Relevance Interventions in the Classroom: A Means to Promote Students’Homework Motivation and Behavior

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam

Many students face motivational difficulties when completing homework, affecting effort and completion. A cluster randomized controlled study evaluated two classroom-based relevance interventions with 82 classrooms and 1,978 ninth-grade students. Outcomes were assessed using homework diaries across four weeks after the intervention. Latent growth curve analyses showed higher triggered interest in the text condition but lower homework completion in the first week, while quotations increased perceived future utility and homework effort right after intervention.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages20

Reading Time50 min

AccessFree to download

Relevance Interventions in the Classroom

Homework motivation and behavior challenges

Study design and research questions

Measurement approach using homework diaries

AERA Open January-December 2021, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 1–20 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584211052049 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2021. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Relevance Interventions in the Classroom: A Means to Promote Students’Homework Motivation and Behavior Barbara Flunger Utrecht University Hanna Gaspard Isabelle Häfner Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, University of Tübingen Brigitte M. Brisson DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, Frankfurt Anna-Lena Dicke University of California, Irvine Cora Parrisius Benjamin Nagengast Ulrich Trautwein Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, University of Tübingen Many students suffer from motivational problems when doing homework. To investigate whether an intervention that effectively promoted value beliefs in mathematics promoted students’homework motivation and behavior, we analyzed data from a cluster randomized controlled study with two classroom-based relevance interventions (writing a text or evaluating quotes from interviews) with 82 classrooms and 1,978 ninth-grade students. Students’ math-specific homework motivation and behavior were assessed with homework diaries over a period of 4 weeks after the intervention. Latent growth curve analyses revealed that students in the text condition reported higher triggered interest but also lower homework completion than students in the control condition in the first week after the intervention. Students in the quotations condition reported higher utility of homework for future life, and higher homework effort directly after the intervention. The study highlights the potential of classroom-based relevance interventions to foster homework-specific outcomes, when considering situational, behavior-related measures. Keywords: homework effort, homework motivation, relevance intervention, value beliefs Many students have trouble finishing their homework (e.g., Markow et al., 2007) or put only a little effort toward doing their assignments (e.g. , Trautwein & Köller, 2003) . If students like doing their homework or find it useful, they are more likely to invest effort into completing it (e.g. , Trautwein & Lüdtke, 2009) . Homework effort and completion can be critical factors determining students’academic achievement (e.g. , Fan et al. , 2017) . However, students do not necessarily perceive homework as interesting or useful (e.g. , Katz et al. , 2014; Warton, 2001) . Motivational interventions could potentially boost homework motivation and behavior, which could be a mechanism by which motivational interventions promote students’ academic achievement. Hence, the question of how to foster students’ homework motivation and behavior is essential to ask in educational contexts. Students’motivation can be promoted through interventions that are aimed at helping students recognize the personal relevance of what they learn at school (e.g., Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2009). Relevance interventions are aimed at promoting changes in students’ learning behavior such as their homework effort. However, little is known about whether these interventions affect students’ learning behavior and motivation in specific learning situations and outside the classroom. We thus conducted a multipurpose study on the effects of a relevance intervention on students’homework motivation and behavior. Our first purpose was to focus on a specific learning context (i.e., the homework situation) and to consider behavior-based criteria to uncover further evidence for the validity of findings concerning the effects of relevance interventions. Second, by studying the impact of Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribut

FAQs

What problem does the article address regarding homework?

Many students struggle with motivation, effort, and completion when doing homework.

How were the relevance interventions implemented?

Students experienced two classroom-based relevance interventions: writing a text or evaluating quotations from interviews.

What did the study find about short-term effects after the intervention?

The text condition increased triggered interest but reduced homework completion in the first week, while the quotations condition increased perceived utility for future life and homework effort right after the intervention.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam