This chapter has introduced the concept of academic learning time (ALT) and has explained why this factor strongly influences learning. ALT is not merely the amount of time listed for an activity on a schedule or the amount of time the teacher allocates to an activity. It is the amount of time a student spends attending to relevant academic tasks while performing those tasks at a high rate of success.
It is important not to oversimplify the concept of ALT. Spending additional time on teaching a topic will not necessarily mean that students will learn more. But if the quality of instruction, the incentives, and the appropriateness of instruction are of high quality - in other words, if instruction is conducted in such a way as to enable the learner to work at a high level of success - then spending more time on learning will enable the students to learn more. In many cases it is more productive to improve the quality of instructional time that we already have than to schedule more time for a particular activity.
This chapter has supplied examples of ALT in various subject areas and has shown that when teaching strategies succeed it is often because ALT has been used effectively and when they fail it is very often because learning time has been used ineffectively. Many of the other chapters in this book will focus on enhancing ALT by prompting students to spend more engaged time on learning tasks and to perform those tasks at a higher rate of success.
This chapter has also discussed direct instruction, active teaching, and generative learning. These are all ways to help students turn their scheduled or allocated time into effective academic learning time. The proper teaching strategy is to (1) think what your goal is, and then (2) use a method that will most effectively reach that goal. If your goal is to assure the acquisition of basic facts, then direct instruction may be in order. If your goal is to help students become independent thinkers, a different strategy would be in order. In both cases your goal as a teacher would be to get the students actively involved in their learning, but your choice of methods might be dramatically different in each case.
This chapter has also introduced Bloom's two-sigma problem, which suggests that educational innovations should try to make group instruction approach the ideal instruction offered by individualized tutorials. The strategies that "solve" Bloom's problem are effective largely because they enhance the ALT of learners.
The remainder of this book is devoted to specific strategies for improving the performance of learners. Many of the topics covered in this book are among those listed in Table 2.7, and most of them work by enhancing academic learning time. Note, however, that the fact that ALT is very strongly related to successful learning does not mean that it is the only factor that teachers and students should be concerned about. Other factors - such as motivational factors, developmental components, and the way subject matter is structured - have an impact on learning. However, in most cases these other factors are more difficult to understand and control than ALT. In addition, these other factors interact with ALT (for example, motivation may influence a student's ability to stay engaged or succeed at a task); and their importance may vary in different subject matters (for example, developmental readiness may play a more important role in acquiring initial reading skills than in learning facts about American history). These other factors will be discussed in detail in this text.
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