students'study time and their homework problem

Soc Indic Res(2009)93:111–115

DOI10.1007/s11205-008-9411-8

Students’Study Time and Their‘‘Homework Problem’’

Jiri Zuzanek

Accepted:1August2008/Published online:18December2008

óSpringer Science+Business Media B.V.2008

North American parents and writers concerned with adolescents’well-being have repeatedly pointed to the‘‘homework problem’’as underlying adolescent stress,disruption of family relationships,and questionable academic results.Publications such as Kralovec and Buell’s(2000)‘‘The end of homework’’,Kohn’s(2006)‘‘The Homework Myth.Why our kids are getting too much of a bad thing’’,and Bennett and Kalish’s(2006)‘‘The case against homework’’have highlighted these concerns.These assertions are countered by arguments that homework enhances learning and is needed for building good work habits (see Cooper et al.2006),often summarised‘‘How can we compete with the Japanese and Koreans,if our kids don’t do homework.’’

Surprisingly little of this debate has been informed by time-use research.This article thus addresses?ve interrelated issues:

(1)How homework loads of Canadian and U.S.students compare with the workloads

of students in other countries?

(2)How have these workloads changed over the past10–20years?

(3)In what way do greater homework loads affect the rest of teens’time use?

(4)What are longer homework’s academic implications?

(5)How do longer hours of homework affect teens’sense of time pressure,feelings

of stress,and emotional well-being?

1Data Sources and Method

Data come from national time-use surveys conducted in the1980s,1990s and early2000s by statistical agencies in Canada,United States,Australia,United Kingdom,Germany, Netherlands,Belgium,Norway and Finland.Data from these surveys were examined as part of the Comparative Study of Adolescent Time Use(CATUS),coordinated by the Research Group on Leisure and Cultural Development of the University of Waterloo J.Zuzanek(&)

University of Waterloo,Waterloo,ON,Canada

e-mail:Zuzanek@healthy.uwaterloo.ca

(Canada).Data were also taken from the Ontario Survey of Adolescent Time Use and Well-Being(OATUS/ESM)administered by this research group in2001/2003.

The OATUS/ESM combined:time diaries with‘‘beeper self-reports’’,the Experience Sampling Method(ESM).Time diaries for the day preceding were?lled out in class in13 schools representative of the Ontario population,accompanied by questions about ado-lescents’academic performance,life-style preferences and the like.Some219of these teens,and one of their parents,took part in the ESM survey,in which they were signalled by a pre-programmed wrist-watch eight times a day across a week.At the time of the beep, they reported their main activity at the time,their location,who they were with,a number of affective states,feelings of time pressure,desire to engage in something else,as well as their interest in and importance of that activity.

2Findings

2.1School Time and Homework from a Comparative and Historical Perspective

Table1shows that the workloads of American high school students(55min of homework on school days)do not appear particularly heavy.Canadian homework loads in1998were higher,but they did not differ substantially from homework loads reported by students in the seven other CATUS countries.

Table1School related time of adolescents aged15–19across countries and across time(In hours and minutes per school day)

Australia (1997)Belgium

(1999)

Canada

(1998)

Finland

(1999/

2000)

Germany

(2001/

2002)

NDL

(2000)

Norway

(2000)

UK

(2000)

USA

(2003)

N86229134326758299175403512 School related

time

8.08.88.47.27.47.57.37.87.9

Attending

classes/time

at school

5.5

6.0 6.5 5.6 5.2 4.9 5.5 5.7 6.5

Homework on

school days

1.4 1.7 1.20.8 1.1 1.50.9 1.00.9

Traveling to/

from school

1.1 1.00.80.9 1.1 1.20.9 1.10.5

Hours and minutes per day averaged across the7-day week

Canada Finland Norway

19861992199820051987/19881999/2000198019902000 N506456414600717658285238260 School related time 6.1 5.6 5.2 5.6 4.7 4.4 5.0 5.3 5.5 Attending classes/time at school 3.9 3.5 3.2 3.8 3.4 3.2 3.4 3.8 3.9 Homework 1.6 1.6 1.5 1.10.80.7 1.00.9 1.0 Traveling to/from school0.50.60.70.50.50.50.60.60.7 112J.Zuzanek

Students’Study Time and Their‘‘Homework Problem’’113 The amount of homework in the surveyed countries has either changed little or declined over the past15years.Canadian students in2005spent3.5h less time doing homework than in the early1990s.Similar declines were observed in Finland and other countries, possibly because part of homework was moved to class time.

2.2Homework Time,Academic Performance and Emotional Well-Being

Although the Table1data suggest that North American students are not overburdened,the ‘‘homework problem’’continues to worry parents and educators concerned with teens’high levels of time pressure,obesity,and emotional and behavioural problems.Tables2 and3address this question and suggest that longer hours of homework do take time away from virtually all other daily activities—but mostly from watching television,computer and video games,and socialising with friends,followed by physically active leisure,paid work and domestic work.Reading books,use of the Internet,and contacts with parents are affected to a lesser degree.The losses are thus mostly among less structured and arguably developmentally less bene?cial activities.

