There's a correlation between contact time and student outcomes. Is it what you think?

Time: Teaching’s Paradox

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

―?Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Last week I was cleaning out the car and came across a note one of my students had written on his last day of school. Jacob* was a quiet and unassuming student who did not consider himself to be particularly talented at English. He was taking English because his parents wanted him to, and had thus far been an able, but not outstanding, student of the subject. By the end of the year, he had won an English prize. The catalyst? Discovering his talents, and the task and assessment format that suited his learning style. He had hitherto undiscovered skills with video editing and came out of his shell when offered the chance to be assessed in a different way.?

Reading the note reminded me of why I loved teaching, and of the two cornerstones of my career: build strong relationships, and differentiate for the student in front of you with engaging content – the rest will follow. It was lockdown in 2020, those heady days where we were all figuring out how to pivot to online learning and what innovative ideas were the best way to engage students. I was very lucky, I had a Head of Faculty who gave me free rein to create my own course content and supported me to approach hybrid learning in the way that I thought would suit my students best.?

I looked at Jacob’s skills, at the course calendar, at the learning that we wanted to achieve, and, because it was a Year 13 class and reality was never far away, at the assessments that we needed to cover. From that puzzle, I created a task that could be assessed against multiple Achievement Standards. Students could choose which they opted into, and the consequent depth and breadth of their work as a result. It was a ‘challenge by choice’ situation, recognising that lockdown was different for everyone and that a one-size-fits-all task wasn’t necessarily the best approach. Jacob decided to attempt all of the tasks and set to work with an enthusiasm I had seen rarely, it allowed him to be assessed in the way he felt most confident, and the results were exceptional- he accomplished nearly all of his internal credits with Excellence for the year through that one (large) task.?

Reflecting on that experience started me thinking about the lessons I could take away from that experience as a teacher. I’d been able to create that resource and truly individualise the learning programmes for my students because at the time I was teaching part-time, I was at home, and I was trying to find ways to connect with my students and maintain relationships across the swirling void of the internet. I had time to be creative. I had time to be my best self as a teacher. How could that be replicated without exceptional circumstances? And what would the effect be??

The central question that experience gave rise to is this: As a teacher, what’s the one commodity that would enable you to be more inspiring, create the best possible outcomes for students, and provide individualised and differentiated instruction??

If you’d asked me at any point over my career, my answer would be simple: time.?

Leaving the Classroom

There is a paradox extant in the teaching world that any experienced educator will be familiar with; inspiring teachers with a real passion for education move up the ladder, and that takes them out of the classroom. The better we become as teachers, the less time we have to actually teach. Salary progression, management responsibility, and the seductive idea of being able to implement strategic change all pull these exceptional teachers in different directions, and it is the students who miss them the most. Of course, those teachers miss their students too, after all, that’s why they got into this profession in the first place.?

Teaching workload

If I were to return to teaching, and could choose the working conditions of any country in the world, I think I’d settle on Luxembourg or one of the Scandanavian countries. ‘Oh yes, Scandinavia,’ you say,? ‘they’ve got a great education system.’ Yes, yes they do. We’ve read about it in education journals and publications for years, the qualifications required and status of teaching as a profession over there is second to none. Do you know what else is interesting? They teach some of the lowest hours in the OECD. There’s a series of interactive graphs that shows all sorts of comparatives, it’s fascinating stuff and if you’re interested you can check it out here.?

In a secondary context, a New Zealand or Australian teacher on a full load will teach approximately 800 hours per year. Timetables vary but it’s generally five classes, four hours per week. Form time, duty, meetings are all on top of that, but for the purposes of this discussion, we’re focussing on contact time, in the classroom, with students. So, 800 hours per year, and a top of the scale experienced teacher will earn $90,000 per year. It’s at the upper end of the scale, with only five countries requiring more hours of their teachers. We are well above the OECD average.?

Let’s transpose Denmark’s conditions to our context. They top out at 700 hours per year and earn $100,000 NZD per year. Finnish teachers earn about the same as us, but their maximum teaching hours are 550 per year. That’s a significant difference, and yet Finland has one of the highest adult literacy rates in the OECD.?

So what about Luxembourg? They do things a little differently over there. The teaching hours per year are slightly less than ours - around the 700-750 per year mark depending on the year level. However, and wait for it because this is the kicker, they get paid a whopping $210,000 per year.??

