How Time is the Friend and Enemy of Learning - 2
The Factors that Affect Learning No. 6: Time: 2 of 2
I have a dislike of podcasts that go on for too long. Whilst some podcasts really benefit from being able to last for an undefined amount of time, others become self-indulgent and take up too much time for the content they are carrying. (Bloggers and Substackers can be the same. Like teachers and schools (and most other organisations) we can all use the time at our disposal profitably or unprofitably.)
Which brings me to this week’s post. On the one hand, I don’t want to waste your time or mine by going on relentlessly about the importance of a) creating as much time as possible for learning (often by not wasting time in a whole variety of different ways) and b) using that time effectively once we have created it. Especially so as last week’s post was about the same theme. On the other hand it is such an important issue that I don’t want us to lose the lens of good learning time through which to look at our own practices.
All of which means that this week’s post is shorter than originally written because I don’t want to waste your time but is long enough for us to revisit and rethink about good learning time as it runs through everything we do. Building on from last week’s post, I’ll briefly highlight this week the way we use our systems, structures and systems in our classrooms and schools with a few other thoughts.
Let’s say this to start with. The good learning time of children and students is at the mercy of many things, some of which we looked at last week.
But just as children and students need the right amounts of different and appropriate time in which to learn well then so do teachers, school leaders, parents and others, too.
If the quantity and quality of good learning is going to be as good as it might be, teachers need time to reflect on why learning is both happening for some children or students in their classes and why it isn’t for others; time to talk to other teachers who may teach the same classes and students; time to discuss as a whole staff the issues that are arising about learning; time to think carefully about which repeated activities are going to work and which aren’t; time to moderate their evidence about learning with other teachers to ensure reliability and validity; time to reflect about and practice their own learning which will help them become better `at helping children and students learn, and so on. School leaders and parents need time to make their own versions of these reflections.
Some of this time can be found (or lost) in classrooms and homes where teachers, school leaders and parents have a considerable amount of control over the extent to which their own systems, structures and processes enable them to be time creators or time wasters for themselves and their students.
In the first school in which I taught with bunny-like enthusiasm but very little insight, I gave up four lunchtimes a week to organise sports coaching or lunchtime clubs. After school I did the same thing or rushed out of school to take a course of some kind. I created an entire day from 0800 until about 1730 that had no reflection time and not much colleague meeting time. No wonder Fred Tiramani said that the children and their parents liked me but no one was learning in my class. My class was almost my oasis in the storm of my rushing about all over the place.
And just to make sure you realise how little insight I had, remember that in amongst this crazy day, my own systems for taking the registers were already losing my students three weeks of learning time a year compared to the students in Fred Tiramani’s class.
If we don’t have enough time, or our students don’t have enough time, it’s always helpful to start looking at our own systems, structures and processes first.
But, for teachers and others, much happens outside of their time in the classroom when when they are at the mercy or misfortune to work within systems, structures and processes that create or waste time. As often as teachers are responsible for ‘designing out’ good learning time for their students and themselves, so schools need to take responsibility for ‘designing in’ or ‘designing out’ good learning time for students and teachers, too.
When, a few posts ago, we looked at structures, systems and processes as factors that affected learning, we did so through the lens of whether they were learning focused or not. We asked the question: What’s the difference between an ‘x’ structure, system or process and a learning focused structure, system or process? In other words, do we have - for example - staff meetings or staff meetings that truly focus on learning.
What we only touched on was how well our classroom and school structures, systems and processes either create or waste time for student, teacher and parental learning.
We have seen teacher time wasted by a school that required its teachers to write out exactly the same learning plans that were already contained in printed resources available in each classroom.
We have seen how a school’s unthinking adoption of a too full curriculum designs into the system a focus on coverage rather than learning. Even more worryingly, we have seen that this focus on coverage also designs into the system less time for good learning and, even more importantly, less time for the good learning of skills and understanding that both need longer time than knowledge learning.
We have seen how timetabling systems can either create the time necessary for good learning to happen or diminish it considerably.