Contrary to the claims that longer hours of‘‘homework’’are of limited academic value,?ndings reported in Table2suggest that additional homework on school days and par-ticularly on Sundays correlates positively with teens’grade averages(correlations.21and .37,respectively).This relationship holds after controls for gender and age,and is also sustained when homework is operationalised as percent of homework episodes reported by teens in ESM self-reports(r=.20;not in Table2).

Subjectively,Canadian and OATUS time-diary data in Tables2and3show that more homework time correlates positively with teens’perceived time pressure and stress both in Table2Effects of school day and Sunday homework on teens’well-being:OATUS2003(Bi-variate correlations and regressions controlling for teens’gender and age)

Canadian2005All days

Pearson‘‘r’’Beta

Time pressure.16.14

Perceived stress.07.14

School is the source of stress.16.13

Feeling happy.14.07

Satis?ed with time use-.06-.06

OATUS2003School days Sundays

Pearson‘‘r’’Beta Pearson‘‘r’’Beta

Time pressure.26.23.34.30 Grade average.21.19.37.33 Importance of doing well at school.21.20.18.18 Expectations of a bright future.07.06ns ns Often feel bored-.10-.10-.16-.16 Composite of lonely and depressed*.07ns.14.09

*Alpha=.71

All relationships are signi?cant at.005level,unless italicised(signi?cant at.05level)

114J.Zuzanek Table3Experiential correlates of homework,time in class,and free time:ESM self-reports2003 (Bi-variate correlations;Pearson‘‘r’’)

Episodes of homework Episodes in class Episodes of free time

Feeling pressed for time.14ns-.18

Feeling stressed.10.04-.10

Affect(feel good,happy,cheerful)-.07ns.11

Anxiety(feel worried,upset,tense).10ns-.09

Feeling bored.03.18-.09

Activity perceived as challenging.25.14-.05

Activity perceived as important.09-.05-.10

Activity perceived as interesting-.06-.14.31

Wish to be doing something else.17.25-.27

All relationships are signi?cant at.005level

diaries and beepers.These emotional and health effects of teens’longer hours of home-work reported in Tables2and3are not entirely clear or consistent.Heavier homework loads do not seem to make teens unhappy and are associated with less boredom,but they also correlate with higher levels of anxiety and higher levels of loneliness and depression.

Unlike free time,homework generates little interest(r=-.06)and is associated with a strong desire to do something else(r=.17).In contrast,free time activities are associated with greater interest(r=.31)and little desire to do something else(r=-.27).However, while enjoying free time activities much more,teens perceive these activities as less challenging(r=-.05)and less important(r=-.10)than homework.In short,homework may be developmentally useful,but is perceived by adolescents as stressful and emotionally unattractive.

What surprises more are the subjective differences between doing homework and time spent in class.Homework is perceived by students as more challenging,more important and,surprisingly,even less boring than time spent in class(excepting tests).Although homework is associated with higher levels of time pressure,it generates less desire to do something else than time spent in class.Thus,the‘‘class time problem’’seems to have greater urgency than the‘‘homework problem.’’

3Conclusions

Tables1,2,3do not suggest that homework per se is the only,or perhaps the main source of teens’life strains.Diary data reported in Zuzanek(2005)show that students often go to bed late on school days(by11:30p.m.,over26%of Ontario teens are still not in bed,and 14%go to bed on school days after midnight).They leave for school early in the morning, often skipping breakfast and staying late in school.Almost30%?nish classes at or past3 p.m.,in part due to parents’employment.Classes are not always challenging,and teachers transfer part of their workload to after-school hours.Parents are expected to help out with homework,but they are often tired after work.

Under these conditions homework may be perceived as excessive,but it is hardly at the root of emotional strains.Pressures experienced by teens do not stem from homework alone but from the way society structures its employment,educational and temporal

Students’Study Time and Their‘‘Homework Problem’’115 environment and opportunities.In other words,we face not so much a‘‘homework problem’’but rather,in a broader sense,a societal time use problem.

References

Bennett,S.,&Kalish,N.(2006).The case against homework.Bethel:Crown Publishers.

Cooper,H.,Robinson,J.C.,&Patall,E.A.(2006).Does homework improve academic achievement?A synthesis of research,1987–2003.Review of Educational Research,76,1–62.

Kohn,A.(2006).The homework myth.Why our kids are getting too much of a bad thing.Cambridge,MA: De Capo Press.

Kralovec,E.,&Buell,J.(2000).The end of homework.How homework overburdens children,and limits learning.Boston:Beacon Press.

Zuzanek,J.(2005).Adolescent time use and well-being from a comparative perspective.Loisir&Societe/ Society and Leisure,28,5–42.