Solving the Homework Problem by Flipping the Learning

Jonathan Bergmann

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781416623755
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Métodos de enseñanza de la educación

Teachers view homework as an opportunity for students to continue learning after the bell rings. For many students, it's often just the dreaded "H" word. How can educators change the way students view homework while ensuring that they still benefit from the additional learning it provides? It's easy. Flip the learning!

In Solving the Homework Problem by Flipping the Learning, Jonathan Bergmann, the co-founder of the flipped learning concept, shows you how. The book outlines

• why traditional homework causes dread and frustration for students,
• how flipped learning—completing the harder or more analytical aspects of learning in class as opposed to having students do it on their own—improves student learning, and
• how teachers can create flipped assignments that both engage students and advance student learning.

Bergmann introduces the idea of flipped videos, and provides step-by-step guidance to make them effective. The book also includes useful forms, a student survey, and a sample letter to send to parents explaining the flipped learning concept.

You want your students to learn, and your students want learning to be accessible. With that in mind, read through these pages, flip the learning in your classroom, and watch students get excited about homework!

---

Chapter 1

---

The Case for Flipped Homework

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Homework! The word strikes fear and trepidation in students. It truly is the "H" word. Parents have a love-hate relationship with homework. They want what is best for their kids, and many think it is the way for their children to succeed, but they fear that they may not be able to help their children. Teachers feel an obligation to assign homework because of outside pressure, internal motivation, or simply because we have always done it this way. What is the value of homework? Does it help students, hinder students, or is it an instrument of control teachers hold over students? As a teacher, I have assigned a lot of homework. Some homework assignments have been meaningful and effective, while other assignments have merely been busywork that did not help my students. And as a parent of three children, I have spent countless hours working with my kids. I have sometimes seen how homework benefits my children and other times seen how it hinders their education. With each of my three children, there have been moments of tears when I questioned the value and purpose of a homework assignment.

According to the National Center for Family Literacy, in 2013 (Scoon, 2013) 50 percent of parents say they have trouble helping their kids with homework. The reasons they gave were:

• They don't understand the material (46.5 percent).
• Their kids don't want help (31.6 percent).
• They are too busy (21.9 percent).

I received this e-mail from Barbra Sterns (2016, personal correspondence), a corporate trainer and frustrated parent:

As far as I am concerned, the "H" word is the biggest advantage of the flipped classroom. When my kids were in school, six or seven different teachers would each lecture for an hour and then send the kids home to do the homework, which was almost always application and practice of the concepts from class that day.

But my kids didn't come straight home; they went to day care until I was back from work. I dropped them off at day care at 7:30 a.m. and picked them up at 5:30–6:00 p.m. The day care didn't have willing or trained helpers for homework. Even after-school programs at the school used their time for activity and fun, not to extend the school day. Then in the three hours between the time we got home and the time they went to bed, we fit in meals, baths, martial arts, birthdays, etc. Homework was always a battle; they couldn't always remember well enough to apply and when I tried to help they said, "That's not what my teacher told me."

The Problem with Homework

From my lens as both a career teacher and a father, I see several problems with homework in today's educational climate:

• Homework that seemingly has little meaning and usefulness
• Assignments that take too long to complete
• Assignments that many students don't complete
• Teachers sending students home with assignments that they are ill-prepared to complete
• Ineffective homework assignments

Denise Pope, PhD, a researcher at Stanford University, surveyed more than 4,300 students at high-achieving secondary schools and found that only 20 to 30 percent of students found their homework to be useful and meaningful (Pope, 2013). Homework, in many cases, does not help students achieve, does not help students develop curiosity, and may be an exercise in compliance and control. Assignments are often given without context, are either too easy or too difficult, or are irrelevant to the course.

As a parent, I have watched my children work late into the night, and even into the wee hours of the morning, to complete homework. It feels as if some teachers equate the amount of homework with rigor. But in reality, all their homework accomplishes is teaching students to resent and sabotage the love of learning.

The Educator's Dilemma

For a variety of reasons, students often come to class without having completed the necessary prework. Should teachers fight this, or should they give up and not assign any homework? If our goal is compliance instead of learning, then we educators have missed the point of homework. On the flip side, hard work and perseverance are elements of learning. Not every student is interested in everything that is taught, and many may lack the internal motivation to complete all assignments.

A Recipe for Failure

I am the first to confess that I sent students home with assignments that some could not complete. I sent them home with work they were incapable of completing with the limited background I had given them. Maybe they did not have the cognitive framework, maybe they did not have adequate support at home, or maybe they were simply too busy with the demands of their home life. Some students came to class with incomplete work because they saw no value to the assignment and chose not to complete it. Others had been inundated with senseless homework over many years and rejected homework as a whole on principle. Much of the time, students didn't complete homework assignments because they lacked the necessary background knowledge and gave up. Then these same students came to class and professed not to care about school and often became discipline problems. In my experience, students who are discipline problems are getting negative attention for behavior to mask feelings of inadequacy and a sense of failure. It is easier to struggle and disregard the value of school than to struggle, continue to care, and feel like a failure.

The Great Debate

There is quite a debate among educators, parents, and communities about the value of homework. On one side are the proponents of homework, who feel that students need to have time to practice what they have learned in class. And on the other side are those who think homework is a waste of time or harmful for children. Some parents believe that schools should not assign any homework. To those parents, school is for learning and home is for family. They feel that school is infringing on the homelife of families and want academic work to be restricted to the school day. I sympathize with these parents because, as a parent myself, I too have seen the dark side of homework, wherein my children are lost, frustrated, or have been given so much homework that sleep is sacrificed.

