As educators, asking and investigating questions around our beliefs, practices and our actions can help us better understand how we can serve students. We need to be learners first before we are teachers as we are constantly learning from our students and our teaching practices so that we could modify them and so that everybody student benefits from that. For me, the goal of educational inquiry is about learning and applying what you learned into your praxis. When it comes to educational inquiry, it doesn’t mean we apply everything we learn, but we should critically analyze research to find solutions that work for us. There are a lot of political and social issues surrounding education that impacts the lives of students, and so research is there to guide us and for us to think critically about these issues so that we could bring transformative change that could benefit us and our students in our professional and teaching practices within education.
In my Critical Literature Review, I chose to research a topic that I related to in terms of the way I learned at the beginning of my educational journey. The research question that I looked at was to see, the impact of time on student achievement and learning. When I was in India, I had a longer school year and I even attended school on Saturdays, but in American schools, the school year and times are shorter and so I wanted to see if there is a correlation between time allocated to learning to student achievement. Throughout the research process, I was able to see supporters for both sides of the argument for whether they would support longer or shorter school time. Some researchers stated that longer school years do benefit students living in areas where school cancellations occur the most, while others stated that longer school years does not have any academic benefits. There was also research on how a shorter school week at schools in Oregon does not help students academically. There were many statistics concerning test scores that supported that argument. There was also interesting research surrounding earlier/later school start times to see if later school start time has any benefit to students taking exams or standardized tests. According to research, there was evidence that a later school start time does increase student test scores in math and reading. Another aspect of my research focused specifically on students who come from low-income families and on poor schools, to see if more time can positively impact their learning and academics and according to a research study done in Columbia, there is evidence that low-income students do benefit from longer or extended school time. All the research that I collected and studied was from other countries as well and not only from America, so it was cool to research this topic of how extended school time impacts students in other countries.
Through this research, I was able to see multiple perspectives of how time does or does not relate to student achievement, but with this research it was not just about learning, but also applying what you learned to your educational practice. At the end of my Critical literature review, I critically reflected on the research, and I created an action plan relating to this topic to see if longer days would benefit students in the school that I would teach in. I would conduct a year-long study in my classroom to see if a longer school day would benefit students. This will be completely optional and for parents to decide whether they want their students to spend an extra hour in school. During this time, seeing if this has any positive correlation to test scores will be important and I will also compare this to students who don’t attend that extra hour. I believe that this will be a great study for me, and it gives me that chance to put my research into action and to create my narrative of the study based on the results that I get.
Overall, this learning goal meant a lot to me, and it gave me the chance to explore a topic that I was interested in. This is not the only research that I would do, but I will continue to do a lot more throughout my teaching career around many other education research topics to not only further my knowledge but also use that knowledge to have a positive impact on my student’s educational journey.
Paul Stephen
The Impact of Time on Student Achievement and Learning
The current education system in America, the school calendars have been stable at 180 days. This is the typical school year for most kids and youths in the United States, and they spend about 6 and half hours a day in school and we attend school 5 out of the 7 days a week which is 30 hours of instruction time a week. Some school and educational experts believe that the school year or school day should be extended because they believe that this will improve student learning, social development, and achievement. When it comes to learning, I am concerned about the amount of knowledge and information kids and youths receive through experience and study during a school year, while also paying attention to the test scores and how students will perform in tests when they attend school for 6 hours and 180 days a year. In this research, I will investigate how a typical school day and year impacts student achievement and learning versus a different school year and school day and how that impacts student learning and achievement. We’ve all had to admit that not everyone in this nation attends school 180 days every school year, that by itself would be a huge accomplishment, but the fact of the matter is that we all at some point, do not go to school because of weather, sickness, travel, family problems and of course our intention not to go to school for our reason. We skip school for numerous reasons, but in reality, missing a day of school means that you miss one whole day of content from various subjects. This might not seem as bad, but when we don’t learn the content that we need to learn in a given amount of time, then it is going to affect our learning and success at standardized tests. The goal of this research is to see if extended learning time, whether it be an extended time in a day, or a year can impact students going to schools in America.
