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Designing Effective Homework

Best practices for creating homework that raises student achievement

Homework. It can be challenging…and not just for students. For teachers, designing homework can be a daunting task with lots of unanswered questions: How much should I assign? What type of content should I cover? Why aren’t students doing the work I assign? Homework can be a powerful opportunity to reinforce the Shifts in your instruction and promote standards-aligned learning, but how do we avoid the pitfalls that make key learning opportunities sources of stress and antipathy?

The nonprofit Instruction Partners recently set out to answer some of these questions, looking at what research says about what works when it comes to homework. You can view their original presentation here , but I’ve summarized some of the key findings you can put to use with your students immediately.

Does homework help?

Consistent homework completion has been shown to increase student achievement rates—but frequency matters. Students who are given homework regularly show greater gains than those who only receive homework sporadically. Researchers hypothesize that this is due to improved study skills and routines practiced through homework that allow students to perform better academically.

Average gains on unit tests for students who completed homework were six percentile points in grades 4–6, 12 percentile points in grades 7–9, and an impressive 24 percentile points in grades 10–12; so yes, homework (done well) does work. [i]

What should homework cover?

While there is little research about exactly what types of homework content lead to the biggest achievement gains, there are some general rules of thumb about how homework should change gradually over time.

In grades 1–5, homework should:

• Reinforce and allow students to practice skills learned in the classroom
• Help students develop good study habits and routines
• Foster positive feelings about school

In grades 6–12, homework should:

• Prepare students for engagement and discussion during the next lesson
• Allow students to apply their skills in new and more challenging ways

The most often-heard criticism of homework assignments is that they simply take too long. So how much homework should you assign in order to see results for students? Not surprisingly, it varies by grade. Assign 10-20 minutes of homework per night total, starting in first grade, and then add 10 minutes for each additional grade. [ii] Doing more can result in student stress, frustration, and disengagement, particularly in the early grades.

Why are some students not doing the homework?

There are any number of reasons why students may not complete homework, from lack of motivation to lack of content knowledge, but one issue to watch out for as a teacher is the impact of economic disparities on the ability to complete homework.

Multiple studies [iii] have shown that low-income students complete homework less often than students who come from wealthier families. This can lead to increased achievement gaps between students. Students from low-income families may face additional challenges when it comes to completing homework such as lack of access to the internet, lack of access to outside tutors or assistance, and additional jobs or family responsibilities.

While you can’t erase these challenges for your students, you can design homework that takes those issues into account by creating homework that can be done offline, independently, and in a reasonable timeframe. With those design principles in mind, you increase the opportunity for all your students to complete and benefit from the homework you assign.

The Big Picture

Perhaps most importantly, students benefit from receiving feedback from you, their teacher, on their assignments. Praise or rewards simply for homework completion have little effect on student achievement, but feedback that helps them improve or reinforces strong performance does. Consider keeping this mini-table handy as you design homework:

The act of assigning homework doesn’t automatically raise student achievement, so be a critical consumer of the homework products that come as part of your curriculum. If they assign too much (or too little!) work or reflect some of these common pitfalls, take action to make assignments that better serve your students.

[i] Cooper, H. (2007). The battle over homework (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

[ii] Cooper, H. (1989a). Homework .White Plains, NY: Longman.

[iii] Horrigan, T. (2015). The numbers behind the broadband ‘homework gap’ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/20/the-numbers-behind-the-broadband-homework-gap/ and Miami Dade Public Schools. (2009). Literature Review: Homework. http://drs.dadeschools.net/LiteratureReviews/Homework.pdf

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About the Author: Claire Rivero is the Digital Strategy Manager for Student Achievement Partners. Claire leads the organization’s communications and digital promotion work across various channels including email, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, always seeking new ways to reach educators. She also manages Achieve the Core’s blog, Aligned. Prior to joining Student Achievement Partners, Claire worked in the Communications department for the American Red Cross and as a literacy instructor in a London pilot program. Claire holds bachelor’s degrees in English and Public Policy from Duke University and a master’s degree in Social Policy (with a concentration on Education Policy) from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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• DOI: 10.18260/1-2--7561
• Corpus ID: 63274729

Designing Homework Assignments: From Theory To Design

• L. Feldmann
• Published in Annual Conference Proceedings 20 June 1999
• Education, Engineering
• 1999 Annual Conference Proceedings

4 Citations

Ac 2010-848: individualized homework: an effective learning strategy, increasing student engagement and motivation by replacing homework with assignment-quizzes, using game theory to analyse homework administering in undergraduate teaching, multi-split optimized bagging ensemble model selection for multi-class educational data mining, 7 references, out-of-class assignments as a method of teaching and evaluating law students., experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development, homework as a learning experience.

