We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework-in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You’ve said that they’re missing the point.īempechat: I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older-to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.īU Today sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.īU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework-Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next, Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies. “Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century.

Are you doing your homework