research on homework 2019

Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

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

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. 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.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU 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.

BU 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. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : 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. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with 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.

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.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways—by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

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Senior Contributing Editor

Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

She can be reached at [email protected] .

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There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what’s going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

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The Cult of Homework

America’s devotion to the practice stems in part from the fact that it’s what today’s parents and teachers grew up with themselves.

America has long had a fickle relationship with homework. A century or so ago, progressive reformers argued that it made kids unduly stressed , which later led in some cases to district-level bans on it for all grades under seventh. This anti-homework sentiment faded, though, amid mid-century fears that the U.S. was falling behind the Soviet Union (which led to more homework), only to resurface in the 1960s and ’70s, when a more open culture came to see homework as stifling play and creativity (which led to less). But this didn’t last either: In the ’80s, government researchers blamed America’s schools for its economic troubles and recommended ramping homework up once more.

The 21st century has so far been a homework-heavy era, with American teenagers now averaging about twice as much time spent on homework each day as their predecessors did in the 1990s . Even little kids are asked to bring school home with them. A 2015 study , for instance, found that kindergarteners, who researchers tend to agree shouldn’t have any take-home work, were spending about 25 minutes a night on it.

But not without pushback. As many children, not to mention their parents and teachers, are drained by their daily workload, some schools and districts are rethinking how homework should work—and some teachers are doing away with it entirely. They’re reviewing the research on homework (which, it should be noted, is contested) and concluding that it’s time to revisit the subject.

Read: My daughter’s homework is killing me

Hillsborough, California, an affluent suburb of San Francisco, is one district that has changed its ways. The district, which includes three elementary schools and a middle school, worked with teachers and convened panels of parents in order to come up with a homework policy that would allow students more unscheduled time to spend with their families or to play. In August 2017, it rolled out an updated policy, which emphasized that homework should be “meaningful” and banned due dates that fell on the day after a weekend or a break.

“The first year was a bit bumpy,” says Louann Carlomagno, the district’s superintendent. She says the adjustment was at times hard for the teachers, some of whom had been doing their job in a similar fashion for a quarter of a century. Parents’ expectations were also an issue. Carlomagno says they took some time to “realize that it was okay not to have an hour of homework for a second grader—that was new.”

Most of the way through year two, though, the policy appears to be working more smoothly. “The students do seem to be less stressed based on conversations I’ve had with parents,” Carlomagno says. It also helps that the students performed just as well on the state standardized test last year as they have in the past.

Earlier this year, the district of Somerville, Massachusetts, also rewrote its homework policy, reducing the amount of homework its elementary and middle schoolers may receive. In grades six through eight, for example, homework is capped at an hour a night and can only be assigned two to three nights a week.

Jack Schneider, an education professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell whose daughter attends school in Somerville, is generally pleased with the new policy. But, he says, it’s part of a bigger, worrisome pattern. “The origin for this was general parental dissatisfaction, which not surprisingly was coming from a particular demographic,” Schneider says. “Middle-class white parents tend to be more vocal about concerns about homework … They feel entitled enough to voice their opinions.”

Schneider is all for revisiting taken-for-granted practices like homework, but thinks districts need to take care to be inclusive in that process. “I hear approximately zero middle-class white parents talking about how homework done best in grades K through two actually strengthens the connection between home and school for young people and their families,” he says. Because many of these parents already feel connected to their school community, this benefit of homework can seem redundant. “They don’t need it,” Schneider says, “so they’re not advocating for it.”

That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that homework is more vital in low-income districts. In fact, there are different, but just as compelling, reasons it can be burdensome in these communities as well. Allison Wienhold, who teaches high-school Spanish in the small town of Dunkerton, Iowa, has phased out homework assignments over the past three years. Her thinking: Some of her students, she says, have little time for homework because they’re working 30 hours a week or responsible for looking after younger siblings.

As educators reduce or eliminate the homework they assign, it’s worth asking what amount and what kind of homework is best for students. It turns out that there’s some disagreement about this among researchers, who tend to fall in one of two camps.

In the first camp is Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. Cooper conducted a review of the existing research on homework in the mid-2000s , and found that, up to a point, the amount of homework students reported doing correlates with their performance on in-class tests. This correlation, the review found, was stronger for older students than for younger ones.

This conclusion is generally accepted among educators, in part because it’s compatible with “the 10-minute rule,” a rule of thumb popular among teachers suggesting that the proper amount of homework is approximately 10 minutes per night, per grade level—that is, 10 minutes a night for first graders, 20 minutes a night for second graders, and so on, up to two hours a night for high schoolers.

In Cooper’s eyes, homework isn’t overly burdensome for the typical American kid. He points to a 2014 Brookings Institution report that found “little evidence that the homework load has increased for the average student”; onerous amounts of homework, it determined, are indeed out there, but relatively rare. Moreover, the report noted that most parents think their children get the right amount of homework, and that parents who are worried about under-assigning outnumber those who are worried about over-assigning. Cooper says that those latter worries tend to come from a small number of communities with “concerns about being competitive for the most selective colleges and universities.”

