Teacher, do you know how to leave homework
Homework design and management is a familiar and unfamiliar topic for many elementary and middle school teachers. Familiarity is because teachers assign homework, mark and comment on homework almost every day. Unfamiliar is because many teachers are not very clear about the function and purpose of homework, but in the bones. It is a natural and righteous traditional idea to keep the teacher assigning homework.
The author conducted an online questionnaire survey on homework design and management within a certain city in 2020. This questionnaire survey covers 13,860 primary and secondary school teachers in 11 counties and districts in the city. The survey results reflect the current primary and secondary school homework design and implementation There are many problems in concept and practice. For example, most teachers believe that the meaning of homework is to consolidate knowledge (90.34%). The content of homework design for teachers in daily teaching is mainly after-school exercises (71.64%) and auxiliary materials (68.81%) , Most of the teachers were able to focus on the assessment based on the corrections of the assignments (75.96%), while only a few teachers were able to think deeply about the root cause of the problem (30.1%), let students comment on their own (11.83%), and actively promote excellent assignments The call for design and implementation cases is higher (51.65%), and so on.
These problems in the field of primary and secondary school homework reflect the inertial thinking and inertial practices of teachers in daily teaching, and the root causes behind them are not only the teachers' own deficiencies, but also the constraints of the traditional teaching system.
It is precisely because of these "fetters" that teachers have insufficient ability and motivation to design original homework. Repeated homework reforms have little effect, and students' academic burdens continue to increase.
Teachers' homework evaluation literacy is lacking.
The traditional view of homework is to use homework as an effective carrier for after-school knowledge consolidation and skill training.
Most teachers regard homework as a follow-up and extension of classroom teaching, but few teachers consciously think about the function and meaning of homework, and even fewer teachers can combine subject characteristics to think about the characteristics of their subject work.
This traditional view of homework ignores and conceals the evaluation functions of homework, such as feedback, diagnosis, and correction, and separates the organic connection between homework and teaching, and homework and students. Many teachers are also lacking in evaluation literacy and cannot be viewed from the perspective of evaluation. Careful scrutiny of the design and implementation of daily homework has caused teachers of various subjects to be keen on multiple consolidations of subject knowledge and repeated practice of subject skills, which has virtually increased the academic burden on students.
Moreover, most teachers have little participation in the evaluation and training of homework design, and they rarely have the opportunity to learn the systematic and advanced concepts and practices of homework design and implementation. Only some disciplines can independently conduct homework in practice and other aspects. Innovative, but these innovative practices are not highly transferable due to lack of universal significance.
Therefore, these two factors, both internal and external, have caused teachers to be more accustomed to following traditional practices in the design and implementation of daily homework. It has never been effectively improved.
The knowledge-based concept is deeply ingrained.
For quite a long period of time, the basic education field of our country has emphasized the mastery of students’ knowledge and “skills” from the traditional focus on students’ “double basics” to later “three-dimensional”. Consolidation and training of students' basic knowledge and basic skills.
This knowledge-based concept is rooted in the minds of most teachers, runs through the entire process of teachers' classroom teaching, and is projected into the design and implementation of students' homework.
Due to the deep-rooted knowledge-based concept, teachers pay too much attention to the basic knowledge of the subject, and even narrow the solid foundation to solid basic knowledge, and fail to consider the process, methods and effectiveness of students' knowledge.
As a result, the content of homework design is mostly to consolidate knowledge and repeatedly train so-called "skills". Many primary and secondary school homework have this kind of "low-level repetitive construction" problem.
There is a large amount of content for students’ daily homework knowledge and memory and mechanical training, but the content for cultivating students’ key abilities and subject literacy is seriously insufficient, with too much training for low-level abilities and insufficient training for high-level thinking.
If things go on like this, the students only learn to memorize and behave well, but their ability to solve practical problems and innovative abilities appear weak. Judging from the current development situation of curriculum reform and evaluation reform, it can be said to be harmful.
Indifference to the student's dominant position.
The traditional class teaching system is conducive to the concentration of teachers, improving the efficiency of teaching, and it is also very helpful to improve the overall level of the class.
In terms of homework implementation, teachers can carry out centralized correction, centralized comment, and centralized feedback of homework, which is very efficient.
At the same time, teachers can achieve a combination of centralized correction and face-to-face correction, which is somewhat more facetable and also reflects the flexibility of homework correction under the class teaching system.
Although the assignment, correction, and feedback of homework under the traditional class teaching system all show great advantages, the main status of students in the process of doing homework is rarely valued.
Because the process of students' homework is also the process of students' self-learning, students are the main body of homework. Teachers should focus on the development of students for homework design and homework implementation, rather than treating the homework as a teacher's patent or even a tool to punish students. .
From the subject level, teachers consciously use the diagnostic function of homework to feedback their daily teaching is also worthy of recognition, but more importantly, they must firmly establish the concept of "education" in their hearts, and cannot ignore the subject status of students in the process of completing homework.
Teachers need to master students' learning status, mental state, level of personality, etc. through homework, so that students can truly realize the forging of abilities, the development of thinking and the improvement of literacy in the process of completing the homework.
Of course, this requires teachers to scientifically design homework content, continuously innovate homework forms, and design high-quality homework based on the core literacy of the subject.
Slack and lack of job management.
For a long time, homework management is generally the category of teachers' personal daily teaching. Some schools will also coordinate the management of school assignments, and the district level and above have less coordinated homework management.
Under this situation, the management of homework by departments at all levels is relatively slack. Teachers assign homework according to the teaching situation, and the lesson preparation group rarely unifies the content of homework. School homework management includes both school-level rules and regulations, and class or grade management. It is the overall management of the work volume of the unit; the work management at the district level and above is mostly carried out in the form of documents, but the binding force is not strong.
Therefore, measures such as the construction of the subject operation resource database, the implementation of process evaluation and research on the operation design and implementation, the development and implementation of the operation record management system, the conduct of various discipline operation design evaluation activities, and the strengthening of the supervision and inspection of the daily operation design, and It has not been effectively implemented on every teacher in units at all levels.
In addition, there is still the phenomenon of lack of relevant departments in homework management. The teaching and research departments at all levels are obviously not doing well in promoting excellent homework design and implementation cases, strengthening the training and guidance of teacher homework design, and collecting and reviewing homework cases.
These activities are exactly the professional guidance that the majority of frontline teachers urgently need, and they are also an indispensable key link for the overall promotion of regional operations.
Only when there is no lack of job management in teaching and research departments at all levels, and school job management is not slack, can we truly form a high-quality job management system at all levels.
Therefore, only by breaking these "fetters", stimulating teachers' motivation to design homework, taking into account the basic concepts of homework design and implementation, homework design, homework implementation and homework management, and treating homework design and management as a systematic project, can we Really revitalize this chess game of primary and secondary school homework design and management.
This requires the joint efforts of education administration departments, teaching and research departments, schools and frontline teachers to truly realize the continuous improvement of quality and efficiency of primary and secondary school homework.
(The author is a teacher and researcher in the Teaching and Research Office of the Education Bureau of Zhengzhou City, Henan Province)
Yu Kunlun