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Homework Assignments: Classroom Games or Teaching Tools ?

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Making Homework Matter- Differentiate The Homework

Sep 11, 2011 by Whitney Hoffman

In our book, Jenifer and I knew we’d have to address homework.  It’s one of the issues that constantly puts teachers, students and parents at odds.  The real issue with homework is that kids often don’t see the point and it seems like busy work, rather than something that seems to have value.  Can you blame kids? I can’t begin to tell you how many times my kids have said things like “She never checks the homework, so really, why should I do it?”  It’s not that they don’t understand the value of practice, but they do look at it as the teacher assigns homework, but seems not to care or be invested in whether the work is actually done or not.  Is it any wonder why they see no real reason to complete it and stop caring as well?

The New York Times wrote about the topic, in a great opinion piece entitled “The Trouble with Homework.”  One great quote is the following:

In a 2008 survey, one-third of parents polled rated the quality of their children’s homework assignments as fair or poor, and 4 in 10 said they believed that some or a great deal of homework was busywork. A new study, coming in the Economics of Education Review, reports that homework in science, English and history has “little to no impact” on student test scores. (The authors did note a positive effect for math homework.) Enriching children’s classroom learning requires making homework not shorter or longer, but smarter .

In the first chapter of our book, Jenifer and I came up with many ways teachers can differentiate the homework, making it more personally relevant for each child in the classroom.  In the best of circumstances, homework should be work that should be done individually, whether it’s practice, reflective work, or other work that frankly doesn’t require the audience and collaboration of the classroom itself.  By using homework to prepare for class discussions the next day, to make sure that students have critical pieces of projects dine and ready for group work and the like, makes it more likely that the homework will get done, and that it has meaning.

Making homework meaningful also means making class time more meaningful.  If you are together with thirty other students, shouldn’t this be a time to share ideas and collaborate?  To learn from and with each other?  If kids are spending class time doing things like sustained silent reading, this is in some ways wasting the purpose of spending time together in the class, unless the purpose of the exercise is learning to read in a library or public setting.

Assessments can also be part of homework,  Instead of looking at assessments as tests taken during the day, how about trying to give kids open ended questions or novel problems where they have to take what they’ve been learning and apply it to solve a bigger problem?  This gives kids more time to really display what they know, and show mastery (or lack thereof) on assignments in a way that  a multiple choice test in class never will.

We also encourage teachers to try to make homework interactive.  Sometimes this can be reading an article and commenting on it on a classroom blog or wiki.  It could be assembling artifacts about a topic on their own wiki, or with a group.  It could be participating in a discussion through Skype.  Any of these assignments give kids an opportunity to express themselves as well as serving as a jumping off point for classroom discussions the next day.

Homework shouldn’t be a punishment.  If a teacher adds extra homework when the kids are bad, kids will naturally start to associate any form of homework as a form of punishment, not just “discipline”, which in its most authentic form means To Teach.  Homework should  be an opportunity to extend learning, to make connections with the outside world, and start to see how the classroom learning connects with their larger lives.

Now I know full well that some kids need more practice than others, or may memorize things faster than others.  In which case, why do all kids need to do 35 math problems when some have mastered the concept in the first 5 or 6?  The rest of those problems, for those students, is mere repetition and sheer tedium, teaching them nothing new.  Teachers need to help figure out which students need more practice, or perhaps even a different kid of practice than blindly assuming repeating the same procedure over and over will make a kid smarter.  In fact, it seems to me Einstein said the definition of insanity was doing the same task over and over again yet expecting different results.  Maybe there’s room here to start thinking about homework, and what we want kids to get out of it.

Let’s not forget one of the options all teachers have is to ask their students not only how they feel about homework, but why.  If they say it’s stupid and boring, then you need to ask the next question- Why?  What about it is stupid and boring?  How could we make it better?  If you were in charge, how would you change the homework?  Most teachers will be surprised that the majority of kids will give you thoughtful and insightful answers to these questions, and will take them seriously.

I think both teachers and students (not to mention parents) deserve to have more thought and purpose put into homework, and for homework to become a more collaborative process for everyone.

What do you think?

Could you differentiate the homework in your classroom?  Why or Why Not?

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The Batsbi?

Other peoples, resources & links, the pagan religious practices of the chechens and the ingush.

The following article on the pagan religious beliefs and practices of the Chechens and the Ingush was copied from the December 2010 edition (Vol. 8, No.3) of Interreligious Insight ( link ) — "a journal of dialogue and engagement" published by the World Congress of Faiths. The article was written by Dr. Michael Berman, a teacher and writer whose publications include The Shamanic Themes in Armenian Folktales , Shamanic Journeys through the Caucasus , Georgia through its Folktales and Shamanic Journeys Through Daghestan (please see my short Caucasian bibliography for full bibliographical information). "Michael originally trained as a Core Shamanic Counsellor with the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies, but these days his focus is more on the academic side of shamanism, with a particular interest in the folktales with shamanic themes told by and collected from the peoples of the Caucasus. For more information: www.Thestoryteller.org.uk". Dr. Berman's article is of great interest, for it contains many quotations from Bashir Dalgat's remarkable "Pervobytnaia religiia chechentsev" ("The aboriginal religion of the Chechens"), first published (in abriged form) in 1893 in Vladikavkaz in Terskii Sbornik , the journal of the "Terskii Oblastnoi Statisticheskii Komitet" ("Terek oblast Statistical Committee"). Dalgat's book is one of the earliest sources of information on the traditional i.e. pagan religious beliefs and customs of the Nakh peoples, and is a highly-valued "primary" source of information for any student of such matters.

Before considering the religious practices of the Chechens and Ingush, it might be best to start with some background information on the region. The Chechens live in a small territory called Chechnya bordered by Daghestan to the east and northeast; Ingushetia and north Ossetia to the west; Russia‘s Stravrapol Province and Cossack region to the north; and Georgia to the south and southwest. The Caucasus Mountains, which stretch along a line 1,100 kilometres long between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, protect the people not only from enemies but from outside influences in general. The Chechens therefore have retained many traditional customs and practices. As for Ingushetia, it was created in June 1992 as a result of the secession of the Ingush from Checheno-Ingushetia, where the Ingush had been very much in the minority. The decision to break away followed the declaration of independence by the Chechens in 1991 (see Matveena, 1999, pp. 91 & 92). The Chechens and Ingush have lived where they are now since prehistoric times, and while the Mesopotamians, Persians, Turks, Mongols, Slavs and others have greatly influenced the region with their wars, conquests and trade, being fiercely proud and protective of their roots and background, the inhabitants of Chechnya have remained ethnically the same for thousands of years. As for the languages spoken by the peoples, both Chechen and Ingush belong to the nakh branch of the nakh- Daghestanian, or northeast Caucasian, language family and they can both understand each other. Although the current generation of Chechens and Ingush are Muslims and what they practise is a localized Sufi tradition, they still preserve remnants of their pagan past in both their traditions and their folktales. Like many other tribal peoples, the Ingush and the Chechens believed in existence beyond the grave and this was reflected in their burial practices: The belief was based on the evidence of eye-witnesses, of people who have visited the other world – very typical of many other peoples of the world. The other world is similar to this one; it is constructed with the imagination of the Ingush and Chechens by analogy with their native land, the mountain region... The other world is under the ground. It is ruled by the underground God, Eshtr or Eter. A man dies only when that God wishes to take him. The other world is called in Ingush Deli-Ailli, while this present world is Deli-Malkhli. The Ingush say, Deli-Malkhli was built in three years, Deli-Ailli was built in seven years. (Dalgat, 2004, p. 25) This, no doubt, partly explains why the numbers three and seven feature so prominently in the folktales from the region. (The fact that traditionally an Ingush or Chechen man is expected to know the names and birthplaces or origins of his paternal ancestors going back seven generations is yet another indication of the importance attached to this number). These peoples did not view death as going to one’s eternal rest, since the deceased in the other world were believed to do “all their work just exactly as in this world, and moreover simultaneously with the latter: when haymaking or harvesting finishes in this world, the work ceases simultaneously in the other world. The only difference is that the dead people work at nights, when the sun leaves the world of the living for the land of the dead” (Dalgat, 2004, p. 26). According to folk belief, at the moment of death, on the boundary between this world and the other one, when the divine Eshtr has already taken half of a man’s soul for himself, the dying man sees the other world with all those who have died before him. Those around him... pose him questions like: “How is such and such a dead person living?”... If the deceased had not been buried in the proper manner... [in a burial vault that was regarded as the necessary dwelling for a dead person], then the dying man would usually reply that the dead man was troubled without a roof. If a memorial feast had not been made for the deceased, then the dying man would say that the deceased had no food and was living on charity. The dying man would be given various errands to perform in the other world too. (Dalgat, 2004, p. 27) As for the burial of a dead person, he was buried along with everything it was thought he might need on the road to, and in, the other world. And at one time in the distant past, this would have included both his horse and his wife (see Dalgat, 2004, p. 32). The Chechen and Ingush concepts of the soul had much in common with those of other tribal peoples, as we can see from the following tale. One day lame Temir, whose son had been lost, called into a smithy. At that time the blacksmith was sleeping, and Temir, not wanting to interrupt his sleep, sat down next to him and began waiting for him to wake up. He noticed that a fly came out of the blacksmith’s nose, crawled along the tongs across a basin to the anvil. Beyond the anvil there was a huge fissure; the fly descended into this fissure and stopped there quite a long time. Then it crawled back out and, after passing the anvil, crossed the basin by the same tongs, but while crossing it fell into the water. For a long time it was struggling in the water, with difficulty it crawled out on to the tongs, and went back into the nose of the blacksmith. “It seems I have been asleep for a long time!” “Yes, and I was sitting here all the time you were asleep”. Temir replied. Temir said to the blacksmith, “Amuse me. I have lost my son, and I am in great grief. Tell me something”. “But what can I tell you. After all, we cannot reach what I have just seen in my dream”. Temir started asking him to relate his dream. The blacksmith began, “In my dream I crossed a big river and an iron mountain and went down into a large cave, where there was treasure of gold and silver; for a long time I stood there, not having the strength to tear my eyes away from the brilliance and the splendour. But being conscious that I had to return, I climbed out of the cave. On the return journey when I was crossing the river, I fell off the bridge and almost drowned”. Temir realised that the soul of the blacksmith had come out in the form of a fly. And guessing that there had to be a treasure in the smithy, he persuaded the blacksmith to give the place up to him. Then after digging up the place where the soul of the blacksmith had crawled, Temir exposed untold wealth, with which he collected an army and subjugated the whole world. (Dalgat, 2004, p. 39-40) This traditional folktale illustrates the ancient Ingush belief in the reality of dreams and that the soul for them was something material rather than an abstract spiritual concept. In fact, it demonstrates an understanding of the soul that is remarkably similar to that of the