According to Alfie Kohn, squarely in camp two, most of the conclusions listed in the previous three paragraphs are questionable. Kohn, the author of The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing , considers homework to be a “reliable extinguisher of curiosity,” and has several complaints with the evidence that Cooper and others cite in favor of it. Kohn notes, among other things, that Cooper’s 2006 meta-analysis doesn’t establish causation, and that its central correlation is based on children’s (potentially unreliable) self-reporting of how much time they spend doing homework. (Kohn’s prolific writing on the subject alleges numerous other methodological faults.)

In fact, other correlations make a compelling case that homework doesn’t help. Some countries whose students regularly outperform American kids on standardized tests, such as Japan and Denmark, send their kids home with less schoolwork , while students from some countries with higher homework loads than the U.S., such as Thailand and Greece, fare worse on tests. (Of course, international comparisons can be fraught because so many factors, in education systems and in societies at large, might shape students’ success.)

Kohn also takes issue with the way achievement is commonly assessed. “If all you want is to cram kids’ heads with facts for tomorrow’s tests that they’re going to forget by next week, yeah, if you give them more time and make them do the cramming at night, that could raise the scores,” he says. “But if you’re interested in kids who know how to think or enjoy learning, then homework isn’t merely ineffective, but counterproductive.”

His concern is, in a way, a philosophical one. “The practice of homework assumes that only academic growth matters, to the point that having kids work on that most of the school day isn’t enough,” Kohn says. What about homework’s effect on quality time spent with family? On long-term information retention? On critical-thinking skills? On social development? On success later in life? On happiness? The research is quiet on these questions.

Another problem is that research tends to focus on homework’s quantity rather than its quality, because the former is much easier to measure than the latter. While experts generally agree that the substance of an assignment matters greatly (and that a lot of homework is uninspiring busywork), there isn’t a catchall rule for what’s best—the answer is often specific to a certain curriculum or even an individual student.

Given that homework’s benefits are so narrowly defined (and even then, contested), it’s a bit surprising that assigning so much of it is often a classroom default, and that more isn’t done to make the homework that is assigned more enriching. A number of things are preserving this state of affairs—things that have little to do with whether homework helps students learn.

Jack Schneider, the Massachusetts parent and professor, thinks it’s important to consider the generational inertia of the practice. “The vast majority of parents of public-school students themselves are graduates of the public education system,” he says. “Therefore, their views of what is legitimate have been shaped already by the system that they would ostensibly be critiquing.” In other words, many parents’ own history with homework might lead them to expect the same for their children, and anything less is often taken as an indicator that a school or a teacher isn’t rigorous enough. (This dovetails with—and complicates—the finding that most parents think their children have the right amount of homework.)

Barbara Stengel, an education professor at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, brought up two developments in the educational system that might be keeping homework rote and unexciting. The first is the importance placed in the past few decades on standardized testing, which looms over many public-school classroom decisions and frequently discourages teachers from trying out more creative homework assignments. “They could do it, but they’re afraid to do it, because they’re getting pressure every day about test scores,” Stengel says.

Second, she notes that the profession of teaching, with its relatively low wages and lack of autonomy, struggles to attract and support some of the people who might reimagine homework, as well as other aspects of education. “Part of why we get less interesting homework is because some of the people who would really have pushed the limits of that are no longer in teaching,” she says.

“In general, we have no imagination when it comes to homework,” Stengel says. She wishes teachers had the time and resources to remake homework into something that actually engages students. “If we had kids reading—anything, the sports page, anything that they’re able to read—that’s the best single thing. If we had kids going to the zoo, if we had kids going to parks after school, if we had them doing all of those things, their test scores would improve. But they’re not. They’re going home and doing homework that is not expanding what they think about.”

“Exploratory” is one word Mike Simpson used when describing the types of homework he’d like his students to undertake. Simpson is the head of the Stone Independent School, a tiny private high school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that opened in 2017. “We were lucky to start a school a year and a half ago,” Simpson says, “so it’s been easy to say we aren’t going to assign worksheets, we aren’t going assign regurgitative problem sets.” For instance, a half-dozen students recently built a 25-foot trebuchet on campus.

Simpson says he thinks it’s a shame that the things students have to do at home are often the least fulfilling parts of schooling: “When our students can’t make the connection between the work they’re doing at 11 o’clock at night on a Tuesday to the way they want their lives to be, I think we begin to lose the plot.”

When I talked with other teachers who did homework makeovers in their classrooms, I heard few regrets. Brandy Young, a second-grade teacher in Joshua, Texas, stopped assigning take-home packets of worksheets three years ago, and instead started asking her students to do 20 minutes of pleasure reading a night. She says she’s pleased with the results, but she’s noticed something funny. “Some kids,” she says, “really do like homework.” She’s started putting out a bucket of it for students to draw from voluntarily—whether because they want an additional challenge or something to pass the time at home.

