Teacher Candidate's Name: Hayden Koller

Inquiry/Action Research Project Report

Background information:
After reading several different sources my mentor teacher decided to no longer grade/require homework in his chemistry
class. The reasoning behind this was that, based on what he read, homework should not be graded since it is essentially just
a formative assessment for student to check their understanding. This ended up working ok for the first part of the school
year but once the students came back from Christmas vacation he noticed a problem: students were not scoring very well on
their examinations. We couldnt pin point what the problem actual was- was it the lack homework? Was the material too
difficult? Was it the curriculum? Where the students coasting?

Inquiry focus: Does requiring homework help increase the students test scores, or does it just become one more chunk of
work that they have to do outside of school?

Rationale for the inquiry: The targeted outcome for this inquiry is some evidence that supports the use of homework in our
chemistry class. If homework appears to have no actual effect on exam scores than this implies that a serious look at the
curriculum and the assignment the students are required to do. If required homework does appear to have an effect than we
will have some more justification for why we require it.

Beneficiaries: This project benefits both the students and the science faculty at the school. This should, in theory, improve
student test scores by a tangible amount. This also helps inform the science faculty about whether or not graded homework
is a useful tool in their classrooms (the science teachers were split down the middle about whether they thought homework
should be required).

Resources: 1. Copies of student exam scores

2. List of students with the number of homework assignment they completed
3. Data for the pre-test and previous units exam

Plan of action: At the start of my unit I explained to the students that homework was going to start being required and that I
would be checking for completeness at the beginning of every class. Before class started I would write the homework
assignment that was due the next class on the board (same location every time) and tell the students to write it down in their
note books (I would refer to this at least twice during a given period). At the beginning of every class I would have the
students take out their work and I would mark them as having completed it or not. Completed assignments received a 100%
and homework that was completed when we went over it together received a 70%. After I checked this we would go over
the assignment together as a class and discuss any questions or misunderstandings that anyone had.

Data collection: I collected many different pieces of data during this project (a full spreadsheet can be found in the separate
excel file). I created a spreadsheet that had every student marked on a row (I assigned the students numbers instead of
names). I recorded their scores for the previous units assessment along with their pretest for my unit. I would record
number of homeworks that the completed in the cart as well. The final piece of evidence I collected was their score on my
unit exam. I then averaged out the scores for each assessment (previous unit, pre-, and post-) by the number of homeworks
completed and graphed the results.

Information dissemination: I had many discussions with my mentor about how he felt the students were doing now that
they were required to do homework.

Findings and conclusions: I found some very interesting findings, which can be seen in the graph below. These students
scores were averaged together based on the number homeworks completed. Group 0 completed no homework, group 1
completed 1, group 3 completed 3, group 4 completed 4, group 5 completed 5, and group 6 completed 6 (there were no
students who only completed 2 homeworks). Overall the test scores dropped from the first exam, which was expected
because this material was much more complicated compared to the previous unit. Doing at least 1 homework leads to a 14
point increase (40% to 54%) compared to a 6 point increase (40% to 46%) when no homework is done. Doing at least 3
homework assignments correlates to a 30 point increase and an average score of 71%. Finally completing all 6 homework
assignments leads to an average score of ~81%. While I did get some interesting data I dont believe it is significant enough
to make any meaningful conclusions. The number of students and the time frame this was done over was much too small. In
addition there were many things I didnt control for. Were the students who did all 6 homework assignments the students
who were already doing the homework? Why was there no major difference between completing 3, 4, or 5 assignments?
Did some students who did all of the work go on and not study at all for the test? At the very least this project generated
some interesting talking points and potential relationships.

Affect of Homework on Average Exam Scores

100
88
90
80.5
80 77.5 75
71.5 71.25 70
70 65 65 65
60 54 55
51
Previous
Average Unit Exam
Score 50 (avg)46 Pre-Exam Score (avg)
(%) Score Final Exam Score
43.5 (avg)
40 40 40
40
30
20
10
0
0 1 00
20 3 4 5 6

Number of Homworks Completed (out of 6)

Reflection:
Respondtothefollowingpromptsbytypingyouranswerbeloweachprompt:
1. Why did you select this project?
I actual didnt come up with this project myself, it was more of a joint decision between my mentor and myself. We
noticed that the students were struggling with their chemistry exams. My mentor told me that this was the first year he
didnt require homework so we realized that maybe it would be worthwhile to try something different. We came up with this
project to see if requiring homework would be a good idea in the future. I was also interested in the results myself because it
seems like the general idea in education is to not grade homework.

2. What did you learn by doing this project?

Doing this project helped me realize how interesting these kinds of projects are. There are so many things in the
classroom and in education we take as absolute. Challenging these notions like should homework be graded and required?
is really important and having this ability is part of what makes being a teacher so great.

3. Did you have to make adjustments as the project progressed? Why and how?
This project went pretty much according to plan and didnt require any real adjustments. The only major issue that
occurred was the 3 snow days that occurred over the course of 2 weeks. In the chaos we misplaced some of our data so we
had to go back and figure out which students had completed 2 of the 6 homework assignments and which did not.

4. To what extent did your project improve student learning?

It is a little hard to say exactly how much this project helped students but I believe it was pretty helpful to those who
did the work. If you suspend reality a bit and take the data as 100% correctly, the student who did every assigned homework
scored almost 40 points higher than those who didnt. In addition these students also received a grade boost because they
now have at least 6 100% grades in the gradebook for completing this assignments.
 5. What were the areas that were less than completely successful? What further actions should be taken?
I felt like my project was as well as it could have been but the least successful part of it was the actual data itself. The
number of participants and the timeframe this occurred over were both much too small to produce meaningful data. I also
did not control for other outside factors like the types of students (motivated vs. not un-motivated) or for study time, etc. I
think the only way to improve this would be to use more students or potentially perform this same experiment in another
class like English. This would help account for students who didnt do well because they dislike science or chemistry or the
teacher and dont put much effort into this class.

Mentor's signature: Date:

(Mentor's signature indicates that he/she approved of this project and has conferred with the student teacher throughout the
project's process. The mentor may sign here or on the alternate form. If the alternate form is used, so indicate here.)

Appendices (What are some examples of evidence related to your project?):

-Separate Excel file with all of the data I collected inside