Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe effects of demographic and dispositional traits on the homework practices of Australian secondary school students and teachers( 2023-01)A wide body of research has identified a range of benefits of homework for secondary school students, including improved achievement outcomes, development of metacognitive processes, and enhanced involvement of parents and carers with their children’s learning. However, research has also identified demographic differences in homework practices and has found that demographic variables moderate relationships between homework and achievement. This thesis examines demographic patterns in Australian students’ homework behaviour and affective dispositions towards homework and learning. Interactions between demography, student attitudes and teachers’ homework allocation practices are also examined with the aim of informing equitable and effective homework policies and practices. Study 1 published in the proceedings of the 2016 Australian Association for Research in Education’s (AARE) Annual Conference, explores demographic patterns in the homework practices of Australian secondary school students. It was found that student gender, location, school type, prior grade repetition, language background, and measures of socioeconomic status varied with reported time spent on homework by Australian 15-year-olds surveyed by PISA in 2012. Study 2, published in the Australian Journal of Education in 2021, examines relationships between Australian secondary school teachers’ homework allocation practices and student demography, dispositions, and teacher expectations. The results for Study 2 showed that the demographic profiles of classrooms affected teachers’ homework allocation practices although they were mediated by teachers’ assessments (or expectations) of their students’ capacities and by their students’ assessments of their own levels of competency and motivation. By drawing connections between the work of Bourdieu, and Eccles and Wigfield, homework is situated within a theoretical framework that attempts to account for the relationships between the dispositions and practices of individual and collective educational actors (students, teachers, schools and systems), and the economic, social and cultural environments in which they operate. Given that it was found that measures of individual and aggregated dispositions of students mediated the relationship between demographic factors and the homework practices of students and teachers, interventions and strategies suggested by the expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation have the potential to minimise relationships between demography and homework practices. However, lower levels of homework support, on average, from low socioeconomic status families will require a range of other supports from schools to ensure that the benefits of homework are more equitably distributed.