| dc.description.abstract | Although homework is not mandatory, the practice of assigning homework is, and has always been, commonplace in the Irish education system. However, homework has begun to provoke strong passions and opinions throughout the past decades, making it a topic at the root of worldwide research for some time. It has been both commended and denounced by past studies, yet it remains a topic of immense importance to students, teachers and parents. The ever-changing opinions of parents and teachers towards homework, paired with the scarcity of research conducted in an Irish context were the justification for the present study. Thus, the focus of this dissertation was to investigate the attitudes of teachers and parents towards homework at primary school level.
A mixed-method approach was selected for the study, with questionnaires that contained open-ended and closed-ended questions chosen as the instrument for data collection. This is a small-scale study which obtained responses from forty-two parents and thirty-eight primary school teachers.
The study investigated several elements of homework such as the participants views of homework’s importance, its effect on academic achievement and participants’ perceived advantages and disadvantages of homework. Other matters that this study sought to investigate included the question of parental involvement in homework, teachers’ reasons for assigning homework and finally, homework’s contribution to stress in the household. The researcher analyzed the data through data tabulation and thematic coding approach and the findings show that the majority of parents and teachers believe that homework is still an important part of primary school life, however it is a complex topic. These findings were used by the researcher to make a number of recommendations for future practice and research. | |
