Great study
Why there is little point in helping with homework
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How can I support my child in school? Spoiler: Not necessarily by studying with him.
Many parents think they have to sit down at their desk with their children and help them with their homework. But this well-intentioned support often not only provokes disputes, a large scientific study by the Technical University of Munich has now also shown that learning together hardly improves the children’s school performance. On the contrary:
Help with homework can even have a negative effect if it exhausts itself in controlling the children and adolescents.
Then how can parents be there for their children? It is not only the PISA studies that repeatedly show that children’s school performance is closely related to the family situation. Their influence can even be stronger than investments in the education system or the size of the school classes. This also means: Parents can do a lot – and as it turns out, it is better to refrain from doing some things – to promote their children’s success in school.
What this is exactly is shown by the results of the largest to date Research work on the subject. Scientists at the Technical University of Munich have evaluated a total of 1700 studies on the subject of school success, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Conference of Ministers of Education.
Independent work is the key
According to the study, children are much more likely to develop a positive attitude towards learning when they are encouraged to work independently, for example by looking for their own solutions and being able to try them out. It has proven to be helpful when parents only provide the framework for when and where the tasks are done. It is also important to create an environment that is suitable for learning.
Positive expectations are also motivating
Parents achieve a greater effect than with the control of school performance if they convey positive expectations about education to their children – by talking to them about possible school qualifications and career paths, discussing learning strategies and referring praise or criticism to individual school work in as differentiated a manner as possible. In this way, they can have a positive effect on what the children trust themselves in the individual subjects. This effect increases with the age of the adolescents.
Parental involvement in school can be helpful
Parents can also achieve a positive effect by getting involved in the school. Students whose parents are on the parents’ council, for example, are often more productive. This also applies to children whose parents take part in school events such as choir concerts or parties. However, the study only shows connections and no causality, the researchers emphasize. So it could also be that parents are more likely to get involved if their children are motivated and productive anyway.
In summary, this means: Parents can strengthen their children in school by conveying positive expectations and by participating in the school’s activities. An active role in learning at home, on the other hand, hardly has a positive effect and can even be harmful in the case of homework control.