DOING HOMEWORK, DOING BEST? HOMEWORK AS A SITE OF GENDERED NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE by Nicole Elizabeth Deneau Hyndman A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto © Copyright by Nicole Elizabeth Deneau Hyndman (2014) DOING HOMEWORK, DOING BEST? HOMEWORK AS A SITE OF GENDERED NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE Doctor of Philosophy (2014) Nicole Elizabeth Deneau Hyndman Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education University of Toronto Abstract This thesis explores elementary schools’ homework practices on Prince Edward Island. I employ a feminist perspective that incorporates Foucault’s concept of governmentality (Foucault, 1991a) to examine homework as a ‘site’ where institutions (family and school) interact and power circulates. I focus on the ways in which the daily lives and subjectivities of mothers, and to a lesser extent teachers, are organized and regulated in the process of making homework work. I assembled and analyzed reports and policies related to education reform, parental involvement and homework.
I draw on Foucault’s approach to genealogy (Foucault, 1984) to examine how homework has been established in these texts as a ‘good’ educational practice for young students, in spite of its dubious effects on educational achievement. Mothers and teachers are explicitly and implicitly addressed in education policy and practice as primary agents for the accomplishment of homework. Following qualitative research methodology, I conducted twenty in-depth interviews with mothers and teachers of elementary aged students. These mothers and teachers often have ambivalent feelings about homework, sharing frustrations about its effects on family time and relations and doubting its value for children.
At the same time, ‘doing homework’ was closely linked to being a ‘good mother.’ Thus, my analysis draws attention to the complex ways that homework and parental involvement discourses work ii on and through people, to produce particular kinds of experiences and feelings. While homework may ‘fail’ to accomplish its professed educational aims for students, I argue that it serves to render women responsible for growing portions of educational labour. My study sheds light on the workings of power in the home/school relationship and more generally on the workings of neoliberal governance and educational reform. Modern government works through routine administration of our lives, in schools and families, and other institutions, often through persuasion, incitement and engagement rather than through explicit policy.
I suggest the daily practice of homework is a concrete example of this and, extending Foucault’s analysis through feminist perspectives, I explore the unequal operation and effects of homework for those who are its main targets. iii Acknowledgements I wish to thank the members of my thesis committee: Kari Dehli, Fiona Walton and Margrit Eichler. Kari, my supervisor, provided invaluable direction, support and encouragement. She had a special talent of guiding me calmly and gently through difficult theoretical terrain; giving me glimpses of her expertise, yet encouraging me to find my own way, always able to provide just the right resource at just the right time.
I’m not quite sure how she did it, but it is something I will attempt to emulate if I am ever so lucky to be in the role of supervising a doctoral student. As committee members, Fiona and Margrit were supportive, encouraging and always professional. Their different styles and areas of knowledge were critical in moving my work forward. Kari, Fiona and Margrit are all passionate, dedicated scholars to whom I feel deeply grateful for having had the opportunity to work with.
I would like to thank Andrea Doucet, as the external examiner, for carrying out such a close and careful reading, and providing challenging questions that forced me to better articulate my claims and arguments in the thesis. Her feedback made my thesis much stronger and for that I am grateful. I would also like to thank the other members of my exam committee: Bonnie Fox and Kathleen Gallagher. I felt privileged to have had these wonderful feminist scholars read my work and provide thoughtful and constructive feedback and questions.
The support I received from friends near and far meant a great deal to me. Included in this group are my fellow students from OISE who participated in thesis group meetings and shared their academic work with me. My parents, Larry and Georgia, have supported me now, and always, in so many ways. For that, I will be forever grateful, for it means so much.
My husband, Dave, has been my stability – my rock – in this journey that has at times left me feeling overwhelmed and unable to meet the challenge of completing this work. His support in every facet of my life, his optimism and calmness have been crucial elements of support that I could not have done without. I thank my children, Alex, Abby and Jonathan for the love and joy they bring to my life and in doing so, bring perspective to everything else. Finally, I would like to thank the mothers and teachers who agreed to participate in my research and share with me their experiences.
iv Table of Contents Abstract. iv Table of Contents. 1 A Sense of a Problem – The Beginnings of a Research Project. 1 Issues, Paradoxes and Gaps.
5 Parental Involvement and the Home-School Relationship. 11 Situating My Work. 15 Thesis Chapters Outline. 19 Chapter 2 – Literature Review.
24 The Shifting Role of Education in Society. 26 Mothering and ‘Doing Best’ in Education. 32 Addressing Gaps in Education Research. 37 Chapter 3 – Theoretical Framework: Feminist Governmentality.
40 Combining Feminist Theory with Foucault. 51 Neoliberal Governmentality and the Neoliberal Subject. 62 Chapter 4 – Methods and Methodology. 66 A Feminist Study of Governmentality.