Chris Bronke, a high-school English teacher in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove, told me something similar. This school year, he eliminated homework for his class of freshmen, and now mostly lets students study on their own or in small groups during class time. It’s usually up to them what they work on each day, and Bronke has been impressed by how they’ve managed their time.

In fact, some of them willingly spend time on assignments at home, whether because they’re particularly engaged, because they prefer to do some deeper thinking outside school, or because they needed to spend time in class that day preparing for, say, a biology test the following period. “They’re making meaningful decisions about their time that I don’t think education really ever gives students the experience, nor the practice, of doing,” Bronke said.

The typical prescription offered by those overwhelmed with homework is to assign less of it—to subtract. But perhaps a more useful approach, for many classrooms, would be to create homework only when teachers and students believe it’s actually needed to further the learning that takes place in class—to start with nothing, and add as necessary.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Individual precursors of student homework behavioral engagement: the role of intrinsic motivation, perceived homework utility and homework attitude.

• 1 Department of Psychology, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain
• 2 Department of Psychology, University of A Coruña, A Coruña, Spain
• 3 Department of Pedagogy and Didactics, University of A Coruña, A Coruña, Spain
• 4 Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Currently, the concept of engagement is crucial in the field of learning and school achievement. It is a multidimensional concept (e.g., behavioral, emotional, and cognitive dimensions) that has been widely used as a theoretical framework to explain the processes of school engagement and dropout. However, this conceptual framework has been scarcely used in the field of homework. The aim of the present study was to analyze the role of intrinsic motivation, perceived homework utility, and personal homework attitude as precursors of student homework engagement (behavioral engagement) and, at the same time, how such engagement is the precursor of academic achievement. Seven hundred and thirty students of Compulsory Secondary Education (CSE) (7th to 10th grade) from fourteen schools northern Spain participated. A structural equation model was elaborated on which intrinsic motivation, perceived utility and attitude were observed variables, and student engagement (time spent on homework, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done) and academic achievement (Mathematics, Spanish Language, English Language, and Social Science) were latent variables. The results reveal that (i) intrinsic motivation is a powerful precursor of student behavioral engagement (also perceived utility and attitude, although to a lesser extent), and (ii) academic achievement is closely linked to the level of student engagement, qualifying the results of many of the previous studies conducted from a task-centered perspective (as opposed to a person-centered perspective).

Introduction

In accordance with the proposal of Trautwein et al. (2006) , we study herein the role of motivational variables as individual antecedents of student behavioral homework engagement and its impact on academic achievement. Assuming the principles of the theory of expectancy-value ( Eccles, 1983 ; Pintrich and De Groot, 1990 ; Eccles and Wigfield, 2002 ), we focused this study on the role of the motivational variables related to the value attributed to homework and we addressed the construct of engagement in accordance with the contributions of the theory of school engagement ( Fredricks et al., 2004 ).

Nowadays, it seems little debatable that the value attributed by students to academic tasks such as tests or homework is linked to their engagement and the effort dedicated to these tasks ( Greene et al., 2004 ; Xu, 2005 ; Cole et al., 2008 ). Thus, students with high-value beliefs spend more time, devote more effort, and complete more homework than those who do not value academic activity ( Bong, 2001 ; Miller and Brickman, 2004 ; Wise and DeMars, 2005 ; Liem et al., 2008 ; Eccles and Wang, 2012 ). This attributed value thereby indirectly influences their achievement ( Pintrich and De Groot, 1990 ; Wolters and Pintrich, 1998 ; Wigfield and Eccles, 2002 ; Trautwein et al., 2006 ).

Motivation and Homework Behavioral Engagement

Compared with students who do their homework to avoid blame or to please their parents, the evidence suggests that intrinsically motivated students devote more effort, persist more, and obtain better results when they engage in an activity ( Wigfield and Eccles, 2002 ; Hardre and Reeve, 2003 ; Coutts, 2004 ; see the review of Wigfield et al., 2009 ). Along with personal expectancies, the link between the value attributed to homework and the intentions of learning and devoting effort is well documented in the literature ( Bandura, 1997 ; Wigfield and Eccles, 2000 ; Eccles and Wigfield, 2002 ; Wigfield et al., 2009 ; Metallidou and Vlachou, 2010 ). Assuming the principles of the theory of Expectancy-Value, this study aims at verifying to what extent the value students attribute to homework predicts their intentions and real decision to engage in homework and to do it ( Eccles et al., 1993 ; Eccles, 2005 ; Wigfield et al., 2017 ).

