By: Paul A. Kirschner & Mirjam Neelen

Dinner’s done, so let the battle begin! “Do you have any homework? When will you start doing it? No! Absolutely no TV until you’ve finished your homework!” So much for the daily battle between parents and their children. The same battle takes place at school between students and teachers and even between teachers and parents.

Although homework is something that most consider to be quite ‘normal’, the question is if it’s really useful and if so, how much is effective, what objectives are strived for, and what does the teacher need to do so that students benefit from the homework? In other words, is homework worth all of the battles and the effort? While these questions sound really easy, they are actually really difficult to answer because there are so many factors at play. For example, how old is the student, what grade…