Is Timetabling a Barrier to Student Achievement?
As I stood on the stage waiting for 70 Year 7’s to file into the auditorium, I noticed that something was different. Last Monday, I taught these same 70 students right after lunch and today it was the first period of the day. But that wasn’t it. Where were Mr Gray, Ms Little, and Mr Hopkins? Just a week ago I worked with these three teachers and their combined 70 students to launch a project. For most of that lesson last week the students were focused on their work as their teachers floated from group to group answering questions and posing questions of their own to push the students’ thinking. At this point, it was five minutes into class and still no sign of the teachers with whom I was working.
Oh well, I figured I should get the lesson started and figure out where the three teachers were some other time. After ten minutes of a warm up activity the students all stood up and filed out of the auditorium. Confused, I asked three teachers I had never met before who were in the back of the auditorium what was going on. They told me that on “B Mondays” these students have Science from 8:55AM to 10:30AM with a 20 minute break that starts at 9:10AM. Confused, I interjected, “The students get a twenty minute break after only being in class for fifteen minutes?” One of the three teachers responded with, “Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense, but every student in school needs to have a fifteen minute break sometime during the first two hours of school. Since these students are the youngest, they get the earliest break.”
Befuddled, I continued to ask more and more questions. “Do you know where Mr. Gray, Ms. Little, and Mr. Hopkins are?” “Oh, they don’t teach this class.” To which I responded, “Um… they taught this class with these students last week.” “Oh this is a ‘B Monday’, last week was an ‘A Monday’. On ‘B Mondays’ we teach these students, and on ‘A Mondays’ they teach these students.” “So you are telling me that these students see two different teachers for the same subject?” “Yes. It’s not perfect, but it works for us.” This raised several questions for me. How can this project be successful if these teachers did not know what the project was? Why do these students see two different teachers for the same subject? Do students always have to look at a planner to figure out which class to go to next?
I was astonished. A few months earlier, I had left San Diego to accept a one year position with the Innovation Unit in London to help schools implement Project Based Learning. In that moment, I understood that a school’s timetable is one of the greatest barriers to effective change.
All over the UK, teachers and students go through a very confusing timetable that changes day to day, and sometimes even week to week. Some students have an English teacher for Mondays and Tuesdays, and then a different English teacher for Thursdays and Fridays.
Table 1 (below) shows a sample student timetable from a school in the UK. What struck me most about this timetable was that this student saw about 17 different teachers each week. When I examined the timetable further, I noticed how this student had two different teachers for English, two different teachers for French, and two different teachers for Math. Educational change visionary, Thomas Sergiovanni, stated, “Complex structures yield simple results and simple structures yield complex results.” I feel that this is the case in England. Students are rushed from class to class and are force fed material in a mile wide and an inch deep mentality. Looking at this timetable, it is evident that broad learning is favored over deep learning. In a timetable such as this, it will be more difficult for students to actively collaborate and solve 21st century style problems.
Table 1. A sample Year 7 timetable from a school in Peterborough, England.
The timetable is confusing for teachers as well. A teacher with an average course load might see 180-200 students in a week while Drama and Dance teachers will see 450-500 students once every other week. In presentations that I have made to teachers and administrators in England, there is a palpable sigh and head shaking once the teachers see Table 1. When teachers see the contrasting colors and classes like English being broken up into two sections, they understand that this timetable is not conducive to deep, authentic learning. The whole process can leave students and teachers feeling lost. Since the introduction of nationwide standardized examinations in the 1950’s, schools in England have been focused on preparing students to do well on tests. As a result of this focus on testing, schools modified their timetable to make sure that students were taught everything that would be on the examinations. For more on the roots of the UK timetable, see Appendix A.
Table 2 (below) is a sample UK teacher timetable. This teacher has to prepare for nine different groups of students each week. On Monday alone, this teacher must prepare for five different groups of students. Alternatively, as a teacher at a High Tech High school, I am provided the luxury of only having to prepare for two sections of 27 students for Math and Physics seeing each set of students for more than ten hours every week. I am able to build stronger relationships with each student and design interdisciplinary project based work, which is deep and meaningful to my students.
Table 2. A sample teacher timetable from a school in Peterborough, England.
With teachers having to prepare classes for nine or more different groups of students, it is no wonder that teachers pool resources and share PowerPoint presentations on a network drive. One teacher in Newcastle described the student experience at his school as “Death by Powerpoint.” I personally witnessed a different teacher deliver a PowerPoint that he admitted to never seeing before he gave his lesson. I felt compassion for him. He poured his heart and soul into his students, but he simply did not have enough time in his days to prepare rich lessons every day. In England, teachers are spread too thin to prepare engaging activities that help build relationships and promote deep thinking.
After visiting over 25 schools and interviewing dozens of students and teachers, I realized that although these teachers wanted to challenge their students to think deeply and to help prepare them for careers of the 21st century, the timetable imposed upon them made it difficult to do so. This led me to wonder:
What happens when a school changes its timetable
to support deeper learning?
This question guided the focus of my action research project.
