Homework and exams have always been a big responsibility for all of us because through them we are evaluated and we get a mark, which is why they are very important.
School homework, sometimes called homework for home, has been defined as “tasks assigned to students by teachers to be carried out during non-school hours” (Cooper, 2001) and are one of the everyday activities in the life of the students. We all agree that it was a daily routine because every day we had homework and we had to spend time doing the homework.
When boys and girls start school they feel a great deal of emotion about the idea of homework, but after an extraordinarily short period of time, this interest and excitement decreases alarmingly (Coutts, 2004). As we can see in Rosario's experience: “At first I always wanted to do the homework with nice lyrics, everything very orderly and with calm and above all that were well made. Then it started not to matter as much because it was something I did every day and it was always the same”.
The effort invested in homework has been shown to have a greater influence on academic achievement than the time devoted to homework (Trautwein, Lüdtke, Kastens, and Köller, 2006). In this way, process of realization and the real use of the time dedicated, since the greater the use, the greater the academic performance. According to Carmen's experience: “I remember when I was more interested in something, I wanted to understand better doing my homework well, and sometimes I did more to practice and improve”. In this sense we can see that, the greater time spent and the better use of that time suppose more tasks performed and a better performance (Núñez, Suárez et al., 2013).
As for the exams, they have often been a great fear for us because we did not know if we were sufficiently prepared to overcome them or if we would answer all the questions or not. As we can see in María’s experience: “I clearly remember that my first exam was on the subject of Spanish language, exactly about the onomatopoeias. I studied a lot at home with my parents and I was totally prepared for the exam. When it came time to take the exam, my classmates and I started to do it, I remember that the exam was easy to me and I could do every exercise, but, as always, I began to talk to my colleagues and distract myself with my imagination, so when I realized the time it was, the teacher was already collecting the exams, the time had finished and I had not finished it. The day that the teacher gave us ours marks of the exam I cried, because although I knew everything of the exam, I got 45% because I did not finish it”.
It is evident that the purpose of qualification is very present in the development of the classes so that the evaluation of the students is, together with the control of their behaviors and the transmission of information, one of the keys that allow to understand the pedagogical practices more common in the classroom.
Class questions and written exercises often have an examination function, as Blanco (1992) states, “the teacher does not ask why he does not know the answer, but because he wants to know if the students know it”. As we can see in Paula's experience: “In my class the teacher always asked oral questions to see if we really understood the lesson or not, and so it was also a point to take into account to evaluate each student as he saw who participated more, who paid more attention, who was absent …”
But there is no doubt that the exam is the main resource teachers use to qualify the students because our educational system determines it. According to Parkin, “titles are awarded on the basis of examinations designed more to measure certain attributes and qualities of a class than practical skills and abilities that can hardly be transmitted through the family” (Parkin, 1999).
We see that, looking at the school itinerary as a whole and considering the credit function of the school system, the academic trajectory of the students can be seen as a race to obtain the qualifications and titles that give access to the different sections in which the education, until finally reaching the one that makes possible its insertion in the job market.
REFERENCES
- Blanco García, N. (1992): Las rejas invisibles. El contenido y la enseñanza de la Historia. Estudio de un caso. Tesis doctoral dirigida por A. Pérez Gómez, Universidad de Málaga, Málaga.
- Cooper, H. (2001). The battle over homework: Common ground for administrators, teachers, and parents (2nd ed.). California: Corwin Press.
- Coutts, P. M. (2004). Meanings of homework and implications for practice. Theory into Practice, 43, 182-187. doi:10.1207/s15430421tip4303_3
- Núñez, J. C., Suárez, N., Cerezo, R., González-Pienda, J. A., Rosário, P., Mourao, R., y Valle, A. (2013). Homework and academic achievement across Spanish Compulsory Education. Educational Psychology. doi:10.1080/01443410.2013.817537
- Parkin, F. (1999): El cierre social como exclusión. En M. Fernández Enguita (Ed.), Sociología de la educación (pp. 264-271). Barcelona: Ariel.
- Trautwein, U., Lüdtke, O., Kastens, C., y Köller, O. (2006). Effort on homework in grades 5-9: Development, motivational antecedents, and the association with effort on classwork. Child Development, 77(4), 1094-1111. doi: 10.1111/j.14678624.2006.00921.x
