Homework self-regulation: Grade, gender, and achievement-level differences

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Abstract

The study examined differences in students' reported homework value, motivation, and metacognitive strategy use during homework completion among two grades, gender, and three achievement levels. Differences among six homework self-regulation constructs (utility value, intrinsic value, effort, persistence, planning, and self-checking) were also examined. Participants were 330 seventh and 407 eleventh graders from a metropolitan city in China. Chinese students' reported self-regulated learning during homework declined from middle to high school. Whereas students rated utility value and effort high, intrinsic value and self-checking were rated low. Male and female students did not differ in homework self-regulation. Achievement-level differences in homework self-regulation were found in seventh graders, but not in eleventh graders. The pattern of Chinese students' reported homework value, motivation, and metacognitive strategy use were discussed, and instructional implications were offered.

Introduction

Homework is a frequently used educational activity. Among the purposes of homework assignments are support for academic learning and for the development of academic skills (e.g., responsibility). Although students' intellectual ability and overall motivation apply similarly to learning activities at school and home at any given time, learning at home is affected by various factors that are unique to each student. Home environment, family, and friends shape the learning conditions under which students engage in homework, and various out-of-school activities compete for students' time and effort (Hong & Milgram, 2000). Thus, students who are responsible for their own learning and regulate their homework behaviors should have a better chance of experiencing successful homework completion (Cooper, Lindsay, Nye, & Greathouse, 1998).

As students progress through school, they experience changes in types, amount, and purposes of homework assignments (Cooper, Lindsay, & Nye, 2000). Likewise, students' perceptions of homework change. Whereas young children see the purpose of homework as an aid to learning, older children have narrow views of homework's purposes (e.g., revise previously learned material) (Warton, 1997). Older than younger children consider homework boring and meaningless (Hong, Topham, Carter, Wozniak, Tomoff, & Lee, 2000). Younger children report that they enjoy schoolwork and are happier in school more so than older children (Bryan & Nelson, 1994). Furthermore, how much children like school is positively related to how much children liked homework (Chen & Stevenson, 1989). With older students receiving more homework and liking school and homework less (Bryan and Nelson, 1994, Polloway et al., 1995), it is important to examine how students in different grade levels value and approach homework.

Given the variations in homework effects across grade level and the importance of students' responsibility for successful homework experience (Corno, 1996, Warton, 2001), it is important that educators understand whether students regulate their homework behaviors. Self-regulation applied in homework may be examined as a specific facet of responsibility (Warton, 1997). Although self-regulated learning has been studied widely (e.g., Pintrich & De Groot, 1990), self-regulation applied to homework has rarely been examined (Xu & Corno, 2003).

According to the social cognitive view (Zimmerman, 2000), self-regulation is thoughts, affects, and behaviors used to attain learning goals. The main tenet of self-regulated learning is that students learn more effectively when they are responsible for their own learning (Schunk, 2001). According to Zimmerman and Bandura (1994), self-regulated learners enlist self-reactive influences to motivate their efforts and employ appropriate strategies to achieve success.

In the current study, we focused on motivational and metacognitive components drawn from modern conceptualizations of self-regulated learning originated from the social–cognitive perspective of self-regulated learning (Zimmerman, 2000). More contemporary models of motivation have been advanced that emphasize constructs such as task value, interest, and self-efficacy that affect motivational process and outcome (e.g., Wolters, 2003). Self-regulated learners are motivated as they view tasks associated with learning as valuable and interesting, are highly self-efficacious, expend effort to achieve goals, and demonstrate persistence when they encounter difficult tasks (Bandura, 1993, Corno, 2001, Pintrich, 2000). Self-regulated learners use effective metacognitive strategies such as planning learning activities, monitoring learning processes, and regulating the use of cognitive strategies (Pintrich, Wolters, & Baxter, 2000).

Students' motivational beliefs (e.g., task value, self-efficacy) and motivational outcome (e.g., effort expenditure) are positively related to the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies (Pintrich and Schunk, 2002, Schunk, 2001, Wigfield, 1994). Bandura (1993) asserts that self-directed learning requires motivation as well as cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Zimmerman (1990) describes the cyclical relationship between motivational and metacogntive components of self-regulaton by positing that a learner's use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies enhances perceptions of self-efficacy, which in turn are assumed to provide the motivational basis for further self-regulation during learning. Thus, as students learn to self-regulate their learning, they become independent learners, taking responsibility for their own learning.