Most of the research that supports the expectancy value models has argued that the value attributed to homework has at least three dimensions or components: the degree to which it is perceived as interesting—its intrinsic value— personally significant and important for the student—achievement value—, and useful—utility value. Thus, students who consider homework important, useful, and/or interesting hold high self-efficacy beliefs and persevere in the face of difficulties encountered when doing homework ( Bandura, 1997 ). In fact, this value-effort relationship has been found for homework, showing the direct influence of the value attributed to dedication and engagement ( Trautwein et al., 2006 ; Hong et al., 2009 ; Xu, 2017 ; Xu et al., 2017 ), and underlining the importance of the utility perception of homework in the promotion of diverse academic outcomes ( Trautwein et al., 2006 ; Yang et al., 2016 ; Xu et al., 2017 ). The term attitude is understood as an evaluative predisposition (positive or negative) that conditions the subject to perceive and to react in a determined way in light of the objects (people, groups, ideas, situations, etc.). It is a learned predisposition, not innate, and stable although it can change ( Hidalgo et al., 2004 ). Therefore, the attitude toward homework refers to the positive or negative predisposition of these students to do homework.

Homework Behavioral Engagement and Academic Achievement

School engagement is receiving increasingly more attention in psychological research because it has been shown to be a relevant predictor of different educational outcomes ( Ladd and Dinella, 2009 ; Wang and Peck, 2013 ), and specifically, of academic achievement ( Ladd and Dinella, 2009 ; Reeve and Tseng, 2011 ). Although there are significant variations in the implementation of the construct, we consider engagement as a meta-construct with affective-emotional, cognitive, and behavioral subcomponents ( Fredricks et al., 2016 ; Rodríguez-Pereiro et al., 2019 ).

In this context, the review of students’ behavioral engagement usually refers to their participation at school, indicators of pro-social behavior in academic contexts, compliance with rules, and/or dedication to homework (e.g., Fredricks et al., 2004 ; Christenson et al., 2012 ). Behavioral engagement, in terms of time, effort, amount of homework performed, persistence, and/or dedication ( Eccles and Wang, 2012 ), must have an impact on adolescents’ academic achievement ( King, 2015 ; Mikami et al., 2017 ).

The construct student homework behavioral engagement usually includes behavioral indicators concerning the time devoted to homework, the management of that time, or the amount of homework performed ( Trautwein et al., 2006 ).

Although among other factors, achievement could depend on students’ age, the quality of the assigned homework, and/or the procedure used to measure achievement, research tends to support a positive relationship between the amount of homework carried out and academic achievement (e.g., Cooper et al., 1998 , 2006 ; Cooper and Valentine, 2001 ; Epstein and Van Voorhis, 2001 ; Trautwein et al., 2002 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ; Núñez et al., 2015a ).

Some works have found positive relationships (see review of Cooper, 1989 ; Cooper and Valentine, 2001 ; Cooper et al., 2006 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ), with more obvious effects in secondary education than in primary education, and some studies have shown that the time spent on homework and achievement may not be related or may even be negatively related ( De Jong et al., 2000 ; Trautwein, 2007 ; Kitsantas et al., 2011 ). There may be a differential effect of the time devoted to homework, and also of the amount of homework performed, at the classroom and individual level.

Both students’ committed effort and their good use of homework time have a positive effect on their achievement ( Schmitz and Skinner, 1993 ; Trautwein and Köller, 2003 ; Trautwein et al., 2006 ; Xu, 2013 ). In this sense, Xu (2010) concluded, for example, that a good study time management contributes to completing a greater amount of homework. Trautwein (2007) found that effort is a better predictor of achievement than time spent on homework. As proposed by Núñez et al. (2015a) , the use of homework time could positively affect academic achievement insofar as it contributes to increasing the amount of homework performed.

The Present Study

According to Lawson (2017) , behavioral engagement is a manifestation of internal motivational processes such as intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, or the value attributed to homework ( Becker et al., 2010 ; Schiefele et al., 2012 ; Guthrie et al., 2013 ), which energize and direct action. In this study, we focus on the value component in terms of the conceptual model of homework developed by Trautwein and colleagues and tested in various studies (e.g., Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2007 ; Dettmers et al., 2010 , among others). As in other studies of this field ( Hughes et al., 2008 ; King, 2015 ; Mikami et al., 2017 ), we propose a structural model in which homework behavioral engagement (i.e., the amount of time dedicated to doing teacher-assigned homework; homework time management; and the amount of homework assigned) mediates between certain student motivational conditions— students’ motivational conditions (perceived homework utility; homework intrinsic motivation; and homework attitude) and their general academic achievement (Social Sciences, Math, Language, and English as second language). In the present study we focus on students in grades 7–10, it is the proper age in which they should begin to take importance the accomplishment of homework. Despite the large number of research on homework in secondary education, it seems interesting to begin to verify models of relationships that allow us to interpret adequately the relationships between motivation and behavioral engagement.

