Thread by @EmathsUK

Following my recent chat about mastery learning and the ways that TIME is used in schools with @mrbartonmaths on his eponymous podcast, lots of people have being asking me to elaborate on what is known about how time is allocated in the classroom. So, here is a thread on time...

All human beings can learning well. But all human beings learn from different models, metaphors, examples and instruction. And, crucially, all human beings learn at different RATES.

In a mastery approach, TIME is the key variable.

Time is used in many different ways in schools. A summary of Cotton's Educational Time Factors follows...

Definitions are taken from the work of Anderson (1983), Bloom (1976), and Fisher, et al. (1980).

ALLOCATED TIME is the amount of time specified for an activity or event. When educators and educational researchers speak of allocated time, they are referring to one of the following three elements:

ALLOCATED TIME 1: SCHOOL TIME - the amount of time spent in school. When used this way, allocated time may refer to the number of school days in a year or the number of hours in a school day.

ALLOCATED TIME 2: CLASSROOM TIME - the amount of time spent in the classrooms within the school (i.e., excluding lunch, recess, time spent changing classes, etc.).

ALLOCATED TIME 3: INSTRUCTIONAL TIME - the portion of classroom time spent teaching pupils particular knowledge, concepts, and skills pertaining to school subjects (i.e., excludes routine procedural matters, transitions, and discipline).

ENGAGED TIME, or TIME-ON-TASK, refers to portions of time during which pupils are paying attention to a learning task and attempting to learn. This excludes time spent socializing, daydreaming, engaging in antisocial behavior, etc.

ACADEMIC LEARNING TIME (ALT) refers to that portion of engaged time that pupils spend working on tasks at an appropriate level of difficulty for them and experiencing high levels of success (excludes time spent engaged in tasks which are too easy or too difficult).

DEAD TIME - refers to periods of classroom time during which there is nothing pupils are expected to be doing; that is, time which the teacher has failed to manage in any way.

Allocated time, "tells you something about values," that is, the values of a district, school, or teacher are implicit in the relative amounts of time allocated to different activities.

Instructional time "tells you something about classroom organisation and management." In other words, the time actually available for and spent in teaching is indicative of the teacher's ability to organise instructional activities and expedite non-instructional ones.

Dead time measures also permit inferences about the teacher's organisation / management skills.

Time-on-task, "tells you something about teaching," that is, it reveals the teacher's skill in selecting learning activities which engage pupils' attention and in keeping them focused.

ALT "tells you something about learning," in that it refers to situations in which pupil and learning material are well-matched and learning is occurring in a fairly ideal fashion.

Large differences in instructional time allocations across schools and classrooms - pupils in one school or classroom may experience three or more times as much mathematics instruction as those in another setting.

Honzay (1986-87) and Karweit (1984, 1985) found that only about half the typical school day is actually used for instruction