What is Extended Learning?

 This article explains the concept of extended learning and enumerates its various aspects.

Extended learning is also referred to as extended learning time. What is this? This term refers to any educational program or strategy which is intended to increase the amount of time students are learning. This is done especially for the purposes of improving academic achievement and test scores, or reducing learning loss, learning gaps, and achievement gaps.

Contribution to Students

Extended learning is an important part of school life. It contributes to student progress and the attainment of students’ learning goals. It also plays a key role in extending the knowledge, understanding and skills that are developed in school. Extended learning also provides opportunities for students to consolidate, enrich and extend their learning. 

Aims of Extended Learning

Extended learning, first and foremost, aims to help all students make progress. It allows practice and consolidation of the learning done in a traditional classroom. It is also used to extend learning from the classroom lesson, for example the completion of past examination questions. 

Extended learning is useful to embed key subject content in the long term memory of students. For example, the learning of vocabulary, spellings etc. It can be used to reinforce and develop the mastery of key skills like calculation. 

In terms of future education too, extended learning can be beneficial. It encourages students to engage in wider and deeper reading and research. This prepares them for further education.

Extended learning also aims to allow students to gain and practise the skills and knowledge that they will be required to reproduce in assessment situations such as examinations. It gives students time that can be used exclusively to reflect upon learning, correcttheir mistakes and act on feedback to make improvements in their performance. 

This form of learning aims to develop study skills of students. These include independence, self-discipline, time management and working to meet deadlines.

Last but not the least, extended learning instils a sense of pride in students. As they get more time to really absorb the subject matter, they understand it better and are proud of their understanding.

The Philosophy Behind Extended Learning

The general philosophy towards the extended learning programs (ELP) of most educational institutions is that students’ needs be met as much as possible through the regular classroom, with the ELP staff serving as resources or facilitators in the learning process. 

Students are generally served at three levels: to be observed by classroom teachers (General Enrichment), to be served in the classroom for those with specific academic strengths (Strength Area), and to be pulled into the ELP resource room as well as have program modifications for those in the highest level of service (Extended Studies). 

Covid-19 and Extended Learning: The Example of USA

The Learning Policy Institute has an illuminating article on the impact of Covid-19 on Extended Learning Time (ELT). It says that since American schools closed in March 2020 due to lockdowns, students have had uneven access to distance learning. Moreover, there was a great disparity between affluent and lower-wealth communities, as well as between urban and rural districts. Consistent internet access has also been a massive factor. 

These opportunity gaps translate to substantial differences in academic achievement. For example, the U.S. public education system’s 6-hour day and 180-day year cannot, on its own, offset the gap in out-of-school learning opportunities between students from more and less affluent families.

With 55 million students out of school in just the United States alone, and receiving highly disparate education due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of lost learning time will be widely felt. A McKinsey report suggests that these negative effects could last a lifetime and disproportionately impact students from low-income families. Expanded learning time (ELT) is a means by which to recover lost learning opportunities, whether in person or online.

As a number of back-to-school frameworks have argued, a critical approach to restarting and reinventing schooling will be to provide expanded learning time and opportunities for all students, with special attention paid to students with special education needs and those who are English learners. ELT takes place before and after the typical school day and over summer vacation and other scheduled breaks and is one of the four pillars of a comprehensive community school strategy.

Conclusion

As times are changing in unpredictable ways, the landscape of education also needs to alter itself for the sake of staying relevant and effective. Extended learning can be one of the major ways in which this can be ensured.

References:

https://huntingtonschool.co.uk/parents-carers/helping-with-extended-learning/

https://www.johnston.k12.ia.us/schools/elp/handbook/2.0.pdf

https://restart-reinvent.learningpolicyinstitute.org/provide-expanded-learning-time