We have seen throughout these Looking for Learning posts that whilst structures, systems and processes are vital in helping a school focus on what really matters (or not) and helping a school create both independence and interdependence for students, teachers and parents (or not) they can, if badly thought through, take away the time that good learning needs.
In the many schools I and my colleagues have visited over the years, this is what we saw in the very best learning-focused schools:
The time available in classrooms for children and students to learn effectively and differently is maximised:
The time that children and students spend on appropriate repeated learning experiences within that time is also maximised;
The time for teachers to individually and collectively reflect on, prepare for and learn about the learning that is or is not happening in their classrooms is maximised;
This time is used profitably by individual teachers, groups of teachers and school leaders working together.
When all of these happen together, the way time is used across classrooms and the school creates the possibility for good learning to be happening. When they don’t happen together or even individually, the time that is badly used creates breakdown points that get in the way of good learning happening.
When the breakdowns happen, children and students suffer a double whammy. Not only are the conditions for their good learning not fulfilled, the teachers responsible for their learning don’t have time to reflect, talk about and try to make their learning better. So, as the lack of time compounds itself for everyone, it does so especially for children and students.
I once read that, up to a point, most things are learnable by everyone, meaning that we can all learn enough to be a not very good pianist rather than being totally unable to be a pianist. This is true of maths, English or language arts, science, physical education, public speaking, and anything you care to name that you think it would be good for us to be better at. It doesn’t matter whether we are ‘able’ or ‘not able’, we can, theoretically, all continue to get better at everything.
Then I read that there was a reason why these levels of learning rarely happened. The reason, of course, was time. Given unlimited time, you could get me to become better (if not great, given my interests and inherent abilities) at some higher level maths, to play the saxophone sort-of competently, to cook something more than just edible, to paraglide without endangering myself or anything else you might want me to get better at.
The problem is that neither you nor I have the time available to spend on all this possible learning. Learning is constrained by the amount of time available to us whether that is in this lesson, in this term, in this year or in this lifetime. It’s not that I couldn’t learn - up to a point - all sorts of things I haven’t learned; I just don’t have the time needed and you don’t don’t have the time to help me.
There is a corollary to this, of course. It’s this. In order to allow as much good learning to happen even within the context of prescribed lesson time, term time, Elementary, Middle and High school time and our life time, we need to create as much time as we possibly can. There isn’t enough time anyway; especially for those of us who are not gifted or talented at one thing or another. ‘Designing-in’ less time for learning in classrooms, schools and homes is counter-productive to everything that is at the heart of something that wants its hedgehog concept to be learning.
To finish, here’s what I hope will be a useful checklist to help us think through whether we are creating time for learning or wasting time for learning.
To what extent:
To what extent is your school overtly committed to maximising good learning time in its different forms?
To what extent do teachers, children and students overtly share a commitment to maximising appropriate learning time in their classrooms?
To what extent is learning time a feature of your evidence base in answer to the fifth and sixth of our seven questions about classroom-based evidence about learning: What is the teacher doing that helps learning happen? What is the teacher doing that gets in the way of learning happening?
To what extent does your school leadership factor in time that maximises impact on learning when designing school wide systems, structures and processes?
To what extent do you regularly and collectively review the school’s systems, structures and processes for their positive or negative impact on good learning time?
How often has the creation of more good learning time featured as an explicit target in one of your last five school improvement plans?
How confident are you that your children and students have as much time as possible for good learning?
What’s your evidence base for your confidence or lack of confidence about all of this?
That’s it for now. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how maximising good learning is dealt with (or not) in classrooms, schools and organisations in which you have worked. Next week, we’ll be taking a look at how technology works as a factor that affects learning, an issue around which there are currently so many ideas. In the spirit of non-time wasting, I’ll keep each post below the 15 minute reading-time target I’ve set myself.
Have the best week possible.
Martin
I found in my headship experience that timetabling lessons/sessions was a crucial structure for helping learning focused time. Often students spent as much time moving around the school as interacting between themselves and their teachers!