Main Topics of Focus
In this research paper, I will be focusing on three main topics that are mentioned below. These topics are important because this paper focuses on the impacts of extending time in a school day or year vs having a shorter school week and how it correlates to student, Achievement, student learning, and the impacts it has on low-achieving students. When I refer to achievement, I am talking about test scores on standardized tests and how longer school days have impacted that. Dave E. Marcotte and Benjamin Hansen identified one of the main issues of having lost schools due to weather complications. They say that “We estimate that an additional 10 days of instruction results in an increase in student performance on state math assessments of just under 0.2 standard deviations. To put that into perspective, the percentage of students passing math assessments falls by about one-third to one-half a percentage point for each day school is closed” (Marcotte & Hansen, 2010). In this research paper, I will focus on how extended/limited instruction time affects student learning/achievement. In addition, I will be focusing on how extended time impacts student learning and achievement in other countries. I will also be talking about how later start times and their impacts on student learning and performance in standardized tests. Finally, I will focus on how a 4-day school week affects student learning and achievement.
Significance of the Topics
The main significance of these topics is to see if there is a correlation between time and student performance. I will also be focusing on the school start time to see if starting school later in the day would impact learning and performance in tests. Essentially, this research focuses on the value of time in terms of hours in a school day and the number of days in a school year to see if an extended amount of time affects students' learning/achievement positively or if America's current school calendar is better for students.
My interest
I was really interested in this specific topic because I came from India where our school calendar would include 200 days of instruction for 1st to 5th grade and 220 days of instruction from 6th to 8th grade. A typical school day would run from 9 am to 4 pm, so that’s 7 hours and sometimes we have additional instruction after that. I also have a lot of friends, and cousins who are studying in India and they go through this schedule every year. I wanted to see if there is a correlation on whether our test scores and learning of the content improve if we have longer school days and longer school years and as well to see how it impacts the poorest schools in our nation.
Research Questions
Does longer school days and a longer school day/year positively affect student learning/Achievement?
How do other countries benefit from extended learning time?
What is the criticism and pushbacks for having longer school days?
Does starting school later in the day affect students' learning/achievement?
What are the impacts and implications of having 4 days a weekly schedule on student learning and achievement?
Literature Review
The number of school days in a year affects students all over America. Over the past few decades, researchers and educators have been arguing to extend the number of school days we have in America. In this research, I will focus on four main topics that I’ve already mentioned above. (a) Impacts of extended school/limited school time on Student achievement and learning, (b) the impact of extended school time in other countries and how it impacts student achievement and learning (c) The impact of early later start times on student achievement. In addition to all this, I will also focus on some of the opposing views of why extending the school year or day is a bad idea for all students.
