AN INQUIRY INTO HOMEWORK AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOUR AMONG PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS OF LARKANA CITY

Abstract

Homework has long been regarded as a bridge between classroom instruction and independent learning, yet across primary schools in the developing world a persistent and under-examined problem quietly erodes this bridge: children who delay, resist, or altogether refuse to complete the tasks set for them at home. In the government primary schools of Larkana City, Sindh, this pattern of homework avoidance has been noticed by teachers for years but rarely investigated in its own right, leaving practitioners to address it through anecdote rather than evidence. This study set out to close that gap by asking, in the words of the students, teachers, and parents who live with the problem daily, what drives young children to avoid homework and what this avoidance costs them academically and emotionally. Guided by an interpretivist philosophy and a phenomenological research design, the study followed a qualitative, inductive, mono-method approach, gathering in-depth semi-structured interviews from ten purposively selected participants — four teachers, four students and two parents — drawn from two government primary schools in Larkana City, and analysed the data through reflexive thematic analysis. The findings reveal that homework avoidance among these children is neither laziness nor simple defiance but a rational response to converging structural and psychological pressures: parental illiteracy and the absence of home academic support, child labour and domestic obligations that consume the hours after school, overcrowded and under-resourced classrooms, and homework that is poorly matched to children's developmental level and home language. These conditions generate fear, anxiety and evaluation-related stress that erode students' academic self-efficacy and motivation, producing a self-reinforcing cycle of avoidance, disengagement and declining performance. The study concludes that reducing homework avoidance in Larkana's primary schools cannot rest on isolated classroom fixes alone; it requires a coordinated response spanning teachers, school administrators, parents and educational policymakers.