Views of Primary and Secondary School Students and Their Parents on Homework

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the views of primary and secondary school students’ and their parents’ views on homework and to examine the problems encountered while doing homework according to the parents’ views. Participants were delivered a form including questions about homework and the data was analyzed descriptively. The study group consisted of 621 primary and secondary school students and their parents (N=279). The data was collected at the first semester of 2015-2016 academic years. Both
primary and secondary school students reported that they like activity based homework like Project or designing something, and they don’t like homework which takes long times to do such as reading and writing. Primary school students like mathematics homework most while secondary school students like science homework. Students referred to emotional reasons (like/dislike, boring/enjoyable, feelings about the teacher, feeling qualified of unqualified) when they indicated any homework type which they like or dislike. Parents
reported the purpose of the homework as practicing. They stated that the most frequent problem encountered while doing homework is unwillingness to do homework for primary school students, and incomprehensible tasks for secondary school students. Findings were discussed in light of the related literature.