For the purpose of the study, we define that self-regulation operates through subsets of psychological functions that include motivational beliefs (e.g., valuing), motivational process and outcome (e.g., effort), and cognitive and metacognition (e.g., self-monitoring strategy). Thus, self-regulated learners appraise tasks (e.g., homework) and direct and monitor their own behaviors by motivating their efforts, being persistent when they encounter difficulties, and utilizing appropriate cognitive and metacognitive strategies in order to complete tasks successfully.

Of the many component constructs of self-regulated learning, we examined six that are viewed as important in homework situations: motivational beliefs focusing on task value separated into utility value and intrinsic value, motivational outcome represented by persistence and effort expenditure, and metacognitive strategy use manifested in planning and self-checking. Literatures on these constructs of self-regulated learning in school and home contexts and their relations with age, gender, and achievement are reviewed.

Task value is students' motivational beliefs that the task (e.g., homework) is important and useful (utility value) or interesting and enjoyable (intrinsic value) (Wigfield & Eccles, 1992). Tasks that are intrinsically valued have shown positive relationships to achievement (Lepper, Corpus, & Iyengar, 2005). Likewise, students' utility values of homework and grades are positively related (Xu, 2005).

Students' motivation for school tasks declines as they progress through school (Wigfield et al., 1997), with noticeable declines in mathematics, followed by science and reading (Gottfried, Fleming, & Gottfried, 2001). Others (e.g., Fredricks & Eccles, 2002) have observed a similar trend in intrinsic and utility values in mathematics. Male and female students are similar in their ratings of either intrinsic or utility value in mathematics in some studies (Wigfield et al., 1997), whereas in others, males report higher utility or intrinsic value than do females (Forgasz, 1995, Watt, 2004).

Gender differences in task value are moderated by age. In Fredricks and Eccles (2002) female students' intrinsic valuing of mathematics shows greater declines than males', although no gender difference is found in utility values. In another study, however, female students have higher values than males in mathematics, except in late elementary to early secondary years when gender difference is not found (Jacobs, Lanza, Osgood, Eccles, & Wigfield, 2002).

Effort and persistence have shown positive relationships with academic performance (Awang-Hashim et al., 2003, Obach, 2003). Effort attributions for academic achievement decrease in the middle level (Moely, Obach, Cassell, & Tonglet, 1995). Persistence level also declines from grades 5 to 8 in homework (Hong & Milgram, 2000). In a longitudinal study of early childhood motivation, girls' persistence were stable across time (ages 2 and 8), and at age eight girls were significantly more persistent than boys with a task requiring sustained effort (Gilmore, Cuskelly, & Purdie, 2003). Likewise, females are more persistent in academic pursuit than males (Martin, 2004). However, in Pajares and Graham (1999) gender differences are not found.

The relationship between the use of self-regulatory strategies and achievement has been evidenced (Kitsantas, 2002). Low achievers have difficulties applying self-regulatory strategies in completing homework (Bryan, Burstein, & Bryan, 2001). Planning strategies prior to and during tests are associated with high test performance (Kitsantas, 2002). Similarly, monitoring and perceived academic competence are positively related (Obach, 2003). However, a few studies have found no significant relationship between the use of metacognitive strategies and achievement (e.g., Malpass, O'Neil, & Hocevar, 1999).

Young students, as compared to older students, are not skilled at using metacognitive strategies (Pressley & Ghatala, 1989). In homework, a developmental progression is shown in students' understanding of their responsibility for homework such as remembering to do homework (Warton, 1997). Gender differences are observed in self-regulated strategy use, with females reporting the use of self-regulated strategies more often than males (Ablard and Lipschultz, 1998, Martin, 2004).

Domain specificity versus generality has been an issue in examining the impact of student behavior on learning (Hofer, 2000). Schraw, Dunkle, Bendixen, and Roedel (1995) contend that general cognitive skills serve an important metacognitive role beyond the effect of domain-specific skills and knowledge. Others (e.g., Borkowski & Muthukrishna, 1992) have asserted that domain-general metacognitive skills are gradually generalized to become trait-like skills from the experience of using state metacognitive skills. The structure of trait and state self-regulation are invariant, and trait and state measures are highly correlated (Hong, 1995, Hong, 1998). In this study, we examined domain-general self-regulated learning applied to homework.

