Prospective primary teachers’ perceptions about the use of mathematics homework

ABSTRACT

The benefit of homework (HW) has been the subject of ongoing debate among various stakeholders. Within this debate, and in relation to teacher development, prospective teachers’ views of HW have received limited attention. In this study, we survey primary pre-service teachers’ (‘PSTs’) views of HW use (n = 45 teaching grades 2–5; n = 39 teaching grades 6 and 7) in a single discipline (mathematics) at one large Australian university.

The literature suggests students in upper primary and secondary grades will benefit from the use of mathematics HW. Results of the study, in contrast, suggest our PSTs teaching early primary grades planned to give proportionally (but not significantly) more mathematics HW than those teaching later grades. Reasons for this disparity are discussed. We argue there is a need in teacher development to equip PSTs with a better understanding of how classroom and home-based learning work together in the development of mathematical understanding.

KEYWORDS:

• Mathematics achievement
• assessment
• homework
• primary level
• teacher education pedagogy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sven Trenholm

Dr Sven Trenholm is a lecturer of mathematics education at the University of South Australia. He received his PhD (Studentship) from Loughborough University (UK), studying at the internationally recognised Mathematics Education Centre (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/mec/). Prior to this, he earned an MSc (Distinction) from the State University of New York at Albany (US) and Graduate Diploma in Teaching as well as BSc from McGill University (Canada). Before taking up his current position, he taught secondary mathematics in Canada and was a tenured instructor of mathematics within the State University of New York. His primary research is situated in the intersection between the fields of mathematics education and instructional technology (‘digital learning’) where he is interested in investigating the development of mathematical thinking in fully asynchronous online and otherwise computer-mediated instructional contexts. He has publications in leading international journals in his field and is currently collaborating on research projects with colleagues in Australia, Canada and the EU.

Mohan Chinnappan

Professor Mohan Chinnappan completed his PhD at Flinders University. His academic career commenced with a post-doctoral positon at the Centre for Mathematics and Science Education at Queensland University of Technology where he received considerable mentoring support from a team of world-class mathematics educators. In the following years, his research has focused on the examination of strategies to support the growth of teachers’ and students’ mathematical knowledge and, more specifically, knowledge that empowers teachers and students to become better problem solvers in geometry, number and algebra. The specific foci of these studies were the unpacking of relations between the organisational structure of knowledge and the accessing of that knowledge by teachers and learners. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of California (Berkeley), University of Michigan and Purdue University, as well as Nanyang University of Technology (Singapore).