time on homework than higher achieving students. This seems to normally be the case. Many lower achieving students spend more time learning the material so they can get a desirable grade in the class. Many argue saying that lower achieving students are lower achieving because they do not spend time on learning the material/homework. This study proved that if lower achieving students do not spend time on homework, they will still receive lower grades. Many also argue that the more time spent on homework will stress them out, and cause them to not do as well in the class. I have many articles saying that, but this article says otherwise. 

This article told me that low achieving students do better in their academic achievement when they have homework done. This brings up my question that if the higher achieving students do not do homework, will their achievement suffer? Is it considered fair to assign homework to the lower achieving students, but not the higher achieving students? I am still attempting to find articles that researches homework and achievement with higher achieving students.