Siberian Buryats. There is a parallel Buryat tale in which the soul takes the form of a bee when it crawls out of someone’s nose for an out-of-body experience (see Dalgat, 2004, p. 40). What the people practised can be described as a form of polytheism. Among the Chechens there were two systems of gods – a cult of ancestors and folk heroes and the worship of the deified powers of nature. The High or Supreme God, the King of all creation and the Father of all other gods is called Dela, Dyala or Deyla... The relation of Dyala to the other gods is like that of a father to his children: everything of course depends on Dyala; what He wants, that has to happen; but the other gods also act independently, each in his own sphere. (Dalgat, 2004, p. 98) The Chechens also had great respect for the one-eyed god Elta, the patron of hunters, who rules over the forests and the wild animals. He is the king of the forests and of all its inhabitants, both the forest people and the beasts. Success in hunting completely depends on Elta... In translation Elta means corn (breaded grain), and actually he performs two functions in parallel – the god of hunting and the god of the harvests. (Dalgat, 2004, p. 91) The Sun and the Moon are also anthropomorphised in Chechen folklore. The Sun and the Moon have mothers; the mother of the Sun, or Malkh-Nana, is called Azoy, and the mother of the Moon, or Betti-Nana, is called Kinch. The Chechens say that the Sun comes out of the sea in the morning, and sinks into it once more in the evening; when it comes up on to the horizon, something black separates from it; the people say that it is the sea pouring off the Sun. (Dalgat, 2004, p. 92) The Mother of the Winds was important as well. At the god’s command she would raise a terrible storm to blow away the goods of the dead who had sinned before God. For mediation between the gods and people the Chechens developed a special type of priest or shaman known as a tsaynsag. In order to become a tsaynsag , besides intelligence and good conduct and the respect of the population, the man also required the ability to interpret his dreams and to tell fortunes – qualities required from the Roman augurs, Siberian shamans and Indian priests. These qualities make the priest a real mediator between God and the people... The priest learns the cause of bad fortune and the will of the gods by means of divination, and several methods of divination exist among the Chechens... In former times there were very many sorcerers and sorceresses throughout Chechnya; everybody treated them with respect and resorted to their mediation in every difficult situation such as illnesses or general misfortunes, asking them to find out the cause of the misfortune and advise them how to be saved from it. “They were the mentors of the people and, like the gods, faithfully gave interpretation of dreams and explained illnesses”, said Ganzyh; they were called dzyry. (Dalgat, 2004, pp. 84, 85) Various forms of divination were practised, including the measuring of a shawl with the elbow, winding cotton wool round a spoon, making use of stones, mirrors, sheep’s bones and also by consulting Arab books (see Dalgat, 2004, p. 86). Of all the Chechens’ gods, the most mighty and honoured was Seli the Thunderer. In the Caucasus Mountains, the land of thunderstorms, this god found suitable soil for himself. In the mountains the most terrible phenomenon is the thunderstorm with thunder and lightning from them the Chechen has to suffer many problems of all kinds; every minute both his field and his very life suffer dangers from them. It is not surprising that Seli is held in such honour by the Chechens. He is the most terrible and most capricious god for them, and he has to be propitiated more then the others. But at the same time he is just, and punishes only those who deserve it... All the Chechens honour him equally, and one could say that even all of the inhabitants of the Caucasus Mountains (of course under various names) he is a god, not of one community or tribe, but of them all … One can judge the strength of the cult of Seli by the fact that they consider a man killed by lightning (Seli’s firebrand) as blessed, and he is buried quite separately from other dead people” (Dalgat, 2004, pp. 94, 95). A sacred place for the Chechens was the domestic hearth, believed to be chosen by God himself and so inviolable. A terrible retribution follows any insult or disrespect towards it. The fire, the chain, the cauldron and hearth enjoy the highest respect in the home: the chain and the cauldron are respected as symbols of the domestic hearth, while the fire [whose deity is known as Seli] is an indissoluble component of it. Even the ashes, and soot on the ceiling, are considered sacred, thanks to its connection with the hearth. (Dalgat, 2004, p. 53) Apart from the fact that it was considered to be sacred, the family hearth, in concentrating the members of the family round itself, also had an “organising” importance: Its cult sanctifies the power of the head of the family, as a devotee who brings sacrifices to the gods. Its influence [helps to explain] …the sacred character of the family as a community..., and the sanctity and inviolability of a guest as a temporary member of the family. (Dalgat, 2004, p. 55) And anyone who visits Chechnya will have the opportunity to experience firsthand the people’s legendary hospitality. In view of the fact that the peoples clearly believed in the existence of at least one other reality, that it was possible for adepts to undertake soul journeys, and in the efficacy of divination, to regard what was practised by the priests as a form of shamanism would surely be a reasonable assumption to make, even though the term itself would of course have been totally alien to them. As to whether the priests actually entered trance states in the course of their work, though, remains unclear. However, given the popularity of the mystic dance among followers of the Sufi tariqat or religious path, it would seem that people in the region have a natural propensity for doing so, which would suggest that even though we lack concrete evidence, it was very likely to have been the case. BIBLIOGRAPHY Dalgat, B. K. (2004) The Aboriginal Religions of the Chechens and Ingush , Moscow: nAUKA. (Translated from the Russian by David Hunt October 2009, and kept in the British Library. The book was first published in an abridged form in 1893). Jaimoukha, A. M. (2005). The Chechens: A Handbook . new York; London: Routledge Curzon. Matveena, A. (1999). The North Caucasus: Russia’s Fragile Borderland . London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs. Smith, S. (2006). Allah’s Mountains: The Battle for Chechnya . London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks.

