New Perspectives in Science Education

Learning doesn’t only happen inside a classroom. One of the most popular but controversial tasks in education that establishes a link between learning during curricular and extracurricular hours is homework. The present research was developed within the scope of this subject and aimed to study the perspectives of students, guardians and teachers of the 1st Cycle of Primary Education. The study included 201 subjects – 115 students, 79 parents and 7 teachers – from 1st cycle primary schools in the Greater Lisbon area. The pupils being studied have different methods of homework prescription: by the teacher, by themselves or through a mixed system in which the prescription is done by the teacher and by the student. The students have also different methods of homework correction: by the teacher collectively with all the students, by the teacher individually in the student's presence and by the teacher individually without the student being present. A mixed research methodology (quantitative and qualitative) was used. The data was collected through questionnaire surveys and was processed using content analysis, Statistical Package for Social Sciences v.25 software and Excel. The results of the study show that the way homework is prescribed and corrected influences the subjects’ opinion about it, particularly in the group of students. Greater the autonomy and responsibility of the student in the prescription of the homework and the more individual and in person the correction of the homework is greater the students’ agreement on its performance but not on the effort they apply to do it. Regardless, parents and teachers are more favourable to the performance of homework when it is prescribed by a mixed methodology.

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