{"id":3410,"date":"2018-05-24T08:00:27","date_gmt":"2018-05-24T13:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=3410"},"modified":"2018-05-20T19:58:05","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T00:58:05","slug":"mothers-homework-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/mothers-homework-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Mothers Help Children With Homework?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Does a mother’s homework help benefit her children? Do they study better? Do they learn more?<\/p>\n

\"mother's<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the years, researchers have found conflicting answers to these questions.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that conflict results from the different kinds of \u201chelp\u201d that mothers might provide. Researchers in Finland wanted to find out.<\/p>\n

Asking the Right Questions<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Jaana Viljaranta and her colleagues worked with several hundred 2nd<\/sup>-4th<\/sup> graders, their mothers, and their teachers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(The researchers don\u2019t explain why they focus on mothers. I imagine they assume that mothers offer more help than fathers, and \u2013 to be precise \u2013 focus on \u201cmaternal behavior\u201d rather than \u201cparental behavior.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Rather than simply ask \u201cdo you help your children with their homework,\u201d they had mothers rate themselves in three categories.<\/p>\n

Perhaps these mothers provide actual help<\/em> or guidance.<\/p>\n

Perhaps they simply check to see<\/em> if their child has done the homework.<\/p>\n

Or, perhaps they \u201cgrant autonomy<\/em>\u201d; that is, \u201ctrust that the child takes care of home assignments by him\/herself.\u201d<\/p>\n

They looked for a connection between these self-ratings and two results.<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>, what effect did this maternal behavior have on task-persistence? They had teachers answer questions like \u201cdoes the student actively attempt to solve even difficult situations and tasks?\u201d<\/p>\n

And second<\/strong>: what effect did it have on students\u2019 learning? Here, researchers used a standard measurement of reading and math skill \u2013 not the students\u2019 grades.<\/p>\n

A Mother’s Homework Help: Finding the Answers<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Because researchers measured so many variables, they\u2019ve got a lot of potential relationships to map.<\/p>\n

The short version is:<\/p>\n

When mothers help<\/em> with homework, children are less task-persistent<\/em> on their own.<\/p>\n

When mothers grant autonomy<\/em>, children are more task-persistent<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And, when mothers check that homework got done<\/em>, that doesn\u2019t influence task-persistence either way.<\/p>\n

(These three findings apply to 2nd<\/sup> and 3rd<\/sup> grade, not 4th<\/sup>.)<\/p>\n

In turn, increased task persistence suggested higher grades, and decreased task persistence suggested lower grades. (For both those findings, the results didn\u2019t quite achieve statistical significance.)<\/p>\n

In sum: help doesn\u2019t help<\/em>. Granting autonomy does<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A Mother’s Homework Help: Explaining the Answers<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Why is this so? Why doesn\u2019t homework help help?<\/p>\n

The Finnish researchers based their study on a well-known theory about motivation: Self-Determination Theory<\/a>. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan argue that people are motivated by a desire for three things: autonomy, competence, and relatedness<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Viljaranta and colleagues reason thus: when mothers help their children with homework, they reduce their child’s autonomy<\/strong>, and imply that they think their children lack necessary competence<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

By holding back from helping, on the other hand, mothers boost their children’s sense of autonomy. They also show that they believe their children can get the work done on their own.<\/p>\n

By promoting autonomy and competence, these mothers help their children develop intrinsic motivation, and thereby improve task persistence.<\/p>\n

Not Too Fast…<\/h2>\n

All research has limitations, and we should keep this study’s limitations in mind.<\/p>\n

This is only one study.<\/p>\n

It was done in a very particular cultural context. (Grade school in Finland.)<\/p>\n

And: researchers found a task-persistence effect only in 2nd and 3rd grade, not 4th. (And, they didn’t find statistically significant difference in learning at any point.)<\/p>\n

Finally: researchers report on averages. Your child isn’t average<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Even if many (or most) children benefit when they get autonomy, others just might need some more support.<\/p>\n

Research can help inform our decisions, but we must make those decisions one child at a time.<\/p>\n

Addendum<\/h2>\n

After I wrote the post above, I discussed this research with a colleague who teachers in Finland. He responds thus:<\/p>\n

\n
The conclusion of the study may contain a cultural bias [as all research does — editor’s note.] Generally speaking, parents in Finland are quite hands off with schools — the very opposite of helicopter parenting. There is also a cultural preference for developing independence from a young age.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In other words: “granting autonomy” is already a cultural norm in Finland in ways that it might not be elsewhere. This background might influence our understanding of this research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to a new study in Finland, a mother’s homework help might reduce her child’s feelings of autonomy and competence. For this reason, even well-intentioned help might reduce a child’s motivation–at least in 2nd and 3rd grades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":3413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[57,64],"class_list":["post-3410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-homework","tag-parents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3410"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3439,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3410\/revisions\/3439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}