Timetabling - My Leadership Project

What happens when a school in the UK changes its timetable to support Project Based Learning?

Abstract

In the past 25 years the secondary school weekly timetable in England has become more fragmented in en effort to prepare students for the rigors of governmental exams and to comply with governmental regulations from OFSTED. Student engagement drops significantly each year a student is in secondary school. This paper is a case study on what happened to one school in England that changed their timetable to support Project Based Learning. I interviewed two teachers and their students to triangulate data from field observations to determine what happens when a school changes its timetable to support Project Based Learning. Teachers who embraced the timetable change saw large gains in literacy due to the flexibility in planning projects and increased student engagement. Teachers who were apprehensive to the timetable change struggled to modify their practice in ways to make the timetable change successful.

Below are the different sections of my action research. At the bottom of the page you can download a .pdf file of the entire thesis. Also, please download the timetabling handout to use if you would like to modify your timetable to support deep learning.

Here is a sample timetable in the UK for a Year 7 student (11 years old).

-What would your daily experience be like?

-How would you be able to make connections between classes?

-How would your teachers be able to plan for expert speakers or field activities?

-Would your daily life amount to "death by Powerpoint"?