The .pdf of this article can be downloaded from this page of the Interreligious Insight website.

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Grozny, and Chechen history, being reconstructed

• Oct. 19, 2008

GROZNY, Russia — This is the year, according to an order from a president whom few dare to disappoint, that the architectural scars of war in Grozny, Chechnya's capital, will be removed.

That the order has nearly been fulfilled is a feat.

Not long ago, Grozny (the name means "terrible" in Russian) offered a panorama of sagging husks of buildings and unmarked graves, scenes that eerily resembled the ruins left by the most destructive urban battles of World War II.

Grozny today is less a battlefield than the renovated seat of a new police state within Russia's borders, led by Ramzan Kadyrov, the republic's young and exceptionally violent president. And Kadyrov, a Chechen who has professed loyalty to the same Kremlin that many of his fellow Chechens fought for more than a decade, has decreed that by Dec. 31 his capital will bear no more of the marks of war that made Grozny worthy of its name.

As the makeover nears completion, and at a pace recalling the fear-driven public works of Stalin's time, Grozny's new look summons questions. The ruins are vanishing. How will the city remember the forces that destroyed it?

The answer, in short, is very carefully. And partially. If the task of writing a war's history falls to the victors, then Kadyrov is busy with a selective first draft.

Throughout the city, memorials have sprouted, but they are as censored and as celebratory of the republic's latest rulers as are the contents of Chechnya's state-run news media.

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Expert Commentary

Understanding the Chechen conflict: Research and reading list

2013 review of Chechnya-related scholarship and the conflict and political grievances there that continue to reverberate.

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by Alexandra Raphel, The Journalist's Resource April 22, 2013

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News that the primary suspects in the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings are of Chechen heritage resurrected interest in historically troubled Chechnya, an autonomous republic in Russia’s North Caucasus Region. Suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s motive has yet to be confirmed, but questions abound about what role the ongoing violence between Russia and Chechen separatists might have played.

Of course, precise connections are speculative, and the media has already been criticized for making too quick a leap — and for perpetuating stereotypes about Chechens and Muslims in general . Charles King’s article in Foreign Affairs , “Not Your Average Chechen Jihadis,” provides further insights on these points.  London School of Economics scholar Jim Hughes offers compelling perspective .

Fiona Hill, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution , writes , “Chechnya and Russia have spent centuries at war and it isn’t surprising that this conflict, which has spanned generations, would provide fertile ground to incite and radicalize sympathizers wherever they happen to live.” Hill also provides an overview of the conflict in an interview titled “The Troubled History of Chechnya.”

Although the region has, for the most part, stayed out of the Western media headlines in recent years, reverberations of the conflict are still being felt both in the region and among the global diaspora. Thomas de Waal, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, notes in a recent article that “a low-level Islamist insurgency continues in and around Chechnya that takes dozens of lives each year.” For a sense of recent activity in the region, see “Islam, Islamism, and Politics in Eurasia Report,” published in March 2013 by Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The ongoing animosity between the largely Muslim ethnic Chechens and the Russian government dates back to Russo-Persian War (1804-1813), when Persia transferred the territory to Russian control. After years of attempted revolt by the Chechens, in 1944 Soviet Leader Josef Stalin deported the entire population of the North Caucasus — people in the republics of Ingushetia, Chechnya and North Ossetia — to Central Asia, claiming that they were collaborating with Nazi Germany.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chechen separatists called for independence from Moscow and two bloody wars followed during the following decade. The second ended in 2000 when Russian forces captured the Chechen capital of Grozny. Since then, Chechen separatists have continued to engage in acts of terrorism, including the 2002 hostage drama at a Moscow theater, capture of a school in 2004 and the 2010 bombing of a Moscow metro station .

For more information on the Chechen conflict and recent Russian history, see the Council on Foreign Relations’ “Backgrounder on Chechen Terrorism” and the article “What to Read on Russian Politics” in Foreign Affairs .

Below is a selection of papers, reports and articles that can provide further context on the conflict:

“The Rise of Radical and Nonofficial Islamic Groups in Russia’s Volga Region” Markedonov, Sergey. Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 2013.

