Chapter 2 Using Time Effectively: The Secret to Successful Learning

This chapter introduces the topic of academic learning time - using time effectively to attain educational goals. In addition, it introduces the notion of keeping students actively involved in learning and trying to make group instruction as effective as private tutoring.

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Define academic learning time and its components.

   
   

2. Define and give examples of the specific factors contributing to the effective use of academic learning time.
   
   
3. Describe and identify examples of direct instruction, active teaching, and generative teaching.
   
   
4. Give examples of the application of the concept of academic learning time to specific subject areas.
   
   
5. Describe possible errors that can occur through the misapplication of the concept of academic learning time and ways to avoid these errors.
   
   
6. Describe Bloom's two-sigma problem and its relation to academic learning time.
   
   
7. Describe the relationship of academic learning time to the major strategies of learning discussed throughout this book.

 

Putting This Chapter in Perspective: Chapter 1 tried to show the practical value of educational psychology and gave an overview of the book. This chapter focuses on academic learning time. It is reasonable to interpret all learning and instruction as making effective use of instructional time. Subsequent chapters will describe specific strategies for enhancing academic learning time.

 

Academic Learning Time

How can we help students learn better? This important question has a simple but accurate answer. If learners spend more time at learning and use that time well, then they will learn more effectively. It's as simple as that.

Academic learning time (ALT) is the amount of time a student spends attending to relevant academic tasks while performing those tasks with a high rate of success (Caldwell, Huitt, and Graeber, 1982; Berliner, 1984).

• Relevant academic tasks are activities that are likely to lead to appropriate educational outcomes.
  
  
• A high rate of success means that the student is achieving the desired outcome a very large amount of the time.

On straightforward tasks like completing worksheets, the high level of success is easy to operationally define ("getting 90% correct"); but with other tasks like reading a textbook the level of success is more difficult to define ("understanding the information with a very high degree of accuracy"). Whatever the subject area, academic learning time is likely to be more strongly related to academic success than any other variable over which the teacher can exercise control.

If learners spend more time at learning and use that time well, then they will learn more effectively.

 

Even without supporting research, it seems fairly obvious that the more time we spend on a task, the more we learn. Research has verified that this relationship exists for academic activities. But simply assigning more study time to a topic will not automatically increase the student's learning. The relationship is a bit more complex than that. For example, not all the time officially scheduled for a classroom activity is likely to actually be allocated to it. If an hour is assigned to working on a set of problems but the teacher devotes five minutes at the beginning of the session to returning papers and five minutes at the end to collecting milk money, then only fifty minutes have been allocated to working the problems. As Figure 2.1 shows, scheduled time merely sets an upper limit on allocated time.

Figure 2.1. Scheduled Time and Allocated Time.

 

Moreover, not all students will spend all the time allocated to a task actively engaged in appropriate activities. While a teacher is lecturing, for example, a student may daydream. While doing seatwork, a student may stop to examine an insect crawling across the floor. While one student is giving a detailed answer to a question, other students who are bored (because they already know the answer) or confused (because they cannot grasp the question or understand the answer) may be engaged in other activities. It is the time the learner is engaged in appropriate activities that is closely related to improved academic performance. As Figure 2.2 shows, scheduled time and allocated time merely set the upper limit for engaged time.

Figure 2.2. Engaged Time as a Subset of Allocated Time.

The value of engaged time is emphasized by the large number of studies that have had as their goal to increase the active engagement of the learner (e.g., CITE A FEW). However, especially with young students, it is not always accurate to believe that the fact that they are seriously engaged in an activity means that they are using that time as productively as possible (Swing, Stoiber, & Peterson, 1988). It is important to monitor their activity and to stimulate them to use skills discussed in later chapters in order to be as successful as possible. For engaged time to be really useful, the student must be participating in useful activities at a high rate of success. Neither succeeding at worthless activities nor failing at worthwhile tasks will lead to improved performance. Improvement requires success at worthwhile activities. Research has shown, for example, that students who are tested after completing worksheets with 90 percent accuracy learn a great deal more than students who spend the same amount of time on the same worksheets with 50 percent accuracy. Academic learning time, then, is defined as the amount of time the learner spends actively engaged in worthwhile tasks at a high level of success.