Impacts of Extended and Limited School Time on Student Learning and Academic Achievement
Throughout this research process and study, the theme that I identify the most is that weather is the main cause of school cancellations which leads to less instructional time and lower test scores. Also, most of their research comes from low-performing schools. The overlying theme is that students who are attending these schools are not performing well, because of the amount of content and education being offered to them that has been caused due to external forces such as weather. This is one of the main problems that the government is asked to solve, but how can they fix it? How can policymakers be accountable for time being lost every year? Marcotte and Hansen (2010), did a study where they researched how having fewer school days in a year impacts student achievement in terms of test scores. They say that “whether or not policymakers change the length of the school year for the average American student, differences in instructional time can and do affect school performance as measured by No Child Left Behind. Ignoring this fact results in less-informative accountability systems and lost opportunities for improving learning outcomes'' (Marcotte & Hansen, 2010). They back this up with the study they did in the snowiest places in the United States. They conducted their research In Denver Colorado and Maryland Virginia. One of the studies they did is they observed the number of cancellations of school days due to snow, and throughout each year they observed trends and changes in test scores and also student performance. According to the research and the results, “Marcotte reports that in winters with average levels of snowfall (about 17 inches) the share of students testing proficient is about 1 to 2 percentage points lower than winters with little to no snow” (Marcotte & Hansen, 2010). The researchers say that “Districts can gain accountability systems by rearranging school calendars so that students have more time in school before the exam” (Marcotte & Hansen, 2010). They say that changing school calendars or adding time before school exams can solve this issue of students performing badly in test scores. The state of Massachusetts created the extended learning time Initiative (ELT) which has helped and benefited high-poverty schools across the state. The article goes on to say that this initiative supports schools by lengthening the school calendar which also results in longer school days daily. This initiative has also been used by schools in Rochester, New York, where the focus is not on having longer time, but on using that time productively according to student needs. “If done consensually with the teachers, and if you acknowledge that it works for some not all students, and you use the time meaningfully, then yes, we should acknowledge that longer school days work” Urbanski (as cited in Walker, 2016). The article concludes by saying that there will be challenges that arise due to the ELT initiative, but it's important to overcome those challenges and to look at the possibilities of what it could be and how it could be beneficial to students even if we need to adjust or changes.
Time is an important factor that must be considered in terms of the amount of learning a student gets, but also all the different benefits a student can have, like having more tutoring sessions, having one on one instruction time and support from a teacher, and also extracurricular activities that can develop and improve learning for students within a school. To understand how extended time has impacted students, we will look at a research study done by the (Massachusetts 2020 research team). In Massachusetts, there are so many poor school districts that have extended school time to improve student learning. There are many low-income families and students who did not have adequate education, especially in those poor school districts. Massachusetts is one of the states in America that has extended school days and students spend 8 hours in school each day while in other states students spend 6 and a half hours in school. “Massachusetts 2020 identified eight urban schools that identify our definition of an extended time school, that serve large populations of poor students” (Farbman & Kaplan, 2005). In this research, the (Massachusetts 2020 research team), went to several school districts that have extended school days in their schedule and they observed the students, the teachers, the staff, annual reports, and test scores to see how additional time impacts student learning. With all the observations and data, the research team collected, they concluded that extended school time does impact students' learning. The extra time not only benefits students but also benefits teachers because when teachers get more teaching time, then they get paid more. Students in these school districts did better on tests because they had 2 more hours of instruction time and also all the extracurricular activities supported and enriched their learning.
There is also research done on limited school time and how that impacts students' learning. This was a study that was done in Oregon, where schools were forced to cut learning time due to budget issues. It starts by talking about schools in Oregon that have faced budget issues and due to that they opted to cut instruction time rather than raising taxes and laying off teachers. This study looks at student test scores over 15 years to see what would happen when schools switch to a 4-day week. It also talks about how a 4-day week schedule does no good for students and puts added pressure on their families to take care of them on the days they don’t go to school. “Overall, average math scores decrease by 5.9 percent deviation in math as a result of the switch to the four-day school week, while reading scores decrease by 4.2 percent of a standard deviation that is nearly one-third the size of the impact of having a larger class size, and equal to losing 40 minutes of reading instruction and about an hour of math instruction each week”. (Thompson, 2021). It also talks about how a shorter school week affects students more negatively in the higher grades because they don’t get help from their parents due to their unfamiliarity with the content that their kids learn, especially in math. It concludes by saying that overall, a 4-day schedule that has less instruction time has a negative impact on students' learning and this is reflected in the test scores which shows that student achievement drops as a result of this change to a 4-day schedule.
