In many ways, homework assignments seem like common sense. Spend more time repeating and practicing multiplication or studying Espanyol vocabulary, and you should master all the Spanish or math. Let’s now discuss Homework and Mental health and if it really impacts children’s health.
But on the brighter side, this might not be the case; homework can indeed produce some educational benefits such as retention and increased understanding of course work, says Duke University Psychologist Cooper Harris, Ph.D., one of the top homework researchers.
However, not all learners benefit; in a review of class work published from 1986 to 2002, Harris and other psychologists found that homework tasks were linked to higher and better test scores in middle school and lesser high school and some advanced training.
Despite these, more minor has been recorded on how homework has improved elementary school performance (Review on Educational Research, 2007). This paper will evaluate some impacts of assignments on students, reading, and mental health statistics and look at various scholars’ suggestions about homework.
Table of Contents
1. Positive effects of Homework
Help students to master the coursework.
Assigning students and learners some extra assignment about the course so that they can work on the answers on their own help students to master the concept well. And this is proven in research conducted by Cooper, where he assigned a punch of 20 students to work on a presentation on their own.
The research found that allowing students to handle or research problems on their own stimulates a need to master the concept. And this improves both solving and learning skills.
Help to cultivate proper problem-solving skills
Students tend to develop better solving skills when given a chance to handle different questions independently, and the best way to induce this is by giving them some coursework to work at home.
The whole art of them trying to read the extra mile or researching online cultivate the student’s need to solve given tasks.
Most research conducted on testing the assignment approach and how effective it is in helping students proved that students who take homework seriously tend to develop better solving skills in real life.
Improve Retention and Understanding
The most direct impact of homework on students is it helps to improve understanding and retention.
More indirectly, assignment tasks, specifically the homework assigned, can improve learners’ study skills and personal attitudes towards course work, school, and the teacher. Learning can take place anywhere, not just in classrooms.
The nonacademic benefits of these tasks include fostering responsibility and independence. And lastly, homework tasks involve parents and guardians in the whole school process, which tend to enhance their appreciation of the system and allow them to express positive traits towards the value of education success.
2. Negative effects of Homework
Induce boredom
Conversely, parents and educators worry that students and learners will grow bored if they have to spend more time solving academic problems at home.
Many people believe that giving students more tasks to perform at home reduces the time for kids to interact and play since they are more into finding answers for the next class.
This denies children leisure and involvement in community activities that also play a huge role in teaching people crucial life skills.
3. Contradictions about Homework and Mental health
Parent or guardian involvement in homework assignments can turn into some parent interference. For instance, a guardian can confuse the students if the instructional methods they use differ from those used by lecturers at school.
4. Acquisition of undesirable traits
Homework tasks can lead to some acquisition of undesirable traits if it promotes online cheating, either through copy-pasting the assignments helping with assignments that go beyond class tutoring.
5. Homework and Mental health statistics
The findings on homework relation to mental health were so troubling since the report showed that too many homework tasks are associated with high levels of stress, physical health condition, and lack of balance in students’ lives.
Fifty-seven percent of the children in the research cited that homework as primary anxiety and stressor in their schooling life (Langberg, J. M., Dvorsky, M. R., Molitor, S. J., Bourchtein, E., Eddy, L. D., Smith, Z. R., … & Eadeh, H. M.).
The research also found that kids growing up in a lower class are at risk for a severe number of ailments; high is both intuitive and well-proofed in the same report.
When it comes down to stress and health, it is clear that too much homework for a student at both ends of the learning spectrum can be of significant damage, which brings the question of how much homework is too much for an average or typical student?
6. What experts have to say about homework and mental health
While many researchers have tried to give their view on how much is too much assignment, the National Education Association and the PTA recommend that students and learners spend 20 minutes per grade per night.
This means that all first graders should at least spend 15 minutes on assignments, second graders 25 minutes, and the graph continues.
But a study conducted and published by American Family Therapy showed that students are getting more than the required, and this is inducing more stress on them, ruining their health.
In a study published by OECD, it evidently that after around 3 hours of assignments per week, the extra hours invested in-home tasks have a small impact on mental performance.
This means that by involving our kids to put an extra hour a day increases their stress by half the hour, we could reduce making assignment one of the significant stressors for kids who should be doing better things (journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 86, no. 1 (2018): 39).
While it is clear that the more assignments we assign our kids, the more we induce more damage, though this might sound alarming, a sizable assignment is good, but it should have a break or major in areas where your kids enjoy the most.
Final summary on Homework and Mental health
With all facts at hand, we can conclude that homework plays a huge role in stimulating our kid’s ability to solve problems and also to seek independence in life, but we cannot forget the negative side they have to hold and keep up with. Stress is one of the critical contributors coming from pressuring students to find answers, and the best way to solve that is to always assign students assignments in fields they like.