68 v Feminist Poststructural Methodology/Methods. 71 Formulating the Research / Applying Methodological Concepts. 81 The Problem of Experience’. 89 Writing Up / Producing Knowledge / Issues and Power.
96 Chapter 5 – Why is Homework Working?. 98 Teachers: Governing and Being Governed by Homework. 112 The Student Agenda. 133 Chapter 6 – How is Homework Working? The Daily-ness of Home-working.
135 The Doing of Homework. 137 Making Homework Work - Being ‘Good’ in Relation to Homework. 143 Homework as a Technology of Neoliberal Governance Working on and Through Mothers. 162 Chapter 7 – How Homework Is not Working.
167 Homework as a Dividing Practice. 189 Incompleteness of Homework as a Governing Technology. 200 vi Possibilities for Resistance. 202 Contributions, Surprises and Discoveries.
214 Appendix A – Invitation to Participate/Recruitment Letter. 216 Appendix B – Letter of Consent for Interview Participants [teachers]. 217 Appendix C – Letter of Consent for Interview Participants [mothers]. 219 Appendix D – Interview Guide - Mothers.
221 Appendix E – Interview Guide – Teachers. 223 Appendix F – Participant Profiles [Mothers]. 225 Appendix G – Participant Profiles [Teachers]. 233 Appendix H – Ethics Approval.
238 vii Chapter 1 – Introduction Homework is commonly defined and understood as “tasks assigned to students by school teachers that are meant to be carried out during non-instructional time” (Cooper, 1989a, p. In this thesis I discuss elementary homework, which I define as tasks assigned to students in Kindergarten through grade four. I delineate these schooling years deliberately because parental involvement is recruited and required to complete homework at this level of schooling. Further, I suggest that elementary homework offers an interesting site in which to explore the organization and experiences of home-school relations more generally.
I show that homework, specifically elementary homework, can be viewed as an assignment to parents, an accountability tool, and as a way for teachers to encourage and recruit parent involvement. In addition, I suggest that homework provides a window that allows parents to see into the classroom and teachers to see into the home. In this way homework might be viewed as an instrument of surveillance or a governing tool that operates in both directions between home and school. Finally, I show that I homework is a gendered practice.
Thus, while I discuss and use the term parental involvement, it is the work of mothers that is my focus. I base this decision to focus on mothers by drawing upon the body of feminist literature that highlights the gendered nature of the work mothers do in relation to their children’s schooling, including homework (David, 1998; David, Edwards, Hughes, & Ribbens, 1993; Dehli, 1988, 2004; Dudley-Marling, 2001; Griffith & Smith, 2005; Hoover-Dempsey, 1995; Hutchison, 2006; Lareau, 2000; O’ Brien, 2007, 2008; Reay, 1998, 2000, 2005; Shumow & Miller, 2001; Vincent, 2000; Walkerdine & Lucey, 1989). A Sense of a Problem – The Beginnings of a Research Project Most of us who have come through a formal public school system have had experience with homework in one way or another. I have experienced homework as a student, a teacher, a 1 2 parent and now as a PhD student.
As an elementary school student in Ontario during the seventies, my recollection of homework was that it was very minimal, certainly not a daily occurrence and not something that my parents were particularly involved with. It seems I am not alone on this. In their Canadian study of parental opinions and attitudes Cameron & Bartel (2008) report that 75% of parents they spoke with believe their children have more homework than they did. I heard similar accounts in my interviews with mothers and teachers.
As an elementary student in Ontario in the seventies I recall that I looked forward to getting homework. At that time it was a rare occurrence until later years in school and I thought of it as a marker of being ‘grown up’. I recall reviewing spelling words for a weekly test, or sometimes practicing math facts, but overall my experience was very different than what I have observed in my children’s experience in their elementary years (my children are now in grades nine, seven and three). The amount and frequency of homework increased as I got older and it gradually became part of my daily school routine by the time I was in high school.
It is probable that my own experience in my elementary years affected my opinion about homework when I got my first teaching job teaching grade two at an International School in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in 1994. The school followed the British National Curriculum and I was informed that regular daily homework was to be assigned. This was the first moment of disquiet for me around the topic of homework. The school’s policy on homework meant that I was required to assign and monitor individually tailored homework on a daily basis.
Or this was the theory. In practice it did not work this way. Assigning and reviewing individual homework was a source of frustration for me because, from a practical standpoint, it was very difficult to design meaningful homework assignments for each of my 25 students. The alternative was that one assignment was given to all with a set time for completion.
This is what I ended up doing, with the uneasy knowledge that 3 what one student could do in 15 minutes, may take another student half an hour or more. Also, to bring school-work out of ‘school’ and into ‘home’ seemed to me to introduce an element of the unknown. Who was at home to support the student with this school-work? I knew that assistance would be required. Would whoever was at home be able and willing to assist with this work? What sort of physical environment did the student have – was it quiet, noisy, chaotic? And, in my view the students just seemed too young to be required to do homework regularly after a seven hour school day.
