{"id":49243,"date":"2019-08-29T13:59:04","date_gmt":"2019-08-29T20:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=49243"},"modified":"2019-08-29T13:59:04","modified_gmt":"2019-08-29T20:59:04","slug":"should-parents-help-their-kids-with-homework","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/should-parents-help-their-kids-with-homework\/","title":{"rendered":"Should parents help their kids with homework?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Schools across the country encourage parents to help their children with homework.<\/p>\n

Parents are listening. Helping with homework is one of the most common things that\u00a0parents say they do<\/a>\u00a0to support their children\u2019s learning.<\/p>\n

Many experts have found that helping with homework cultivates\u00a0positive learning behaviors<\/a>,\u00a0reinforces<\/a>\u00a0class material and\u00a0signals<\/a>\u00a0to children that their education is important. The federal\u00a0Department of Education<\/a>\u00a0says that parents play an important role in their children\u2019s learning when they help with homework.<\/p>\n

Yet parents often hear through the media that helping with homework may not be worth it. After seeing headlines such as \u201cWhy It\u2019s So Important You Never Help Your Kids With Their Homework<\/a>\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t Help Your Kids With Their Homework<\/a>,\u201d moms, dads and other caregivers can be left wondering whether they should even bother.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a professor<\/a>\u00a0of education policy. Together with sociologist\u00a0Angran Li<\/a>, I set out to make sense of this conflicting guidance.<\/p>\n

Cause or consequence?<\/h4>\n

The basis for claims that parental help with homework can be bad for students comes from\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0examining\u00a0national surveys<\/a>. These studies find that frequent homework help from parents\u00a0is associated with lower test scores<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But this finding\u00a0does not necessarily mean<\/a>\u00a0that moms and dads do harm when they help with homework. When children are struggling in school, parents may step in to help more often. That is, frequent homework help from parents might not be the cause of problems, but rather, coincide with them.<\/p>\n

My colleague and I wanted to see if this was the case.<\/p>\n

To find out, we studied data from an important nationally representative survey administered by the federal government \u2013 the\u00a0Early Childhood Longitudinal Study<\/a>. We found that\u00a0low-achieving children<\/a>\u00a0were far more likely to receive frequent homework from parents.<\/p>\n

And importantly, after we factored in children\u2019s achievement levels, help with homework from parents was no longer associated with lower test scores.<\/p>\n

Other considerations<\/h4>\n

While this finding was insightful, we figured that the effect of homework help from parents on student achievement might also be influenced by many other characteristics.<\/p>\n

So we used a\u00a0statistical technique<\/a>\u00a0that would account for many overlapping factors, such as how well parents and their children get along, the number of siblings, and behavior at school.<\/p>\n

Our results also indicated that children with low test scores benefited the most when their parents frequently helped with homework.<\/p>\n

In other words, calls for all parents to stop helping with homework could end up hurting some children.<\/p>\n

In addition,\u00a0one common concern<\/a>\u00a0is that only affluent and highly educated parents have the time and resources to help their children with homework regularly. We find little evidence to support this presumption.\u00a0On national surveys<\/a>, low-income and minority families report helping their children with homework frequently. And this was also true in our study.<\/p>\n

Quality counts<\/h4>\n

It is important to point out that our study looked at the frequency of homework help from parents. However, evidence suggests that the\u00a0quality of homework help<\/a>\u00a0also matters. Parents\u00a0can make a difference<\/a>through warm encouragement and a positive outlook and by communicating high expectations to children.<\/p>\n

The effectiveness of homework help also seems to increase when parents foster\u00a0independent learning behaviors<\/a>. When helping with homework, parents should avoid trying to control the process and should also resist the temptation to\u00a0complete assignments for their kids<\/a>. Instead, they should let their children figure out answers on their own while offering helpful hints and positive feedback as needed.<\/p>\n

Although parents should always consider their child\u2019s individual learning needs,\u00a0researchers say<\/a>\u00a0that parents should gradually reduce homework help as their children grow older, probably phasing out direct assistance with homework by the time their children reach high school. Parents can also seek advice from teachers and other school staff on how to make homework support\u00a0engaging and attuned<\/a>\u00a0to their child\u2019s learning needs.<\/p>\n

Blanket statements about whether homework help is simply good or bad can be misleading. Under the right circumstances, parents can help their kids learn more when they help with homework.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Daniel Hamlin is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Oklahoma<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Schools across the country encourage parents to help their children with homework. Parents are listening. Helping with homework is one of the most common things that\u00a0parents say they do\u00a0to support their children\u2019s learning. Many experts have found that helping with homework cultivates\u00a0positive learning behaviors,\u00a0reinforces\u00a0class material and\u00a0signals\u00a0to children that their education is important. The federal\u00a0Department of […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":49244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15645],"tags":[11070],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-49243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-homework-2"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nShould parents help their kids with homework? - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/should-parents-help-their-kids-with-homework\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Should parents help their kids with homework? - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Schools across the country encourage parents to help their children with homework. 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