There’s a correlation between the countries that give their teachers more time, and the student outcomes that they achieve. Money, even to the amount paid to experienced teachers in Luxembourg, doesn’t have the same effect. The teacher workload question is not one solely predicated on burnout, or on how many teachers leave the profession after five years, it’s fundamentally a question that is directly related to how we can increase efficacy for our students.?

Has anyone done any research??

Over the years, there have been a number of studies around what it is that invigorates teachers, keeps them feeling inspired and valued, and consequently achieves good outcomes for students. One of the most interesting studies is described in the book Where Teachers Thrive, by Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Susan Moore Johnson. In the book, she delves into 14 schools’ practices over a period of seven years (2008-2014) and how they manage their teachers’ time. This is where things get interesting.?

Our workloads and minimum teaching contact hours are set by collective agreements and are unlikely to change. Even if a teacher is hired by an independent school, or negotiates an Independent Employment Agreement, it will adhere to the same conditions as the collective. Changing the hours worked is simply out of the everyday teacher’s sphere of influence, and anyone who has ever taught part-time knows that there is a significant trade-off in terms of remuneration and release time.?

So what can we do?

Johnson’s book revealed something interesting. The more responsibility teachers themselves had for deciding their workflow processes, their meeting schedules, and how they used their time, the happier they were.?

“The schools where teachers thrive are actually schools that are very well managed by principals who protect teachers from interruptions and unrealistic demands,” Johnson says. “Teachers play a role in working together to devise strategies for better using the time that’s available.”

The focus from school leadership becomes a question of how to remove barriers to teaching, to reduce meeting requirements and to trust teachers as the professionals they are. Rather than expecting teachers to be on site all day, every day, allow them to manage their own time, their own free periods, and to trust that they will do a better job as a result.?

Agency goes hand in hand with responsibility. Allow teachers to suggest ways that their time could be streamlined and focussed purely on the classroom. Look at every task that a teacher does on a weekly basis and reduce the administrative tasks that have nothing to do with teaching wherever possible. Could duty be managed in a different way? Could classes and basic resources be provided across year levels so that teachers can spend their time enhancing resources collaboratively rather than working individually??

Many of these things occur naturally in well-managed schools. The more freedom teachers are given the more engaged they become. Conversely, endless meetings that contain content that could be delivered by email or flipped learning, and rules for rules’ sake tend to sow the seeds of discontent and result in teachers who feel under-appreciated and unable to thrive.?

What happens when you get time?

I have a confession to make. Throughout my career, I know I was a better teacher when I had other responsibilities and was released from teaching a full class load. Becoming a Dean allowed me to know students in a different way and with a vertical structured house system, I would know some of the students in all of my classes, and the relationships I was able to develop were deeper as a result. Beyond that though, I was a better teacher because I had more time. I had release time during the day and my teaching was the time where I was able to be the most creative, I wasn’t solving problems, dealing with disciplinary matters, or managing staff. Teaching became precious because it was rarer and I had the mental capacity to be innovative. I also had more time. Much of the work of pastoral care can be done in an evening; emails, phone calls to parents, visits to check in on students, planning house events, and the plethora of other administrative tasks are of a sort that can be managed according to priorities and life. That freedom to decide, the flexibility of a schedule that can adapt to the changing needs of students, the different pressures at different parts of a term, and the ability to have agency over my workload made all the difference. If classroom teachers on a full load had a similar agency over their time, they may feel empowered and have the bandwidth to allow their inner creative full reign – with untold benefits for their students.?

How can technology help?

Technology has had a huge boost in recent years as we have all transitioned to evolved models of hybrid learning and understanding what can be flipped, and what needs to remain personalised. How we use technology to aid teachers is the key determinant in its success. It cannot, and must not, become another layer of complexity that detracts from the business of learning. Rather, it needs to be a flint to the steel of teachers’ creativity, sparking new ideas and helping them to burst into flame.?

What do you think?

Is teacher workload an issue? And if so, is it the weight of a full load, or is it all of the extras? How can we create time and prevent our teachers from becoming burned out and enervated? After all, you are at the coal face, and your ideas are the ones that will make a real difference. Let’s start the discussion.?