For some teachers, homework is assigned because it is expected. Little deep thought is given to the quantity, quality, or efficacy of the assignment. And for others, homework can be a power issue, whereby teachers use homework as a reward-and-punishment system to control students. A quick review of the research can be summarized by the work of two educators—Robert Marzano and Alfie Kohn.

Marzano. Robert Marzano evaluated the research on homework and came to the conclusion that homework is an effective tool for learning. Marzano found a correlation between the age of the student and the effectiveness of homework. The older the student, the greater the effect on student achievement. His findings are summarized in Figure 1.1.

---

Figure 1.1. Student Age and Effectiveness of Homework

---

Marzano also suggested an ideal amount of time for students to engage in homework, which he refers to as the "ten-minute rule." Per the rule, students should be assigned no more than ten minutes of homework per grade level. So, following that rule, a 4th grade student should have no more than forty minutes of homework every night.

Kohn. The other side of the homework debate can be represented by Alfie Kohn. Like Marzano, Kohn examined the research. However, unlike Marzano, Kohn concluded that the research shows that homework has little effect on student achievement and should be abolished. He stated in an online video (Kohn, 2009):

When you think about it, it's kinda weird that after spending all day in school, kids are asked to do more academic assignments when they get home. What is weirder about this is that we don't think it is weird. We never stop to ask if it is logical, whether it is consistent with our ultimate goals for children's development, or whether any research supports it. The questions I want to ask about homework are not the little bitty questions like should we cap it at x minutes? I want to ask the question, "Why do kids need to work a second shift when they get home on academic assignments?"

Kohn argues that students need more unstructured time to play, explore, and develop outside of the structure of rigorous homework. Kohn criticizes homework studies and questions the value of any homework. In his book, The Homework Myth, he concludes that "… the research offers no reason to believe that students in high-quality classrooms whose teachers give little or no homework would be at a disadvantage as regards any meaningful kind of learning." He breaks down his summary into two categories: younger students and older students. He states that for younger students, there is either no relationship, and possibly even a negative relationship, between homework and student achievement. For older students, Kohn states that there is no significant relationship between homework and student achievement, with one exception: there is a positive relationship between the amount of homework done and students' grades (Kohn 2006).

A Possible Solution?

So which is it? Does homework benefit students? As a classroom teacher, as someone who has visited classrooms around the globe, and as one who has reviewed the literature, I have come to the conclusion that homework, when done with meaning and forethought, helps students achieve. Homework must be relevant, meaningful, and taught at a level that is commensurate with a student's ability.

Is there another way? What if homework took less time, was more meaningful, more relevant, more focused, and students actually did it? I have seen how flipped learning "solves" the homework problem. No longer is homework the "H" word, but rather an activity that prepares students to learn deeply and become active and engaged participants in the classroom experience.

Flipped Learning and Bloom's Taxonomy

Before discussing flipped learning, let's look at homework in light of Bloom's Taxonomy. In a traditional classroom, the lower tiers of Bloom's Taxonomy are done in class and students are sent home to climb their way to the top of the taxonomy by completing practice problems, projects, and papers on their own time without an expert present to help. In a flipped classroom, the lower tiers of Bloom's Taxonomy are delivered to the individual learner outside of the class, so all students can engage in higher-order thinking during class with their peers and an expert present.

From the Bottom Up

As I look back at my classes before I pioneered the flipped class with Aaron Sams (Bergmann and Sams, 2012), I spent the bulk of class time teaching remembering and understanding and then sent my students home to apply, analyze, evaluate, and create (see Figure 1.2). As a parent, I have had my children come home and get frustrated with homework. But my kids had me, a professional educator, there to help them, so my educational practice was adequate for my children. But not all children grow up in educator-rich homes.

---

Figure 1.2. Bloom's Taxonomy, Easy/Hard (Anderson 2001)

---

Many students come to us from disadvantaged homes where parents lack the time or expertise to help their children. I especially remember how sending students home to do the "hard stuff" didn't work when I taught in an inner-city middle school in Denver, Colorado. When I sent students home to apply and analyze, many came back empty-handed. Some of these students did not have the parental support at home to help them with the more difficult cognitive tasks and, thus, they were not successful. For instance, I recall teaching my 7th grade students the rock cycle via a lecture. Students were expected to take notes and then go home and answer some questions on a worksheet. I was frustrated by both the lack-of-completion percentage and the quality of the students' answers. A typical assignment I might send home when I taught was:

"The mid-ocean ridge is a divergent boundary where lava erupts onto the ocean floor. Explain what is happening in terms of igneous rocks." This assignment requires students to understand the difference between extrusive igneous and intrusive igneous rocks. From a Bloom's Taxonomic lens, this is either at the application or analysis level. It is important to analyze, but expecting them to complete this assignment on their own with little or no help is unrealistic at best and harmful at worst.

From the Top Down: The Flipped Classroom

What if we were able to do the "hard s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Chapter 1. The Case for Flipped Homework
• Chapter 2. The Hallmarks of Good Flipped Homework
• Chapter 3. Flipped Strategies for Educators
• Chapter 4. Assessing and Grading Flipped Homework
• Chapter 5. Strategies for Schools, Administrators, and Parents
• Chapter 6. Tying it All Together
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Study Guide
• Related ASCD Resources
• About the Author
• Copyright