The purpose of this action research was to study the potential of block time lesson planning (BTLP) as a viable alternative to detailed daily lesson planning in managing teachers' workloads. The study delved into primary responsibilities of a teacher such as resourcing lessons, carrying out assessments and daily lesson planning as workloads. A…

Background: During self-study, students need to monitor and regulate mental effort to replete working memory resources and optimize learning results. Taking breaks during self-study could be an effective effort regulation strategy. However, little is known about how breaktaking relates to self-regulated learning. Aims: We investigated the effects…

This SoTL study aimed to discover how teacher education students engaged with a 30-minute unstructured break during a weekly three-hour lecture. Cognitive fatigue and resulting stress accumulation have negative effects on wellness. Education students can accumulate significant stress when studying and preparing. This, in turn, affects their career…

Purpose: We report the qualitative findings from a survey of elementary teachers regarding reading instruction. The purpose is to extend on quantitative findings in a previously described survey to gain a more in-depth understanding of Australian elementary teachers' approaches to the literacy block in their schools: how this is used, who makes…

Purpose/Objective: Historically, school administrators schedule recess immediately after lunch. Recent research, however, suggests a plethora of benefits if recess is scheduled before lunch, including decreased plate waste, increased consumption of nutrients, and decreased discipline problems on the playground and in the lunchroom. The purpose of…

Laboratory evidence of a positive effect of sleep on declarative memory consolidation suggests that naps can be used to boost school learning in a scalable, low-cost manner. The few direct investigations of this hypothesis have so far upheld it, but departed from the naturalistic setting by testing non-curricular contents presented by…

Utilizing data from the National Center for Education Statistics Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), a multilevel model (Hierarchical Linear Model) was developed to examine the association of teacher/classroom and state level indicators on reported elementary social studies instructional time. Findings indicated that state testing policy was a…

The construct of time influences student learning in and out of school and consequently pervades educational discourse. Yet the integration of information and communication technologies into contemporary society is changing how people perceive and experience time. Traditional theoretical and methodological approaches to time research no longer…

The separate and combined effects of visual schedules and extinction plus differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) were evaluated to decrease transition-related problem behavior of 2 children diagnosed with autism. Visual schedules alone were ineffective in reducing problem behavior when transitioning from preferred to nonpreferred…

In today's teaching and learning approaches for first-semester students, practical courses more and more often complement traditional theoretical lectures. This practical element allows an early insight into the real world of engineering, augments student motivation, and enables students to acquire soft skills early. This paper describes a new…

This study questions the belief that little or no social studies is being taught in regular elementary education classrooms. That belief is based on time studies and a body of research that looks at curriculum and teacher interviews and concludes that the social studies time block has been decreased in elementary classrooms, therefore little or no…

Several studies have found that an inordinate amount of potential instructional time is lost in the American secondary school classroom. This paper briefly overviews the history and types of block scheduling in secondary schools and presents findings of a study that examined the perceptions of administrators and teachers in two large eastern…

This study investigates how public school teacher of grades K-6 utilize their scheduled times free of students, excluding lunch and recess. A questionnaire that included items about a) respondents' position, b) time schedules, and c) usual duties performed during times free of students was sent to 36 participating schools. Sixty-three percent of…

This article: (1) describes the characteristics and duration of transitions between units of classroom activities; and (2) investigates how transitions are achieved by three effective junior high school teachers. (CB)

Teachers will improve student learning if they attend to allocated time, engaged time, and student success rate. (Author)