Courtney Krueger

Professor Beeson
Foundations of Education
December 9 2016
Top Two Research - Current Trends/Issues in Education
I chose to do my research on the topics of homework and gifted and talented. I chose
these topics because they both interested me and can both be applied to my future teaching
career. Homework is a topic that I have heard a lot of discussion on from being a student myself
and from listening to other teachers and parents talk about it. The gifted and talented program is
something that interested me because I did not know a lot about it. Both of these topic are very
important and affect the ways students learn and their overall education. From this research I
hoped to get a better understanding of the effects of homework and be able to formulate my own
opinion of how much I am planning to give my students. I also hoped to learn what the gifted
and talented program specifically is, how students are put it in and how it affect those in it.
For my research, I googled information and came up with 3 useful and reliable websites
for each of my topics. For my research on homework I read an article by Alfie Kohn. It was a bit
opinionated in the favor of no homework, however it did briefly go over the benefits of
homework, which he later disproved to actually be benefits of homework. Regarding the topic of
homework, I also found two different articles on ​edutopia.org​ which discussed both the positive
and negative outcomes of giving students homework and what should be considered when giving
it. These 3 sources were all very helpful for my research.
For my research about the gifted and talented program, I read an article on the Inquires
Journal which was a very useful article. This article taught me about what the program is and the
effects of it. It was not biased and did not state an opinion whether the programs are good or bad,
it just stated the effects and what teachers can do to avoid the negative effects. I also looked at an
article published by the Davidson Institute, which discusses both the positive and negative
effects that the gifted and talented programs on the students and how it can affect them both
inside and outside the classroom. The last source I used was from a website called Education
Next which did a lot of studies and had information focusing on the negative effects of the gifted
and talented program. This article was useful but was biased and did not talk enough about the
positive effects. Overall these sources were all useful and taught me a lot about the subject.
The question of if homework should be given to students is a big controversy that is
commonly debated between teachers, students, parents and administrators. There are a lot of
positive and negative effects of giving students homework and it’s interesting to see the different
viewpoints from each side. Some of the arguments for homework are that it creates a connection
between school and family, it provides extra practice for the students, it reinforces the lesson and
that it teaches students self-discipline and responsibility. It’s important as a future educator to
recognize that there are both advantages and disadvantages of homework that need to be
considered when it comes to the amount and type of homework that I consider giving my
students.
Alfie Kohn is big on being against homework and in his article he takes all of these point
for homework and disproves them. He writes how there are other ways for families to be
involved in education, and that reinforcing the lesson doesn’t necessarily increase the
understanding. He write that homework teaching students self- discipline and responsibility is “a
claim for which absolutely no evidence exists”(Kohn). As well as having not a lot of solid
benefits, homework has a lot of negative effects that detriments the students and their learning. It
causes students to have limited free time at home to do things like spend time with their family
or for younger kids play and have fun. Starting from a young age students are given large
amounts of homework that cause a lot of stress on the children which causes them to do worse in
school. Especially with younger kids, homework can be very harmful to their learning instead of
helping it like it is supposed to. Finland is a country that is doing very well in education and one
of the things they do is they give their students little homework and allow them to relax and find
more ways to express their creativity. Finland has been doing remarkably well on test scores
which means that they are doing something right.
There are a lot of both pros and cons to homework and although it can be beneficial to
students, teachers and administrators should refrain from giving students too much homework
because it can cause a lot of negative effects and can harm their learning rather than help it.
Finding a balance between how much homework to give is a very important part of education
and is something to keep in mind as a future teacher.
I knew a little bit of information about the gifted and talented program as I know they had
one in my school system, however after researching it I learned a lot of new information about it.
“The gifted learner is traditionally identified with a higher-than-average score on an Intelligence
Quotient (IQ) test”(Inquires Journal). These students are at a higher intellectual level and
because of that have different needs compared to the normal students. They are taken out of
classes and given different assignments in order to challenge them more and prevent them from
being bored on disinterested in what is happening in the normal classroom. Some of the effects
of having a gifted and talented program is the gifted students and how the program mentally
affects them. Being labeled as “gifted” causes students to have a different perspective on
themselves. They often begin to view themselves on a high level then their other classmates
which can cause them to have problems socialization, conformity, authority and other similar
issues.
Another issue that comes up in gifted and talented students is that the students are so used
to performing better than others when it comes to school that they strive for perfection and deal
with issues when they fall short of it. “[P]erfectionism has both positive and negative aspects. In
a positive form, perfectionism can provide the driving energy which leads to great
achievement”(Davidson Institute). There is also a negative side to perfectionism which is when
the students fail to reach perfection it can cause them to have a decrease in self esteem and
motivation to persevere. Being gifted also means that more is expected of those students from
adults, causing them to potentially become stressed and too busy, forgetting the fact that they are
just a kid that needs time to relax and play. Gifted students may often tend to alienate themselves
from their peers which can cause major problems in their social life.
What this means as a future educator is how I must consider having gifted students in my
class and learn how to deal with that. Because they learn different than other students, they need
to be treated differently. However it is important as a teacher to not show them favoritism or treat
them like they are superior to other students. They are still students, they just learn in a different
way.
Sources:
Homewrok: ​http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/rethinking-homework/
https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/homework-helpful-5-questions-every-teacher-should-ask
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/research-trends-is-homework-effective-youki-terada
Gifted/Talented
http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/330/challenges-faced-by-gifted-learners-in-school-and-
beyond
http://www.davidsongifted.org/Search-Database/entry/A10065
http://educationnext.org/poor-results-for-high-achievers/