In what is sure to be music to the ears of many students around the world, a new piece of research suggests maths homework (at least in the manner in which it’s currently being delivered) is reinforcing social inequality and warrants a bit of a rethink.
The paper, You Need to Be More Responsible, examined the effects a student’s socio-economic background had on the homework they completed – and the findings were intriguing.
The paper’s first author, Associate Professor Jessica Calarco from the University of Indiana, sat in on classes, interviewing students, teachers and caregivers over a four-year period.
One thing that was clear from her analysis was the inequity of support students had access to at home.
“And yet, because of these standard, taken-for-granted policies that treated homework as students’ individual responsibilities, it erased those unequal contexts of support and led teachers to interpret and respond to homework in these status-reinforcing ways,” she adds.
Some students have less access to resources
Professor Calarco noted multiple instances where students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds simply didn’t have access to the same resources as their counterparts outside the classroom.
But because they were being measured by the same yardstick, the playing field was uneven.
The paper notes while traditionally experts have called for more parental involvement in homework as a way to bridge the gap for low performing students, this doesn’t always work for families from lower socio-economic backgrounds where the parents have, “limited formal education, financial resources, or English proficiency.”
So, does this mean an end to those dreaded assignments?
Not necessarily.
“I’m not sure I want to completely come out and say that we need to ban homework entirely, but I think we need to really seriously reconsider when and how we assign it,” she adds.
Makes sense to us!