Impacts of Extended School Time in Other Countries
When I look at the developing countries, I see an upward trend in the quality of education students receive and their academic success, but when I see countries like America, I see the other side of the argument where students don’t reach a certain level of success and I base it on the amount of time they spend in school, especially low-achieving students. There was a research study done by (Diana Hincapie) who studies the impacts of longer school days on student achievement in Columbia. She mainly focused on the amount of instruction time students get and how that impacts their test scores. She gathered data from test scores from many different years and it was only among 5th and 9th graders. According to her findings, “The results suggest that lengthening the school day may be an effective policy for increasing student achievement, particularly for the lowest-income students in Columbia and developing countries” (Hincapie, 2016). Colombia is a developing country, where low-income students get good quality education because of the extended time, and they have more time to learn and to study for exams which helps them score better. There was also another research done in Chile, where schools have extended instruction time. The people in Chile value their reading and comprehension skills and it is important for kids to develop those skills quickly. In this research, the authors (Kruger and Vienne) study the schools in Chile and how extended school time helps elementary kids develop reading and comprehension skills faster. “Longer school schedules lead to an increase of 0.14 standard deviations in reading comprehension. Effects are heterogeneous with greater benefits among children attending public (municipal) and urban schools, and among girls, we also find that the benefits of longer school days accumulate overtime” (Kruger and Vienne, 2016). Even though this study was based in a different country, I believe that kids in America could also be benefited from this system, because it can help elementary kids develop reading and writing skills faster if they attended school for a longer time. The amount of instruction time in schools in different countries like Indonesia, Japan, India, and European countries all have different school schedules. A study done by (Patall, Cooper, and Allen), focused on many researchers who studied the impacts of extending school time in America and they compared the impacts to other countries to see how they differed. “These studies showed that U.S students scored lower on various tests in math and/or science and that U.S schools required fewer instructional hours than several other countries, including Japan, Finland, Korea, and the Netherlands” (Patall, Copper & Allen, 2010, p.407). When they compared the results of the test scores in the United States to international test scores, they found out that other countries did outscore America in terms of test scores based on the amount of learning they get every year. It’s really interesting to see how other countries outside of the United States, have had better academic performance, which again begs the question of if extended school time can have an impact on schools in America.
The Impact of Early and Later Start Times on Student Achievement
In America, schools across the nation have different start times which in turn has different effects on student learning and achievement. In research done in 2012 in wake county public school, the researcher examines how earlier start times affect student performance in standardized tests. “I find that delaying school start times by one hour, from roughly 7:30 to 8:30, increases standardized test scores by at least 2 percentile points in math and 1 percentile point in reading. The effect is largest for students with below-average Test scores, suggesting that the later start times would narrow gaps in student achievement” (Edwards, 2012). He also argues that middle school and high school students benefit from a later start to a school than elementary school students. “The results indicate that the effect of a later start time in both math and reading is more than twice as large for students in the bottom third of the test-score distribution than for students in the top third” (Edwards, 2012). Interestingly, another was done on how earlier start times affect student performance, but this research focused on the psychology and the geographical relations towards academic performance. It also talks about time zones and how in the eastern part of the country, there is less sunlight before they start school than those who live in the central and western parts of the country. This article argues for policymakers to change start times so that schools don’t start too early when it's still dark outside. It also talks about how the student's academic performance increases in math and reading when they are at later start times and this seems prominent in the adolescent age group. One of the main implications of this research is that “more sunlight before school — or a later relative start time — increases academic achievement for children of all ages” (Heissel & Norris, 2012). The researchers argue that students in the eastern side of the country are often sleep deprived and that policymakers need to change the start time because later start time has shown that it could improve student performance and achievement in tests.
Opposing Views to Extending Time
(Aronson, Zimmerman & Carlos, 1999) do research on the relationship between time and learning. Many people can define time and learning in many ways. Many would say that time plays an essential part in learning and also student achievement, but in this research, they say that time doesn’t guarantee success in academic achievement, and also their “research indicates that there is no consistent relationship between the amount of time allocated for instruction and the amount of time students spend engaged in learning activities” (Aronson, Zimmerman & Carlos, 1999). This quote says that time has little impact on student performance, because of the way we use time. The quality of the education also matters and to whether students are willing to use the extra time to learn and to create success in their life. Student viewpoints are important, if they see extended time as a good thing, then they will have success, but if they see it as a bad thing then it will be useless for them and their learning.