Figure 1 shows the model to be tested. The main hypotheses of this model are as follows:

(1) Students’ homework behavioral engagement will be significantly and positively determined by their motivational conditions (homework intrinsic motivation, homework utility, and homework attitude). Based on previous studies (e.g., Trautwein et al., 2006 ; Hong et al., 2009 ; Regueiro et al., 2015 , 2017 , 2018 ; Valle et al., 2018 ; Yang et al., 2016 ; Xu, 2017 ; Xu et al., 2017 ), we expect that the intensity of this relationship (in terms of the effect size) will be medium or large.

(2) Students’ homework behavioral engagement will positively and significant predict their overall academic achievement (in terms of average grades in the four core academic areas). Based on the results of previous studies of the relationship between homework and academic achievement in Secondary Education students (e.g., De Jong et al., 2000 ; Trautwein et al., 2002 ; Cooper et al., 2006 ; Trautwein, 2007 ; Kitsantas et al., 2011 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ; Núñez et al., 2015a ; Fan et al., 2017 ), we expect that the effect size of the relationship will be moderate (or small).

Figure 1. Structural model to be tested.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

Participants were 730 students in Compulsory Secondary Education (CSE) (aged between 12 and 16 years ( M = 13.5, SD = 1.15) from 14 schools randomly selected (12 public schools and 2 private-subsidized schools) in three provinces of northern Spain. Fifty-six students were eliminated due to missing data. Half of the schools are in urban areas and the other half are in rural or semi-urban areas. Of the participants, 43.4% were boys and 56.6% were girls. Besides, 194 students (26.6%) were in 1st grade of CSE, 152 students (20.8%) were 2nd-graders, 182 students (24.9%) were in 3rd grade, and 202 students (27.7%) were 4th-graders.

Instruments

Student’s motivational variables.

The items used to measure homework intrinsic motivation, homework perceived utility, and homework attitude were obtained from the Homework Survey, an instrument already used in previous studies (e.g., Núñez et al., 2015a , b , c ; Valle et al., 2015a , 2018 ). The fact of having chosen the questionnaire as a data collection instrument was mainly due to its characteristics of versatility, efficiency and generalizability, which have made this research instrument one of the most widespread in the educational and psychological field, as established authors such as McMillan and Schumacher (2005) .

- HW Intrinsic Motivation . We evaluated the students’ degree of enjoyment, satisfaction, and the benefits obtained by doing homework. This dimension consists of 8 items (α = 00.85), which are rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( completely false ) to 5 ( completely true ). An example item is: “I enjoy doing homework, because it allows me to learn more.”

- HW Perceived Utility . This variable was assessed with a single item asking students whether they considered the homework assigned by their teachers to be useful. The response scale ranged from 1 ( completely false ) to 5 ( completely true ).

- Homework Attitude . In this study three items to evaluate the affective dimension of the homework attitude were used: students’ preference for, their willingness to (their disposal to), and their positive emotions generated and associated with doing homework (α = 0.77). Students responded on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( completely false ) up to 5 ( completely true ).

Homework Behavioral Engagement

Behavioral engagement was measured through three indicators: time spent on homework, homework time optimization, and amount of teacher-assigned homework carried out by the students. The items used to obtain three measurements were taken from the aforementioned Homework Survey.

- Homework Time Spent . To measure the time spent on homework, students responded to two items (“How much time do you usually spend on homework every day from Monday to Friday?,” and “How much time do you usually spend on homework on the weekend?), with the following response options: 1 ( less than 30 min ), 2 ( 30 min to 1 h ), 3 ( 1 h to an hour and a half ), 4 ( 1 h and a half to 2 h ), and 5 ( more than 2 h ). The alpha coefficient was α = 0.72 in this study).

- Homework Time Management . This variable was measured through the responses to two items asking students to indicate how they managed the time normally spent doing homework (Monday through Friday, and on the weekend), using the following scale: 1 ( I waste it completely; I am constantly distracted by anything ), 2 ( I waste it more than I should ), 3 ( regular ), 4 ( I manage it pretty well ), and 5 ( I optimize it completely; I concentrate and, I don’t think about anything else until I finish ). The alpha coefficient was α = 0.78 in this study.

- Amount of Homework Done. The estimate of the amount of teacher-assigned homework completed by students was obtained through one item rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale: 1 ( none ), 2 ( some ), 3 ( one half ), 4 ( almost all ), and 5 ( all of it ).

Academic Achievement

The evaluation of academic achievement was calculated from average grade obtained by the students at the end of the academic year they were enrolled in at that time. The subjects used to calculate the mean were Social Sciences, Mathematics, Spanish Language, and Foreign Language (English as a second language) because they have the greatest weight in the curriculum.

The data referring to the variables under study were collected during school hours by personnel external to the school itself, after obtaining the written informed consent of the parents or legal guardians, the management team, and the students’ teachers, respecting the ethical standards established in the Declaration of Helsinki. In each session, the staff give some practical indications to students on how to address those questions. Then, participants fill in all the questions of the self-report individually by themselves, and without time limit.