In Figure 2.3, the shaded area represents high-quality academic learning time. As this figure shows, scheduled time, allocated time, and engaged time all merely set the upper limit for academic learning time. If the outer circle in Figure 2.3 represents an hour of scheduled time, the shaded area represents about ten or fifteen minutes of academic learning time.

Figure 2.3. Academic Learning Time as a subset of Engaged Time.

The relationships among scheduled time, allocated time, engaged time, and academic learning time are summarized in Table 2.1.

One way to increase academic learning time is to increase scheduled time - for example, by extending the length of the school year or of the school day. Another is to get rid of frills - see to it that more time is devoted to essential topics rather than to less important information. Both approaches are designed to increase the size of the outer circle (scheduled time) in Figure 2.3. Another approach is to increase allocated time by making the classroom operate more efficiently. Perhaps the teacher could return papers within one minute instead of five minutes; maybe an aide could collect the milk money while the teacher explains the homework assignment. These steps would bring the second circle (allocated time) more in line with the outer circle.

Yet another approach is to increase engaged time by ensuring that students stay on task. The teacher could use effective behavior modification to reward on-task behavior and punish deviant behavior or use effective strategies to enable students to understand and want to listen to the content of the lesson. Or the teacher could be careful not to bore other students while she must devote attention to the unique problems of isolated learners. These approaches would expand engaged time - the inner circle in Figure 2.2. Figure 2.4 shows an example of a teacher who has left the other factors alone and focused entirely on engaged time.

Figure 2.4. An example of increasing ELT by keeping the student engaged during all the allocated time.

Another approach is to increase the rate of success by assigning tasks that breed success and by monitoring progress and providing feedback as students complete appropriate assignments. This approach would increase the HSR area in Figure 2.3. An application of this approach is shown in Figure 2.5.

Figure 2.5. An example of increasing ALT by increasing High Success Rate.

As Figures 2.4 and 2.5 indicate, a focus on any of the four factors could lead to an increase in academic learning time and to improved learning. The ideal strategy, of course, would be to apply simultaneously all the approaches described here. Figure 2.6 describes the impact of this combined strategy.

Figure 2.6. An example of increasing ALT maximizing all the factors.

Whatever the area of instruction, students learn efficiently to the extent that they turn their class and study time into useful academic learning time. Neither class time nor study time automatically qualifies as academic learning time, but both may become academic learning time to the extent that the learner actively attends to relevant tasks with a high rate of success. A student who devotes 100 hours to academic learning time in a course will learn more than an equally capable student who devotes only 50 hours. However, a person allocating only 50 hours to study and spending 90 percent of it in active academic learning will learn more than an equally capable student who allocates 100 hours but spends only 30 percent of it in active academic learning.

An emphasis on "time-on-task" could give the false impression that the best way to enhance learning is to mechanistically increase the number of minutes or hours available for instruction or for study. If you have gotten this impression from this text, then either you are a careless reader or I am a bad writer. It is an oversimplification to expect that merely increasing time will enhance learning (Karweit, 1988). Increasing the time available for learning is not likely to be productive unless the learner uses that time productively (Blai, 1986). For this reason, this book emphasizes academic learning time (ALT) - a broader concept that focuses on both the quantity and quality of time devoted to learning. One of the best ways to ascertain whether students are using their time effectively is to converse with them frequently and to have them describe what they are thinking about (Peterson & Swing, 1992).

It is not sensible or useful to turn the concept of ALT into a mathematical equation that can prescribe instructional activities. The purpose of the concept is to get across the idea that the quality of educational time is extremely important. Brophy (1992) has pointed out that teachers who elicit greater achievement gains among their students do not merely maximize "time on task" (allocated or engaged time). They also spend a great deal of time actively instructing their students through interactive lessons that feature teacher-student discourse and relatively little time working without guidance. They stimulate their students to react to the curriculum in a thoughtful and successful manner. For the most successful teachers, instruction occurs during interactive discourse with students rather than during extended lectures, presentations, or demonstrations. It is this combination of quantity and quality that defines effective academic learning time.

