More than learning : parent-assisted homework as an arena for moral education

Pedagogical research has long and extensively investigated homework as a parent-involvement activity characterized by ‘teacher-like’ educational practices aimed at fostering children’s subject-related knowledge and academic success. However, little is known about the educational relevance of this activity beyond formal learning and academic-related instruction. Drawing on video-recorded parent-child homework sessions, this conversation analysis-informed study illustrates that homework is a vehicle of knowledge far beyond the academic subject-matters. In subtle yet pervasive ways, homework provides parents and children with moments of ‘ethical reflexivity’, occasions to evoke and educate each other into moral ideologies concerning a variety of topics such as virtue, autonomy, the existence of social roles and related duties, rights, and responsibilities. Illustrating how moral talk is afforded by contingent, homework-related interactions, this article promotes parents’ awareness of the moral and educational relevance of the often unnoticed and deemed-as-irrelevant conversations that sprinkle ordinary family life.