Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper presents an exploratory study of English and Swedish teachers’ perspectives on the role of homework in year-one children’s learning of number. In order to ensure cultural integrity, data were analysed independently by two colleagues in each context. Analyses yielded three broad but cross-culturally common themes reflecting culturally situated notions of common sense. These concerned the existence of homework, the purpose of homework and the role of parents in homework’s completion. While homework was unproblematic for all English teachers, half the Swedish cohort spoke against it, arguing that variation in home background would compromise principles of equity. All teachers who set homework, whether English or Swedish, spoke of homework as a means of supporting children at risk of falling behind their peers, a process by which children practice routine skills. English teachers’ homework-related justifications were located in a discourse of target setting that was invisible in the Swedish.
Highlights
It is generally accepted that the processes of education are deep-rooted in the cultures, albeit invisibly (Williams, 1958), in which they are found
The analyses described above yielded three broad themes common across the two data sets. They allowed the construction of a narrative highlighting culturally situ ated differences, frequently within a nominal similarity, with respect to how teachers in England and Sweden view the role of homework in the teaching of number to year-one students
We present each theme, with evidence from Sweden followed by evidence from England
Summary
It is generally accepted that the processes of education are deep-rooted in the cultures, albeit invisibly (Williams, 1958), in which they are found. Because culture embodies shared ideas about what is good, right, and desirable (Schwartz, 1999), its maintenance is a key function of education (Triandis & Suh, 2002), with curricula typically reflecting societal perspective on the ideal citizen (Cummings, 2003) In this latter respect, Hofstede (1986) showed how different cultural groups create widely differing practices with respect to the management of teaching, learning, and the respective actors’ roles and responsibilities. From the perspective of mathematics, the focus of this paper, such differences play out in the expectations set out in curricula, the manifestation of those expectations in textbooks and the didactical traditions within which participants operate (Andrews & Larson, 2017) Underpinning these culturally situated folkways is common sense, or the received beliefs and practices that pass from one generation to the (Geertz, 1975; Schutz, 1962).
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