Summary: “In the two decades since the dissolution of the USSR, Russian and Western experts, human rights activists, and journalists have become accustomed to the political violence of the North Caucasus. Terrorist bombings and acts of sabotage in Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Chechnya are perceived as somehow intrinsic to the region. But a recent tragedy in the Volga region suggests that this sort of violence — and the Islamist terrorists who perpetrate it — may not be confined to the Caucasus. To examine this increasingly serious situation, this report sheds light on the ideological sources and resources of radicalism in the Volga region, nonofficial Islamic movements’ support among the regional population, and opportunities for the potential growth of different forms of Islamist activities. It describes the origins of different nonofficial Islamic movements, as well as their post-Soviet development, ideology, and relationship with the authorities and official Muslim clergy. The report also offers practical approaches both for Russian domestic policy and for the U.S.-Russia security cooperation agenda.”

“Russia’s Homegrown Insurgency: Jihad in the North Caucasus” Blank, Stephen J. Strategic Studies Institute, October 2012.

Summary: “The three papers offered in this monograph provide a detailed analysis of the insurgency and counterinsurgency campaigns being conducted by Islamist rebels against Russia in the North Caucasus. This conflict is Russia’s primary security threat, but it has barely registered on Western minds and is hardly reported in the West as well. To overcome this neglect, these three papers go into great detail concerning the nature of the Islamist challenge, the Russian response, and the implications of this conflict. This monograph, in keeping with SSI’s objectives, provides a basis for dialogue among U.S., European, and Russian experts concerning insurgency and counterinsurgency, which will certainly prove useful to all of these nations, since they will continue to be challenged by such wars well into the future. It is important for us to learn from the insurgency in the North Caucasus, because the issues raised by this conflict will not easily go away, even for the United States as it leaves Afghanistan.”

“Prisoners of the Caucasus: Russia’s Invisible Civil War” King, Charles; Menon, Rajan. Foreign Affairs , July/August 2010.

Summary: “A pernicious mix of heavy-handed rule, corrupt governance, high unemployment, and militant Islam has reignited the Russian North Caucasus. Today, it is not only the old conflict zone of Chechnya but also its neighboring republics that are bordering on open civil war.”

“The New Chechen Jihad: Militant Wahhabism as a Radical Movement and a Source of Suicide Terrorism in Post-War Chechen Society” Speckhard, Anne; Akhmedova, Khapta. Democracy and Security , Vol. 2, Issue 1, 2006.

Abstract: The first act of Chechen suicide terrorism occurred on June 7, 2000, and was carried out by two young women. This inaugurated the migration of suicide terrorism from other conflict zones, into the Chechen conflict. How suicide terrorism as a tactic made its way into Chechnya is the topic of this paper, which provides an analysis of the events concerning the importation of militant ideologies and radical terrorist movements taking place since the Chechen declaration of independence as well as an empirical and theoretical analysis of Chechen suicide terrorism based on psycho-social interviews that were collected in Chechnya over a two-year time period from March 2003 to March 2005. We report data about suicide terrorism and the radicalization process from 32 interviews with family members and close associates of thirty-four Chechen suicide terrorists, inquiring about the terrorists’ backgrounds, experiences, religious, and psychological reasons leading up to their suicidal acts.

“Russia’s Ruinous Chechen War” Menon, Rajan; Fuller, Graham. Foreign Affairs , March/April 2000.

Summary: “The Russian Federation is unraveling, and its war against Chechnya shows why. Moscow blames Islamist terrorists for the trouble there. But in doing so, it ignores Russia’s deeper afflictions. Russia has forced disparate ethnic groups to live together for decades but has proven inept at governing its wobbly empire. Now the fighting in Chechnya is leading dissatisfied nationalities to rethink their options — and their dependence on Russia. Chechnya was the first to rebel. It will not be the last.”

“Russia’s Invasion of Chechnya: A Preliminary Assessment” Blank, Stephen J.; Tilford, Earl H. Jr. Strategic Studies Institute, January 1995.

Brief Synopsis: “On December 11, 1994, Russia invaded the secessionist republic of Chechnya in the North Caucasus. The aim was to suppress the republic’s government, led by General Dzhokar Dudayev, compel it to accept Moscow’s authority, and to force it to renounce its bid for independence and sovereignty. This invasion, which quickly turned into a military quagmire for Russia’s troops, triggered a firestorm of domestic opposition, even within the higher levels of the Ministry of Defense. As a result, the invasion has the most profound and troubling possible consequences for the stability of the Russian government, Russian democracy, and the future political-military relationship. This special report, based on what is already known, attempts to assess the discernible consequences of this invasion and provide a framework within which future developments can be assessed.”