Studies of self-regulated learning with Chinese elementary or secondary students are rare. To our knowledge, there are two studies examining Chinese students in Hong Kong. In Salili and Lai's study (2003), students enrolled in schools for low achievers used fewer self-regulated learning strategies as compared to students who attend schools for high achievers. However, this difference was not evident in older students (Rao, Moely, & Sachs, 2000).

Chinese students, as compared to their U.S. peers, were reported as having more positive attitudes about homework and spending more time on homework (Chen and Stevenson, 1989, Hong et al., 2000). The Chinese school system is highly examination driven and requires that scores from national examinations are utilized for transition decisions from middle to high school and from high school to college (China Ministry of Education, 2006). Recently, however, China has been undergoing significant economic and socio-cultural changes (Webber et al., 2003, Yao, 2006). How these changes might have influenced Chinese students' experiences within the educational system or their views about homework is unknown at present. Research on homework self-regulation with Chinese students is pertinent due to the high level of interest in homework by parents and teachers and to schools that place a high utility value on homework (Dandy and Nettelbeck, 2002, Ebbeck, 1996).

Given the importance of students' responsibility for successful homework completion, whether students apply self-regulation during homework needs to be determined. Based on varied learning conditions under which students engage in homework, a study of homework self-regulation will be an important addition to the existing literature on self-regulated learning.

Chinese students' as well as their parents' attitudes toward homework are different from those of other countries. By examining students of mainland China, the study adds cultural aspect of self-regulation in homework. We also examined the difference in homework self-regulation between middle and high school years as well as differences across varied levels of achievers and gender. The study will help determine whether the findings from this study would be similar to previous findings with students of other countries.

We examined differences in Chinese students' homework task value (utility value, intrinsic value), motivational outcome (effort, persistence), and metacognitive strategy use (planning, self-checking) during homework among two grades, gender, and three achievement levels in mathematics. That is, whether the homework self-regulation profiles are consistent across these groups was of interest. Differences among the six homework self-regulatory constructs were also examined to determine Chinese students' perceived importance of these constructs. Specifically, we examined whether: (1) scores of the six component constructs of homework self-regulation (SR) were different; (2) homework SR score differences were moderated by grade, gender, and/or achievement-group differences; (3) group differences were significant on overall homework SR scores; and (4) each of these group effects were moderated by other group characteristics.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were from four schools in Guangzhou, a major metropolitan city in southern China. The four schools were similar in student achievement and socioeconomic status. The 368 seventh graders in two schools and 437 eleventh graders in the other two schools who were present on the day of data collection were invited to participate in the study. With 18 participating classes, 805 students were the initial sample. After inspecting their completed questionnaires, 38 from Grade 7 and 30 from

Measures

Self Assessment Questionnaire: Homework (SAQ: Homework; Author, 2005). To measure students' homework utility value, intrinsic value, effort, persistence, planning, and self-checking applied during homework process, the SAQ: Homework was used. The questionnaire consisted of 34 items. Examples of the items are: “Homework provides me with more chances to learn in depth” (utility value; 7 items); “I like doing any kind of homework” (intrinsic value; 6 items); “I work as hard as possible on my

Results

The means and standard deviations of six homework self-regulation (SR) scores were presented by grade, gender, and achievement groups in Table 1. In general, the SR scores were lower in Grade 11, and achievement-group differences seemed apparent in Grade 7 but not in Grade 11 (see below for significance tests). Correlations among six SR measures ranged from .29 to .64 in Grade 7 and .19 to .53 in Grade 11. Except for one correlation, seventh graders' coefficients were higher than those of

Discussion

Self-regulated learning has been studied extensively in the recent past. However, how students perceive their self-regulated behavior applied to homework has rarely been examined. In the current study, we extended the existing research by examining a number of components of self-regulation applied to homework within the context of Chinese education system. Although the first research question regards differences among six homework self-regulation constructs, we present the discussion of group

Conclusions

In China, reform efforts directed at the National Entrance Examination for higher education are in place to reduce the “heavy burden on students” and help them “grow into a new generation with overall development in intelligence, morale….” (China Ministry of Education, 2006). As China seeks to hold its competitive edge in the emerging global economy, it would not be surprising to see continued efforts to develop an education system that meets the challenges of modernization. The rapid changes

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