Data Analysis

After verifying that the distribution of the variables could be considered sufficiently normal to allow the use of the maximum likelihood procedure, a structural equation analysis, using the computer program AMOS 18, was employed to contrast a hypothesized model predicting the influence of homework motivation on homework engagement and achievement. In addition to chi-square (χχ 2 ) and its associated probability ( p ), we used two absolute indices: the goodness-of-fit-index (GFI) and the adjusted goodness-of-fit-index (AGFI). We also provide a relative index, the comparative fit index (CFI) ( Bentler, 1990 ); and a close-fit parsimony-based index, the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), including 90% confidence intervals ( Hu and Bentler, 1999 ). The model fits well if GFI and AGFI >0.90, CFI >0.95, and RMSEA ≤ 0.05.

The effect sizes were calculated using Cohen’s d ( d < 0.20 = non-significant effect; d ≥ 0.20 and d < 0.50 = small effect; d ≥ 0.50 and d < 0.80 = medium effect; d ≥ 0.80 = large effect).

Preliminary Analysis

Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations, skewness, kurtosis, and bivariate Pearson correlations. In general, the relationship between the variables included in the study was as expected. Specifically, the three motivational variables considered— intrinsic motivation, utility, and homework attitude—significant and positive correlations with the time spent doing homework, time optimization, and the amount of homework done. These three variables that constitute the construct of homework behavioral engagement correlated positively and significantly with each other and with the grades obtained by the students in the four subject areas considered.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations ( N = 730).

We observed moderate correlations between the utility perception and the intrinsic value of homework and students’ grades, whereas the interrelationship between homework attitude and academic achievement was lower. Statistically significant correlations were also observed among the three homework motivational variables, as well as among the grades obtained in the subjects that constitute the academic achievement measures.

Structural Model Fit

In Figure 1 , the relationships expressed in the formulation of the hypothesis of the contrasted model are made explicit. With the exception of χ 2 (31) = 75.548; χ 2 / df = 2.43, p < 0.001, all the fit indices suggest that the hypothesized model adequately represents the relations of the empirical data matrix: GFI = 0.980; AGFI = 0.964; TLI = 0.980; CFI = 0.986; and RMSEA = 0.044, 90% CI [0.032, 0.057], p > 0.05. As a result, the model does not need any changes. In addition, as can be seen in Table 2 , the factor loadings as well as the corresponding estimation errors of the three measurement variables corresponding to student homework behavioral engagement (time spent; homework time management; amount of homework done) and to the academic achievement areas (Social Sciences, Mathematics, Spanish Language, and English as Second Language) suggest that both latent variables were reliably constructed.

Table 2. Assessment of the hypothesized homework model.

Assessment of Model Hypotheses

Correlations between the three independent variables, standardized regression weights, and their statistical significance are presented in Table 2 and Figure 2 .

Figure 2. Correlations and standardized regression weights for the final model. All coefficients are statistically significant at p < 0.001, except for HW Attitude on HW Behavioral Engagement ( p < 0.01).

In the present study, two general hypotheses were formulated. First, we hypothesized that students’ homework behavioral engagement would be significantly and positively determined by their motivational personal variables. In addition, based on previous studies, we expected that the intensity of this relationship would be medium or large. In general terms, the results confirm this hypothesis. As a whole, the effect is statistically significant and positive: students who perceive greater homework utility have a more positive attitude toward homework and consider it an opportunity to learn. They also engage more in their homework than students who express low utility, a poor attitude, and low intrinsic motivation. However, the effect sizes suggest that students’ homework behavioral engagement depends little on perceived homework utility and homework attitude, although it does depend on intrinsic homework motivation (interest in working on homework to achieve learning and gain competence), with an effect size between medium and large. The three motivational variables explain 17.5% of students’ homework behavioral engagement.

Secondly, we formulated the hypothesis that students’ homework behavioral engagement would significantly and positively predict their overall academic achievement, and that the effect size of that relationship would be moderate, or even small. The data obtained confirm this hypothesis, both in the intensity (the mean effect size) and the sign (positive). The higher the students’ homework behavioral engagement, the greater was their academic achievement, and vice versa. The amount of total explained academic achievement variance was 41%.

The role of students’ behavioral homework engagement is a highly controversial issue. For example, prior studies indicate that spending more time on homework is no guarantee of higher academic achievement. Also, there is not sufficient empirical evidence about the determinants of such engagement. This research intended to provide some information about these two large gaps. On the one hand, we wondered whether the motivational factors could be important determinants of student homework engagement (as derived from the motivational theories of academic learning) and, on the other hand, we wished to confirm the predictive power of student homework engagement for academic achievement when using latent variables (instead of specific measures of engagement or achievement).

The results confirm the contribution of motivation and, specifically, of its value component, on students’ academic engagement ( Bong, 2001 ; Eccles and Wang, 2012 ). Moreover, according to our results, the value attributed to homework in terms of enjoyment and satisfaction, utility perception, and positive attitude moderately explain students’ dedication to and engagement with homework.

