Time students spend working at home for school Petra Wagner a, * , Barbara Schober b,1 , Christiane Spiel b,2 a University of Applied Sciences Linz, Garnisonstrasse 21, A-4020 Linz, Austria b Department of Economic Psychology, Educational Psychology, and Evaluation, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Universitaetsstrasse 7, A-1010 Vienna, Austria Received 13 April 2006; revised 15 December 2006; accepted 8 March 2007 Abstract The paper presents three studies which deal with the time students spend working at home for school. In addition, the paper focuses on the distribution of time investment over the course of a week and on the relationship between academic achievement and time spent working at home for school. In sum, 824 students with an average age of 15 years participated in the studies. Data collection was done using diaries. Data equivocally show that students invest on the average 11.7 h per week in work done at home for school. Girls spend more time than boys. Over the course of a school week, systematic fluctuations in time spent working at home for school could be observed. Application of Configural Frequency Analyses identified gender as the moderating variable in the relationship between time investment and scholastic achievement. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Learning time; Homework; Scholastic achievement; Gender differences 1. Introduction Demands made by school and scholastic achievement have been the focus of public and academic interest for sev- eral years and the subject of debate e also in conjunction with political decisions in the field of education (Artelt, Baumert, Julius-McElvany, & Peschar, 2003). One aspect of this debate is the time students spend on their homework and learning in general. Although the time students dedicate to their schoolwork is considered in numerous theoretical learning models as a determinant of scholastic success (Bloom, 1976; Carroll, 1963; Haertel, Walberg, & Weinstein, 1983; Harnischfeger & Wiley, 1975), in comparison to other determinants relevant to scholastic achievement (e.g., test anxiety, self- concept) relatively few conclusive and generally accepted empirical findings have been reported (see Trautwein & Ko¨ller, 2003). In particular, no clear relationship between time spent working at home for school and scholastic achieve- ment has been found. From our perspective the main problems in the research field of working at home for school are as follows: (a) the lack of conceptual clarity regarding what is to be exactly understood by homework e and, * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ43 732 20082290. E-mail addresses: petra.wagner@fh-linz.at (P. Wagner), barbara.schober@univie.ac.at (B. Schober), christiane.spiel@univie.ac.at (C. Spiel). 1 Tel.: þ43 1 427747873. 2 Tel.: þ43 1 427747870. 0959-4752/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2007.03.002 www.elsevier.com/locate/learninstruc Learning and Instruction 18 (2008) 309e320