Finally, note that the concept of academic learning time is valid even in unstructured settings. For example, imagine a successful classroom in which learners are given complete freedom to choose what they want to study. In this setting, the scheduling would occur informally and the students rather than the teacher would determine how much time they would allocate to any topic. However, students would master any topic only to the extent that they would allocate time to that topic and spend that time successfully engaged in coming to an understanding of it. The major strength of extremely unstructured approaches is that learners are likely to be highly engaged and successful during whatever time they themselves have chosen to allocate to a given topic; the major weakness is that they may fail to allocate enough time to important topics.

This research suggests that teachers can acquire useful, prescriptive information by simply asking students what they are thinking. (Of course, it would be important not to punish students for being honest or accurate in their self-descriptions.) In addition, it would be possible to teach students useful cognitive strategies normally associated with improved academic performance. However, at the present time, research is not yet clear on how to accomplish this latter goal.

Another false impression is that the ALT research demands that teachers be "all business" - that any digression from the direct pursuit of clearly stated objectives will reduce learning. This is not true. Sometimes activities that appear to be digressions can have the long-term effect of increasing ALT for the learner. Even blatant attempts to entertain the students can lead to enhanced ALT (Proctor et al., 1992). For example, if students are scheduled to study a subject for an hour and are likely to spend none of that time in effective ALT (because they hate it or cannot understand it), then it would be efficient to spend half of that hour on apparent digressions that encourage them to use the other thirty minutes for ALT in pursuit of the desired objectives. On the other hand, if the students were already at a high level of ALT, this same digression would not be justified. Likewise, requiring young students to study math instead of going to recess may be counterproductive. Fifteen minutes of diversion might enable the students to use the next hour much more effectively.

Of course, it is also necessary to be concerned about the topics to which students devote ALT. Devoting vast amounts of academic learning time to trivial or inappropriate topics is not likely to be as productive as devoting time to more useful topics. Likewise, within a specific topic, the pacing of instruction is also an important variable. In general, the more the teacher covers, the more the students learn - provided they understand what is being covered. (Obviously, there could be a point of overload and frustration, at which this relationship would no longer hold true.) Pacing is an important consideration in the discussion of ability grouping. (See chapter 9). Shavelson (1983) has found that teachers pace different ability groups differently. The advanced groups may go as much as 15 times as quickly as the slower groups, thus increasing the difference among the groups.

Table 2.2 summarizes the key components of academic learning time and ways in which learners might lose time that could be devoted to learning. That table also describes principles that will be discussed elsewhere in this book that contribute to each aspect of academic learning time. As you can see, a major purpose of the rest of this textbook is to describe principles and strategies that enable learners to spend time attending to relevant academic tasks while performing those tasks with a high degree of success. This book takes the position that nearly all activities that influence learning have their impact because they influence academic learning time.

Table 2.3 summarizes how a few of the principles of educational psychology (which will be discussed in later chapters) influence learning by first influencing ALT.  

The River City School System allocates 1 hour each day for reading. Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Jones teach reading in this system.

Mrs. Smith spends five minutes at the beginning of the class and five minutes at the end on paperwork of various types. She also spends an average of ten minutes out of each hour on discipline problems.

Randall Jefferson is a student in Mrs. Smith's class. He spends about ten minutes per hour daydreaming. The rest of the time he spends attending to Mrs. Smith's instructions and constantly performs activities at about a fifty percent rate of success.

Helen Jurgens is a student in Mrs. Smith's class. She spends no time at all daydreaming. She attends to Mrs. Smith's instructions and constantly performs activities at about a ninety percent rate of success.

Mrs. Jones spends one minute at the beginning of the class and one minute at the end on paperwork of various types. She also spends an average of ten minutes out of each hour on discipline problems.

Mike Zimmerman is a student in Mrs. Jones's class. He spends about ten minutes per hour daydreaming. The rest of the time he spends attending to Mrs. Jones's instructions and constantly performs activities at about a fifty percent rate of success.

