Students given 'short bursts' of homework perform better than those given long assignments

'A teacher who sets a quick homework task after most lessons appears to be doing more for their students than one who occasionally assigns a long, involved piece of work, even if the total number of hours is similar,' the researchers said. 

Shorter, regular homework assignments, rather than an increased volume of work, may be linked to stronger performance in maths and science among second-level students, new research suggests.

While public opinion and attitudes towards homework can often be “quite polarised”, Irish researchers have found a small but statistically significant positive relationship between homework and achievement among 13 and 14-year old students.

This tends to be driven by the frequency with which homework is assigned rather than its volume, and was also associated with highly qualified and more experienced teachers.

The assignment of homework may also not be an effective tool for raising achievement among the very weakest students, the study also highlighted.

Conducted by Dr Darragh Flannery and Professor Dónal Palcic from the University of Limerick, in collaboration with Dr José G Clavel from the University of Murcia, Spain, the study found the positive link between additional homework and improved test scores to be stronger where students were educated by more experienced teachers. 

Researchers analysed data from almost 100,000 13 and 14-year-old students from across 23 countries, including Ireland, taken from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 dataset. 

Researchers compared each student against themselves, looking at their performance in the subject in which they were assigned more homework in versus the subject in which they were assigned less. 

They also looked how often homework was assigned, and how long each assignment took to complete. Students who were given shorter, frequent homework assignments between three to five times a week, and taking up to half an hour each time tended to score higher than those given no homework at all.

However, this pattern was not seen among weaker-performing students, but "lower ability students in some jurisdictions may see some benefits", it noted. 

"A teacher who sets a quick homework task after most lessons appears to be doing more for their students than one who occasionally assigns a long, involved piece of work, even if the total number of hours is similar," the researchers said. 

"This lines up with decades of cognitive science on ‘spaced repetition’, recalling and applying material in short bursts, spread over time, builds a stronger memory trace than cramming the same amount of practice into one sitting." 

More "modern styles of teaching" do not lend themselves towards complementing the assignment of homework in improving student test scores, they added. 

"This may help inform discussions around teacher and school practices while contributing to the wider debate around modern versus traditional teaching styles." 

The positive association also "depends on homework actually being done independently", they added. 

“If pupils increasingly turn to AI to generate answers rather than work through problems on their own, the retrieval-practice benefit we document could weaken or disappear entirely, regardless of how homework is structured."

How schools design homework and assessment to preserve its value in an AI-saturated environment is now an "urgent question".