Language and homework

Summary

This study explores the issue of homework through the texts composed by children and adults at home and in school. An analysis of the text production processes, generated from the framework of a Spanish language class in Year 4 of EGB (General Basic Education), allowed us to understand the beliefs and practices generated by homework.

Objectives

Some questions that guided our work: What are the most frequent approaches when the family collaborates in school homework? Is an epistemic approach easier in situations with family interaction? Could the models constructed by parents regarding the concept of homework influence this approach?

Project Development

In this project we explore how homework is present in a Spanish language class from a double perspective. We wanted to know, first of all, opinions and beliefs held by children on this type of schoolwork, and for this we worked the issue in the classroom composing different types of texts. In second place, we were also interested in the way in which they did homework; we wanted to propose meaningful homework for children and for their families going further than the textbook, so that family collaboration would become a joint construction process of some texts that awakened interest in the daily life.

For this we conducted an experience in a year 4 class of EGB in a public school in Cordoba.

The data collection was conducted in two stages. In the first one, to get to know the ideas held by children and their families on the matter of homework, we prepared a questionnaire that was sent to each family. After evaluating the children’s opinions we thought it was preferable to use other techniques and we asked the little ones to elaborate different types of texts, all of them related to doing schoolwork at home. They completed them, in addition, with several drawings. More specifically, they all wrote a dialogue, a story and a letter to their teacher related with the issue.

Subsequently we asked the families for their collaboration once more. We wanted to know what happened at home while homework was being done. We requested them to allow us to install a recorder while they worked with their children on helping them to complete their homework. Seventeen families accepted to participate. We proposed two different pieces of homework related to reading and writing. This homework was presented within the program of education for health, which was being worked at in school. We thought this approach would allow is to compare the collaboration between children and adults considering differences based in the difficulty of the homework being done.

Results

The meaning of homework

Results show, on one hand, that children associate homework to school knowledge and that, in addition, they confer onto it very negative implications. We also notice, on the other hand, that the introduction of any other type of homework, in which a close collaboration from the family is sought, could contribute to taking the school outside of the classroom walls.

Homework that involves families

When reading and writing associated to homework is present at home, it is not independent from a world of previous beliefs and theories surrounded by scholastic meaning. A greater reflection from the family on school learning, always in collaboration with teachers, will contribute to easing approaches to the texts, thus allowing a joint reconstruction between the one who learns and the one who teaches.

Also participating

Students in year 7 and 8 of EGB in a public school in Cordoba and their families.

Financing

Project subsidized by the Sectorial Program for the Promotion of General Knowledge DGICYT- PB96-0109. Complementary Financing granted by the University of Cordoba (3rd Own Program) to the project titled ‘Acquisition and development of reading and writing skills within formal and non-formal contexts’.

Related publications

Lacasa, P.; Reina, A.; Alburquerque, M. (2002) ‘Adults and children share literacy practices the case of homeworks’. Linguistics and Education, 13 (1), pp. 39 – 64.
Lacasa, P. (ed.) (1999) ‘Los deberes escolares, entre la certeza y la duda’. Tema monográfico. Cultura y Educación, 13, pp. 3-100.

English