“The North Caucasus: Russia’s Volatile Frontier” Kuchins, Andrew C.; Markedonov, Sergey. Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 2011.

Synopsis: “Continued violence and unrest in the North Caucasus have created a major area of instability for the Russian Federation. Although Chechnya is relatively more stable, for now, under the brutal dictatorship of Ramzan Kadyrov, neighboring republics including Ingushetia, Dagestan, and others have experienced significant increases in the frequency of violence. The entire region is plagued by extreme poverty, high unemployment, and corrupt and often incompetent governance. Additionally, the prevalence of radical Islamic influences as well as growing competitive nationalist identities further increases the challenges for governance and stability. The Russian federal government seeks to insulate the rest of the country from the overflow of violence in this volatile region, but terrorist attacks in the past year on the Moscow Metro and again on the train between Moscow and St. Petersburg demonstrate how hard this is to manage. Kuchins, Malarkey, and Markedonov examine the socioeconomic trends in the region, the role of Islam and rise of radicalism throughout the Caucasus, nationalism and growing ethnic tensions, and the external factors influencing the North Caucasus.”

“Radical Islam in the North Caucasus: Evolving Threats, Challenges, and Prospects” Markedonov, Sergey. Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 2010.

Synopsis: “As Kyrgyzstan plunges into crisis and the threat of a second Afghanistan in Central Asia looms large, the situation in the “Big Caucasus” seems less pressing and thus overshadowed. The worst scenarios predicted by analysts and politicians for the period of the 2008 August war have not been realized. The Russian attempt to “replace the regime” of Mikhail Saakashvili or apply the Georgian pattern in Ukraine, expected by many in the West, has not taken place. Neither have the attempts from the West (the United States, NATO, and others) to “nudge Georgia into a rematch,” which were expected in Moscow. Nonetheless, the Caucasus region remains one of the most vulnerable spaces in Eurasia. What challenges have turned the North Caucasus into a primary issue for Russia? Could we paint the political, ideological, and psychological portrait of the North Caucasus militant resistance? What resources do they have, and why has radicalism becomes popular? What external and internal factors determine their approaches? What mistakes did Russia, its society, and the Western observers make? And, finally, could the rise of Islamist militancy in the North Caucasus bring Moscow and Washington closer, regardless of the numerous foreign policy disputes existing between the two countries? This report is an attempt to answer these questions. It is based on open sources and interviews made during several trips to the North Caucasus republics, and it aims to promote more practical approaches to the situation there.”

“Conflicts in the Caucasus: Prospects for Resolution” Testimony by Fiona Hill before the U.S. Helsinki Commission, December 2011.

Excerpt: “The Helsinki Commission has an important role to play in advancing peace and democracy throughout the world. Unfortunately today, even in what might be considered an enlightened time, many people still face war and oppression in their homes. One of the regions that still witnesses much conflict is the Caucasus, with disputes in Georgia, Russia, Chechnya and others. The quest for peace is ongoing and certainly a worthwhile goal. Today, I hope to hear from the witnesses about the latest developments in the Caucasus. I would like to hear about what actions the countries within the region are taking to ease tensions. I’d also like to learn what the other Helsinki Commission countries are doing to help, as well as what the role the witnesses believe that us here in the United States House of Representatives, where we could be helpful.”

“Connectedness, Social Support and Internalising Emotional and Behavioural Problems in Adolescents Displaced by the Chechen conflict” Betancourt, Theresa S. et al. Disasters , 36(4), 2012.

Abstract: “ The study investigated factors associated with internalising emotional and behavioural problems among adolescents displaced during the most recent Chechen conflict. A cross-sectional survey (N=183) examined relationships between social support and connectedness with family, peers and community in relation to internalising problems. Levels of internalising were higher in displaced Chechen youth compared to published norms among non-referred youth in the United States and among Russian children not affected by conflict. Girls demonstrated higher problem scores compared to boys. Significant inverse correlations were observed between family, peer and community connectedness and internalising problems. In multivariate analyses, family connectedness was indicated as a significant predictor of internalising problems, independent of age, gender, housing status and other forms of support evaluated. Sub-analyses by gender indicated stronger protective relationships between family connectedness and internalising problems in boys. Results indicate that family connectedness is an important protective factor requiring further exploration by gender in war-affected adolescents.”

Tags: terrorism, research roundup

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Alexandra Raphel