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| Sample of students' homework |
This writing aims to report the thematic analysis of the interviews regarding issues related to homework conducted with five teachers of a public sector high school. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted using a predesigned interview protocol which included five open-ended questions to elicit the responses of the teachers.
From the analysis of the data collected through interviews, themes emerged such as cheating/copying, the burden on students, irregularity in doing homework, poor performance attempts, lack of motivation among the students, and lack of sharing homework with parents. The following is the detailed report on the
emerged themes regarding issues related to homework.
Cheating/Copying
From the data collected through individual interviews of teachers, it was revealed that students often copy homework from their colleagues. There are some students who do their homework on time and most other students take their homework notebooks and copy them to complete their assigned work at home. The reason behind copying homework according to the teachers was assigning the same type and amount of homework to all the students. Sometimes the homework assigned is challenging which compels low-performing students to copy from their colleagues.
Because
students do not bother to put their energies and time to complete the
challenging homework. It was evident from the responses of the teachers that
classes are crowded so the lack of sufficient time for teachers to thoroughly
check students’ homework leads students to copy in doing homework. The teachers
teach thirty to thirty-five periods in a week so that they do not spare much of
their time to check their assigned homework along with carrying other
professional tasks assigned by the school management.
Burdon on
students
As it was found that all the subjects are taught on daily basis and the homework is assigned on regular basis by all the teachers. Completing the homework of all the subjects on daily basis for students is a burden on them. In this way, students get reluctant and fatigue in completing homework. From the responses of the teachers during interviews, it was found that there is no timetable for checking students’ homework so that the students could manage their homework accordingly.
In the absence of a timetable, students
get confused and feel the burden to complete their homework on many subjects. There
are no set rules/norms of how much amount of homework is to be assigned by each
teacher on each subject. A huge amount of homework is assigned by the teachers
on daily basis causing a burden on students. It was also noted while analyzing
the data from interviews that along with homework, students are also asked to
prepare for classroom tests so that they have to prepare for the test as well
along with doing homework.
Irregularity of
completing homework
The data collected through interviews reported that most of the students do not do the assigned homework on regular basis or show incomplete homework. Usually, they get absent when they are asked one day earlier to make their homework check the next day. The data revealed that students provide excuses for not completing or not doing homework on time. The students do their homework overnight when they are informed a day earlier to check their homework on the following day. The quality of work done by the students, not on regular basis is not up to the mark.
From the analysis
of data collected, it was found that irregular mode of checking homework leads
the students develop no habits of doing homework on daily basis. The students
have developed an attitude that they are supposed to do their homework on the
day when they are informed about checking homework on the next day. It revealed
from the data that students are unaware of the purpose of homework as an
extension of classroom work to connect the school with home.
Poor performance
in doing homework
Data through individual interviews with teachers regarding issues related to homework showed that the students demonstrate poor performance in doing homework. The handwriting of the students in homework is not legible and unattractive. Cleanliness in doing homework is not evident and the condition of the homework notebooks is vulnerable. Many mistakes are found in students' homework while writing words and sentences.
Paragraphs written by students
in homework are lacking punctuation. Formatting and styles of writing are far
away from the writing tasks in doing homework. Utilization of spaces in pages
is not proper as the students unnecessarily leave blank spaces in pages. The
students have no practice using color pens for headings and subheadings for their homework. Cutting, erasing, and overwriting are common in homework done by
the students.
Lack of
motivation among the students in doing homework
From the data, it was evident that
the students are not motivated in completing their homework. The students do
not get excited when the homework is assigned. On delaying of checking
homework, the students feel happy that they got rid of making their homework
checked. Homework is taken as a formality by the students while doing and
presenting that to the teachers. Feedback provided by the teachers to improve
the need improvement areas is not followed by the students as they make the
same mistakes that had been given feedback on to be improved. No creativity by
the students is observed in carrying out the tasks assigned as homework.
Lack of sharing
homework with parents
The students do not share the assigned and checked
homework with parents on which they could give their comments. The teachers
provide feedback on the students’ homework and that is not shared with the
parents by the students. From parents, it is also lacking in follow up of
homework so that the communication could be made between the parents and
teachers. It was revealed that there is no mechanism of sharing homework with
parents by teachers and management of the school. During parents and teachers’
meetings, there has been rare in putting homework as agenda point and similarly, from the parents, there is no any point raises regarding homework.
Conclusion
The analysis of data collected through five teachers' individual interviews and subsequent analysis revealed that there are issues related with students regarding homework as well as some issues are found in the teachers and management of the school in addressing the homework issues. In order to make homework streamlined, school leadership, teachers and parents need to play their roles so that the issue among the students regarding homework could be addressed appropriately.
At the school level, a homework timetable needs to be designed, the arrangement needs to be made to share
homework with parents and on part of teachers, they need to regularise the
assigning and checking homework so that the regularity among students in doing
homework could be ensured. Furthermore, homework needs to be assigned in such a way that copying could be avoided and challenging homework needs to be assigned
to develop critical thinking skills among the students.
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