Reflection
Regarding the next steps, I would like to talk a little bit about how I would apply this research in my classroom assuming that the school that I worked at was open to extending learning time. This will be more study done by me to see if extended time does benefit students in my classroom. I will be doing action research because it will give me the chance to experiment, and collect data to see if extended time does benefit students, and ultimately this study will be guided by research and data. I will design a research study where I would email the parents on whether they would like to have extended instruction time for their kids. I assume that some parents might say yes, and some might say no. If the parents say yes, then I would teach the kids an extra hour. During this process, I will be observing and collecting data on their academic improvement. I will also compare the test scores of the kids who study an extra hour with those who don’t, to see if there is any difference. This will be a year-long research study, and once the action research is complete, I would observe and analyze the results to see what I could do to further develop my research. As a result of this action research, I hope to observe the changes that occur within the classroom and to see the positive effects of extended school time. I want to observe the positive changes using data collected from the test scores and the amount of course material my students have learned. Overall, I hope to be a positive contributor and an influence on student learning and achievement and especially for low-achieving students.
Through this research, I learned a lot about my topic in terms of how time can be used as a valuable asset to make learning more meaningful for students and also how it can benefit students when they do standardized testing. My thoughts going into this research process had to do with my experience studying in India. I remember spending 8 to 9 hours in school when I attended grades 3-5 in India and a lot of my friends did the same thing. I’ve had a lot of success with grades and exam results in India because I've spent a lot of time studying in school. My lived experiences inspired me to ask the question of if Extended school does impact student learning and achievement. Throughout this research, I noticed a lot of support for extended learning time, but some criticisms were brought up on this topic regarding how we use time. I grew up in a different culture where I learned in an extended school day, so it was really interesting to see research that talked about how extended time could impact schools in America. In terms of my writing process, I would say that initially finding sources to use was hard but after I found all the sources, I was able to put everything together comfortably using the help of the annotated bibliography. I would say that doing the annotated bibliography before writing the paper gave me a good understanding of my outline and what I needed to include for each section starting from the introduction to the reflection. Overall, I felt inspired to research because I had the experience of living and studying in two different countries with two different school calendars.
References
Aronson, J., Zimmerman, J., & Carlos, L. (1999). Improving Student Achievement by Extending School: Is It Just a Matter of Time?
Berthelon, M., Kruger, D. I., & Vienne, V. (2016). Longer school schedules and early reading skills: Effects from a full-day school reform in Chile.
Blazer, Christie. “Information Capsule - Eric - Education Resources ...” EXTENDED SCHOOL YEAR, 2010, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED544703.pdf.
EducationNext. (2021, May 11). The Shrinking School Week / Education News. The Shrinking School Week | Education News (educationviews.org)
Farbman, D., & Kaplan, C. (2005). Time for a Change: The Promise of Extended Time Schools for Promoting Student Achievement. Executive Summary. Massachusetts 2020.
Finley Edwards. (2012). Do Schools Begin Too Early? Education Next, 12(3).
Heissel, & Norris, S. (2019). RISE AND SHINE: HOW SCHOOL START TIMES AFFECT ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE. Education Next, 19(3), 54.
Hincapie, D. (2016). Do longer school days improve student achievement? Evidence from Colombia (No. IDB-WP-679). IDB Working paper series.
Marcotte, D. E., & Hansen, B. (2010). Time for school. Education Next, 10(1)
Patall, E. A., Cooper, H., & Allen, A. B. (2010). Extending the school day or school year: A systematic review of research (1985–2009). Review of educational research, 80(3), 401-436.
Walker, T. (2016, November 22). A 9 to 5 School Day: Are Longer Hours Better for Students and Educators? /NEA. A 9 to 5 School Day: Are Longer Hours Better for Students and Educators? | NEA