Date of Award
8-2009
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Education (MEd)
College/School
College of Education and Human Services
Department/Program
Early Childhood, Elementary and Literacy Education
Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair
Susan Wray
Committee Member
Nancy Lauter
Committee Member
Katrina Bulkley
Abstract
Homework remains a controversial topic among educators and families. Although there are reasons to support the assignment of homework as-well as reasons against its use, it seemed that a lot of my middle school students were simply not completing the work they were assigned to do at home to reinforce the skills they learned during the school day. The following illustrates an action research project that I completed to learn about two of my classes of eighth grade students’ thoughts on homework and to determine whether certain specific approaches within the classroom could boost the homework completion of these students. In order to increase the rate of homework completion, I first gathered information about students’ homework habits. From that information, I implemented several strategies into the normal classroom routine. Homework quizzes were administered, where students were assessed on problems taken directly from homework assignments to ensure they were being completed. Data was collected through these quiz scores as well as homework logs, homework completion rates, and a research journal. At the conclusion of the study, these data were analyzed and compared to see if there was any significance between the use of the interventions and the increase of homework completion. The results offered little correlation between the two. In fact, I found that the majority of the students that participated in the study actually did complete their homework most of the time. However, my research led me to other intriguing ideas such as the importance of the quality of homework that students turn in and the question of whether all students need homework.
File Format
Recommended Citation
Perillo, Christin, "Investigating Classroom Strategies That Affect Middle School Students’ Homework Completion" (2009). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. 1233.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/1233