Background
Complex Structures Beget Simple Results
In May of 2012, an amazing opportunity popped into my email inbox. I had been teaching at High Tech High Media Arts in San Diego for eight years and at traditional public schools for five years before that. I was also pursuing a Master’s Degree with The High Tech High Graduate School of Education School Leadership Program. That email in May of 2012 was the first step in Cady Staff’s, an 8th Grade Humanities Teacher from High Tech Middle Chula Vista, and my journey for one school year with the Innovation Unit in England to help schools transition to Project Based Learning. The Innovation Unit is a not-for-profit social enterprise with the stated aim of using innovation to create different, better, lower cost public services that better meet social challenges (www.innovationunit.org). After struggling with the UK Border Agency for a few months to work through visa issues, Cady and I finally flew to England for a three week tour of the country to visit as many schools as possible and to observe best practices. Jetlagged, we caught an early train from London to Sheffield to meet with Angela Armitage, the Head Teacher, and Lucie Wainwright, the Assistant Head Teacher for Yewlands Technical College. After a tour of their beautiful campus, we sat down to show off some of the High Tech High student created projects that we brought all the way from San Diego. My colleague and I proudly showed Angela and Lucie High Tech High student projects that ranged from documentaries and street art based on The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird to a collaborative Art and Physics project that was developed into a book. About fifteen minutes into our presentation, Angela stopped us and asked us “How many hours per week do we see our students?” What I didn’t know was that this seemingly banal question would change the course of the rest of my time in England.
For the rest of the next three weeks, Cady and I lugged around our huge suitcases filled with student work all over the country. Everywhere we went, we met spirited educators who were amazed by the work that High Tech High students had done. Almost all of them replied that their students would never be able to produce in depth projects, such as a student created book where each student writes a five page research paper on an infectious disease of their choice. Almost every teacher I spoke to lamented the fact that they each see 180 or more students for anywhere from 50 minutes to four hours per week. At many Project Based Learning Schools in America, teachers only see between 50-100 students per week. One drama teacher in England told me that she teaches over 500 students every fortnight. Angela’s question about timetables kept surfacing in my thoughts.
Simple Structures Beget Complex Results
Ted Sizer, the founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, argues that “Less is More”. He believes that teachers should not be responsible for too many students and how schools should offer less subjects to students. The theory of “less is more” should dominate curricular decision-making, and school practice should be tailored to meet the needs of individual students. Teaching and learning should be personalized to the maximum extent feasible, and teachers should not be responsible for too many students (Coalition of Essential Schools).
In speaking with various school administrators and teachers, it became clear that schools were not willing to modify their timetable for Year 10 students and older due to the high stakes associated with the GCSE and A Level examinations. Given this, I recommended that schools modify their timetable with Year 7 and Year 8 students to boost student engagement and promote deep learning.
One solution that many school districts in the United States have adopted is block scheduling. In block scheduling, students see teachers for 1.5-2 hours each lesson and attend fewer lessons per day. Block scheduling allows for a more relaxed, less frenetic pace (Kienholtz, Segall, & Yellin 2003). It also increases flexibility and is more conducive to team teaching, multidisciplinary classes, labs, and field work (Maltese, Dexter, Tai, & Sadler).
In middle grades, a block style schedule can have a larger impact on student performance. Education researchers Cobb, Abate, and Baker studied a middle grades block scheduling school program that had been running for four years. Consistent with their review of the literature, they found that students positively viewed the timetable change. They also found that in all subjects except for mathematics, students reported consistently higher performance (1999).
In their study, Mixing Block and Traditional Scheduling, Childers and Weeks studied a school transitioning to block scheduling. During 1999-2000 school year, the Watauga County School District in North Carolina encouraged teachers to block schedule their content if they wanted to. They hired consultants and came up with a composite schedule, basically a mix between regular and block. The study found that block courses are taught in a more hands on way. Students are up, moving around the classroom and interacting with instructional material and one another. In the Watauga County School District’s opinion neither a full block nor full traditional schedule would best serve its students, teachers and subjects. Several years after its implementation, Watauga County School District reported that the schedule was still working very effectively. They continue to make revisions to the schedule to improve it. Only four out of 130 teachers in the district felt that they should return to a traditional schedule (Childers & Weeks, 2005).
One area of concern for changing the timetable is ensuring that teachers know how to structure their time to get the most out of students. Misuse of instructional tactics better suited for block scheduling is a major reason why block scheduling does not work (Hackman & Schmitt, 1997). A common complaint of block scheduling is that teachers are not applying the methodologies that capitalize on its advantages (Maltese, Dexter, Tai, & Sadler, 2007). Education researchers Donald Hackman and Donna Schmitt are proponents of block scheduling, but realize that there can be “great deal of apprehension” from veteran teachers. They also warn that without proper structures, valuable instruction time can be lost and student achievement can decline (1997).
“Learners find it much easier to make connections if the process is facilitated by an instructor who poses questions that beg exploration and who facilitate links between and among disciplines and processes. Extended periods of time can allow for this dialogue and exploration to occur.” (Robbins, Gregory, & Herndon, 2000, p. 33).
Throughout my time in England, I wondered how can a teacher personalize education for each student when teachers teach seven different age levels, nine different groups of students, and only have two prep periods each week. The answer is most can not. Many students lose interest when they enter Secondary School, perhaps because their learning is less personalized and their relationships with teachers are less deep. In a study done by the CEA, the percentage of students intellectual engaged in school drops from 82% in primary school to 45% at the end of secondary school. For more on how a timetable change can affect student engagement, see Appendix B.
The timetable at many Project Based Learning schools allows teachers to develop student centered learning that is applicable to the real world in order to engage the students better. Sarah Barnes, a Resource Specialist at High Tech High Media Arts says that teachers at High Tech High make their classrooms student centered by including students in the decision making and working closely with students to make sure that their individual developmental needs are met. In their 1998 study Perry and Weinstein found that teachers who used more student centered approaches had more motivated students than teachers who did not use a student centered approach (Perry & Weinstein, 1998).
In this section I examined what has happened when schools change their timetable. Based on the above research, a timetable change has the potential to increase student engagement if teachers use their time wisely. If teachers utilize structures and design hands on activities, then the timetable can help increase student engagement, which can lead to long lasting academic improvement. However, if a school changes their timetable and teachers stick to teaching traditionally, valuable learning could be lost.