Sjunkande matematikkunskaper
en kvalitativ undersökning om matematik i svenska grundskolor
Homework is and has always been a part of school work. It may take a lot of time from the pupils? leisure. Despite this, you cannot find anything written about homework in the curriculum. How can this be? Is homework necessary and what is its function?The purpose of this study is to find out how a few teachers in primary school reason about homework. What are their attitudes towards homework and what functions do they see?To get an answer to this I studied literature and research reports, and did four qualitative interviews with teachers who teach grades 1-6.The results show that all the teachers give homework to their pupils, but their opinions about homework differ. According to the teachers homework is first and foremost given to pupils to give them an opportunity to repeat some knowledge and get some extra practice. Two other functions the teachers talk about are to give the parents an insight into school work and give the pupils an opportunity to practice taking responsibility for their own studies.