Wilma Wong is a student in Mrs. Jones's class. She spends no time at all daydreaming. She attends to Mrs. Jones's instructions and constantly performs activities at about a ninety percent rate of success.

The Gotham City School System allocates 1 hour and twenty minutes each day for reading. Mrs. O'Hara and Mr. Gamez teach reading in this system.

Mrs. O'Hara spends five minutes at the beginning of the class and five minutes at the end on paperwork of various types. She also spends an average of ten minutes out of each period on discipline problems.

 

Joseph Thompson is a student in Mrs. O'Hara's class. He spends about ten minutes per hour daydreaming. The rest of the time he spends attending to Mrs. O'Hara's instructions. When he tries to follow these instructions, he performs activities at about a fifty percent rate of success half the time and at a ninety percent rate of success the other half.

Alice Fonda is a student in Mrs. O'Hara's class. She spends no time at all daydreaming. She attends to Mrs. O'Hara's instructions and constantly performs activities at about a ninety percent rate of success.

Mr. Gamez spends one minute at the beginning of the class and one minute at the end on paperwork of various types. He also spends essentially no time out of each hour on discipline problems.

Stephen Hamilton is a student in Mr. Gamez's class. He spends about ten minutes per hour daydreaming. The rest of the time he spends attending to Mr. Gamez's instructions. When he tries to follow these instructions, he performs activities at about a fifty percent rate of success half the time and at a ninety percent rate of success the other half.

Teresa Maples is a student in Mr. Gamez's class. She spends no time at all daydreaming. She attends to Mr. Gamez's instructions and constantly performs activities at about a ninety percent rate of success.

 

1. Teresa Maples is actively involved in learning reading at a high rate of success for about an hour and eighteen minutes each day. This hour and eighteen minutes is referred to as

 

a. academic learning time

b. allocated time

c. engaged time

d. scheduled time

 

2. Wilma Wong is actively involved in learning reading at a high rate of success for about forty-eight minutes each day. This forty-eight minutes is referred to as

a. academic learning time

b. allocated time

c. engaged time

d. scheduled time

3. Since he spends ten minutes a day daydreaming and since his teacher spends twenty minutes each day on paperwork and discipline problems, Randall Jefferson has only a half hour that he actually spends on reading. This half hour is referred to as

a. academic learning time

b. allocated time

c. engaged time

d. scheduled time

4. Since he spends ten minutes a day daydreaming and since his teacher spends two minutes each day on paperwork and ten minutes on discipline problems, Mike Zimmerman has only thirty-eight minutes that he actually spends on reading each day. This thirty-eight minutes is referred to as

a. academic learning time

b. allocated time

c. engaged time

d. scheduled time

5. How much time does Joseph Thompson spend actively involved in academic learning time each day in his reading class?

a. None

b. 25 minutes

c. 50 minutes

d. An hour

e. An hour and twenty minutes

6. How much time does Wilma Wong spend actively involved in academic learning time each day in her reading class?

a. None

b. 24 minutes

c. 38 minutes

d. 48 minutes

e. An hour

7. Which of the following students spends the most time each day actively involved in academic learning time in reading class?

 

a. Wilma Wong

b. Joseph Thompson

c. Mike Zimmerman

d. Helen Jurgens

e. Alice Fonda

 

8. Which of the following students spends the least time each day actively involved in academic learning time in reading class?

 

a. Wilma Wong

b. Joseph Thompson

c. Mike Zimmerman

d. Helen Jurgens

e. Alice Fonda

 

Answers:

1. a

2. a

3. c

4. c

5. b

6. d

7. e

8. c

Choose where you want to go next:

• Academic Learning Time <-- You are here!
• Applying ALT to Instruction
• Direct Instruction
• Active & Generative Teaching
• Expanding Academic Learning Time
• Homework
• Parental Involvement
• What Specific Strategies Enhance Learning?
• What Teachers Can Do About ALT
• What Students Can Do About ALT
• What Parents Can Do About ALT
• Summary and Overview