by Kathleen Cushman

Editor’s note: This summer, WKCD’s Kathleen Cushman launched a blog in connection with her new book, Fires in the Mind: What Kids Can Tell Us About Motivation and Mastery (Jossey-Bass Books, May 2010). Here and in the months to come, we will offer quick takes from that conversation, and we invite you to visit the blog directly and join in!

August 26, 2010—Ideally, homework should be “deliberate practice,” targeting individual areas of need and pushing each student to a new place just within reach. But students tell me it rarely works that way.

The kids make their case in Chapter 8 of Fires in the Mind, part of which is adapted as “Show Us What Homework’s For” in the new September issue of Educational Leadership magazine. (If you can’t access the magazine article, click here to download a free PDF of Chapter 8 of the book.)

Cognitive researchers have specific criteria for the kind of practice that steadily makes people better at what they do. It would make sense if homework matched those criteria, but my research for “Fires in the Mind” shows that it usually doesn’t. For example:

• Deliberate practice always has an express purpose, but students say they usually don’t know what its point is.
• Deliberate practice is geared to the individual, but typically everyone gets the same homework tasks, no matter what they need to work on.
• Deliberate practice involves attention and focus, but kids say they usually do their homework without thinking.
• Deliberate practice requires repetition or rehearsal, but often kids tell me that they are repeating something just to get it over with, not to perfect and remember it.
• Timing is important in deliberate practice, yet homework often takes more time than kids have for it.
• Finally, although deliberate practice should lead to new skills, students say they don’t use it for anything after it’s done.

What would it take to turn homework into the kind of practice that would help students strengthen their skills and knowledge in academic subjects? Perhaps the most powerful steps in that direction would occur, I propose, when students think of homework as “getting good” at something–much like practice in athletics or the arts.

Please join us in brainstorming some new ways to lift homework to a new level of deliberate practice. How are you already designing homework that accomplishes this?

One Response to “Is homework “deliberate practice”?”

David Wilcox says:
August 26, 2010 at 1:30 am
Homework will always be a contentious issue for both parents and teachers (let alone students).
The premise that homework is ‘deliberate practice’ is an important one. However I fear that teachers have not given adequate thought to the purpose of homework. Sometimes the ‘homework debate’ is not even on the radar. Homework is given because it has always been given, because the curriculum is overcrowded and we need the kids to complete more tasks, or because the expectation of the school is that homework is set.
So, let’s get into the debate.
There are proponents who believe any homework is wrong. I don’t agree with that polarized a view. But neither do I believe homework should be set for the sake of having the students do ‘something’ at home.
I see homework as an extension of my evaluation of the students’ knowledge acquisition. The classroom is a supportive learning environment. It will be a place where students can seek immediate answers and encouragement in their learning. Home is likely to be different. And homework allows me to put the students in a place where they need to think more independently; to consolidate their learning. Yes, they might struggle. But, in some ways, that’s what I want to see. When I correct homework, I am looking to see where the gaps are and why any mistakes have occurred. I’m not setting them up for failure. I create an environment of understanding of the value of mistakes: a mistake is only bad if we do not learn from it.
For me, the setting of homework is only half of the process. It is the correcting and subsequent teaching that completes the value of the exercise.
I love the dot points in the article above. However, I’d encourage dialogue to take the issue of the purpose of homework even further…