Specifically, when students approach homework due to their interest, in order to learn and acquire competence, they spend more time, optimize the time spent, and also do more homework ( Trautwein et al., 2006 ; Hong et al., 2009 ; Xu et al., 2017 ). As defended from different theoretical frameworks, interest would contribute to achievement to the extent that, in general, it increases behavioral engagement, dedication, management of the learning process, and the attentional resources that are implemented ( Lee et al., 2014 ; Trautwein et al., 2015 ; Harackiewicz et al., 2016 ). The prescription and correction of homework can become an instructional strategy for the learning promotion and academic performance, as teachers manage to adjust to the needs and interests of their students (e.g., Akioka and Gilmore, 2013 ). Beyond the interventions focused on self-monitoring and self-management (e.g., Breaux et al., 2019 ) or the use of reinforcements ( Reinhardt et al., 2009 ), homework that are prescribed from classroom must be meaningful and purposeful if we want the apprentices to actively engage with them ( Kalchman and Marentette, 2012 ).

Likewise, it seems that homework utility perception contributes somewhat to helping students spend more time on homework, better manage that time, and do more homework ( Cooper et al., 2006 ; Yang et al., 2016 ; Fan et al., 2017 ). Intrinsic motivation and perceived utility also guarantee a more positive attitude toward doing homework. Given the strong association found, if students perceive the utility of the assigned homework, they could improve their more intrinsic reasons for engaging in homework, which would promote more positive attitudes toward such engagement.

The value students attribute to homework, a key aspect of motivation in self-regulated learning models ( Pintrich and Zusho, 2007 ; Wigfield and Cambria, 2010 ), should be understood as a multidimensional construct that integrates students’ personal interests and the interest aroused by the situations, but also their estimates of its importance or usefulness. As learners will probably engage intrinsically in their homework if they perceive its utility, and in view of the fact that direct intervention in the intrinsic value of homework is not always easy and could even undermine students’ sense of autonomy ( Deci and Ryan, 1985 ), homework utility value becomes a core support in the educational intervention with students who show little interest in homework.

Thus, as Epstein and Van Voorhis (2001 , 2012 ) concluded, when teachers explicitly present the meaning and utility of the homework they assign, they could be affecting students’ behavioral engagement and homework time management. In general, the research seems consistent, suggesting that student homework engagement could be optimized if the teacher assigns quality homework, that is, homework perceived as useful and interesting, which enables students’ progress (adapted to the potential of each student or group of students) and is causally linked to academic success (e.g., Trautwein et al., 2006 ; Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2009 ; Dettmers et al., 2010 , 2011 ; Rosário et al., 2018 ).

In any case, we should not lose sight of the fact that the explanatory potential of the motivational variables considered herein is relatively low and, in fact, more than 80% of the variability of homework behavioral engagement would be explained by variables that were not included in this work. In this regard, we acknowledge that we did not address the expectancy component of motivation, which, as defended from different theoretical frameworks ( Eccles, 1983 ; Pintrich and De Groot, 1990 ; Bandura, 1997 ; Eccles and Wigfield, 2002 ), can be considered a predictor of homework behavioral engagement, at least in terms of effort and persistence ( Trautwein et al., 2006 ; Nagengast et al., 2013 ). On the other hand, although we must assume that motivation energizes cognitive engagement ( Greene et al., 2004 ; Greene, 2015 ), in this case, we did not study the resources and learning strategies implemented by students when approaching homework. However, the research of Valle et al. (2015b) allows us to hypothesize the importance of intrinsic motivation and attitude in the decision to engage more or less deeply in homework, and thereby related to homework behavioral engagement.

On another hand, as has already been stated by many previous studies ( Cooper et al., 1998 , 2006 ; Cooper and Valentine, 2001 ; Epstein and Van Voorhis, 2001 ; Trautwein et al., 2002 ; Xu, 2010 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ; Núñez et al., 2015a ), the time spent on homework along with good time management the amount of homework done largely contribute to students’ grades in different curricular subjects. Compared with other studies that found null or negative relationships (e.g., see De Jong et al., 2000 ; Trautwein, 2007 ; Kitsantas et al., 2011 ), the results of this research not only corroborate the positive relationship between behavioral engagement measures and academic achievement, but also show that the effect size is higher than that reported in most of the previous studies. High school students who spend more time, manage that time well, and do all the homework clearly perform better than those who dedicate little time, are easily distracted, or do not finish their homework.

If, indeed, the more students engage in their homework, the better grades they obtain, then doing homework is better than not doing homework, and assigning homework in class will therefore contribute to improving students’ academic achievement. In this regard, no doubt, students’ competence and abilities will mediate their management of resources like time, the environment, or help ( Du et al., 2016 ; Xu et al., 2017 ), as well as the role of parents, teachers, and peers ( Núñez et al., 2015b , c ).

