Published
Time-on-Task in primary classrooms, during different teaching-learning approaches
Brief
The entire education system is moving from the teacher-centered teaching-learning approaches towards student-centered teaching-learning approaches, with anticipation that it would increase the learning outcomes. This empirical study was carried out to compare the traditional and non-traditional classrooms. It also tried to understand the effectiveness of the Alternate Instructions in the Mathematics and Primary Language (Marathi) classrooms. This study collected about 8000 snapshots from the classrooms of Government schools. Based on the empirical evidences, study can claim that Non-Traditional classrooms show more Time-on-Task (ToT) as compared to the Traditional classrooms. Study could show interesting trends of ToT throughout a session of 35mins. It also compared those trends for Mathematics and Marathi.
Analysis
On-Task trends
Overall trends suggested a decline in the ToT over a period of time. Average ToT dropped for Traditional classrooms; on the contrary it was almost constant in the Non-Traditional classrooms.
On-Task trends during Non-Instructional Time
Teachers do variety of work in the non-Instructional time during the classrooms. Teachers tended to utilize the initial time span for gathering the class, attendance, collecting the ABL cards, taking out the books, etc. Whenever the teachers gave instructions, not directly related to the learning, the students tended to lose their interest and started zoning out.