Finally, as student engagement and dedication to homework impact on their academic results and depend to some extent on homework utility perception, parents and teachers need to converge so we can sustain the utility perception of homework as a society. In this sense, there is a risk that the increasing and recurrent loss of prestige of homework will end up diminishing students’ intrinsic motivation and promoting a negative attitude toward homework.

Limitations of the Work and Future Research

Although the results of the study seem to be robust (consistent effects of the predictions, estimation errors within normal parameters, etc.), they should be taken with some precaution due to some limitations inherent in the nature of the data of the study, the sample used, or the measuring instruments.

The research is cross-sectional, so any causal inferences are seriously compromised. Although we used a powerful multivariate strategy to analyze the data, which could lead us to think in terms of causality, this is not possible because, for this purpose, we should have used a longitudinal design (three repeated measures could be sufficient for this model) or an experimental design. Although in the present investigation, we chose a cross-sectional strategy, we accept and appreciate the suggestion of Xu et al. (2017) about the need to develop causal research where the effects of homework assignment—type of tasks, frequency, etc.—and teacher feedback on students’ motivation and homework engagement are confirmed. In line with different works of research within the framework of the expectancy-value models (e.g., Durik et al., 2006 ; Simpkins et al., 2006 ), it also seems interesting to begin to develop longitudinal follow-up studies that allow us to determine whether, indeed, students’ attitudes and motivation have a greater explanatory potential for homework behavioral engagement throughout their schooling and to observe the extent to which we can assume evolutionary changes in the influence of homework on academic achievement.

Another limitation has to do with the student sample used in this study. We must admit that the results could vary significantly if the sample had been obtained randomly and were representative of the population from which it comes (educational stage, types of educational centers, sociometric features of the families, etc.). However, we are confident that the procedure used is sufficiently sensitive to the variables and that it has strengthened the reliability of the results described.

Finally, data collection regarding homework was done through self-reports. Although this methodology is commonly used in psychology and education, possibly essential to measure thoughts and behaviors that are otherwise hardly observable, it is necessary to replicate the findings using complementary strategies and measuring instruments (of various types). In addition, some variables of this study were assessed with a relatively low number of items, which may compromise the robustness of these measures (although consistency coefficients higher than 0.70 are usually considered reliable). In relation to this type of measure, a matter which we must not forget when interpreting the data and drawing conclusions and implications for educational practice, is that the information obtained is self-reported, which may be more or less subjective, depending on the individual’s variables and the variables of the context. For example, homework utility in itself was not considered, but instead students’ utility perception. Reality and perception of reality may not coincide completely.

Finally, we emphasize that, in this investigation, like in many others carried out within the field of education, we used students’ grades at the end of course as an indicator of academic achievement. However, it should not be forgotten that the magnitude of the relationship between student homework engagement and academic achievement could be significantly different if we had used a more objective measure of achievement (for example, the result of a standardized achievement test). Nevertheless, this study used the final grades as a measure of achievement due to its markedly ecological nature (compared to the standardized test).

This work allows us to suggest the need to incorporate motivational variables such as interest, usefulness and attitude toward homework in research agendas given the incidence found for active participation and student dedication. It is also important to emphasize the need to develop improvement programs, integrated into the school curriculum and implemented from schools with the involvement of parents.

Ethics Statement

Does the study presented in the manuscript involve human or animal subjects: Yes.

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of Research and Teaching Ethics Committee of the University of A Coruña and the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by the Research and Teaching Ethics Committee of the University of A Coruña and the Declaration of Helsinki.

Data about the target variable were collected in accordance with the recommendations of the ethical standards established in the Research and Teaching Ethics Committee of the University of A Coruña and the Declaration of Helsinki. This study was carried out with the written informed consent from parents or legal guardians.

Author Contributions

NS, BR, and IE contributed to conception and design of the study. MdMF organized the database. MG and SR performed the statistical analysis. NS, BR, and IE wrote the first draft of the manuscript. MdMF, MG, and SR wrote the sections of the manuscript. All authors contributed to manuscript revision, read and approved the submitted version.

This work was developed with the financing of the research projects EDU2013-44062-P (MINECO), EDU2017-82984-P (MEIC), and Government of the Principality of Asturias, Spain. European Regional Development Fund (Research Groups Program 2018–2020 FC-GRUPIN-IDI/2018/000199).

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords : homework, behavioral engagement, intrinsic motivation, perceived utility, attitude, secondary education

Citation: Suárez N, Regueiro B, Estévez I, del Mar Ferradás M, Guisande MA and Rodríguez S (2019) Individual Precursors of Student Homework Behavioral Engagement: The Role of Intrinsic Motivation, Perceived Homework Utility and Homework Attitude. Front. Psychol. 10:941. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00941

Received: 27 December 2018; Accepted: 08 April 2019; Published: 26 April 2019.

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Copyright © 2019 Suárez, Regueiro, Estévez, del Mar Ferradás, Guisande and Rodríguez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Bibiana Regueiro, [email protected] ; [email protected]

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