Our learning circle met yesterday to discuss what problem of practice we could work on together in terms of launching innovation at our institution.
- We had all identified areas which we could improve in our first assignment in which we put forward features of a powerful learning environment. However, when we looked at problems of practice related to promoting powerful learning environments in our institution, we acknowledged that the underlying causes to the problems are so fundamental that any attempt at innovation would be doomed as we would be simply treating the 'symptoms' rather than addressing the root cause which would require a complete rethink of the curriculum and the approach to teaching.
- However, one common problem that we identified that could be addressed without a complete overhaul of teaching practice is the problem of students not being able to concentrate in class, and even falling asleep in lessons. All of us confirmed that students are not receptive to learning in the first lesson of the day, which according to the METU tradition initiated in 1956, starts at 08:40.
Here is a picture of students in a class after the first lesson, during the 10 minute break from 09:30 to 09:40.
When we talked to these students, their responses suggest that they are suffering from sleep deprivation. In fact, the majority of our English preparatory school students are not only unresponsive in the first lesson of the day starting at 08:40, but that the effects of sleep deprivation continue throughout the day.
- It isn't uncommon to have some students struggle to keep their attention, daydream or even fall asleep in class later on in the day.
- In addition, it is not unusual to observe students who struggle to get to class on time for the first hour, and often come clutching an energy drink and a bag of biscuits for breakfast in a mad dash to make it on time from bed to classroom.
- Over the course of a semester, this pushes their absenteeism up considerably. At our institution, teaching staff are not privy to the statistics, but it is not uncommon for several students in each class to get warnings from the SFL administration when they are close to exceeding their absenteeism limit.
- The attendance policy is quite strict, and students who exceed the 20% absenteeism allowance are dismissed. This, in turn, contributes to a growing drop out rate, with almost 50% leaving after their first year.
Just to illustrate the problem caused by an early start of lessons, below is a copy of the morning attendance register for my BEG A2 class.
- In the morning block of four lessons, the absent students are shown with a circle. It is obvious that the majority of absenteeism occurs in the first hour, and this affects almost half of the class.
- Note that is not always the same students, but that this happens to different students on different days.
The administration has the data for all classes, but as individual teachers we can only see our individual class records. However, when talking to colleagues, it seems that this pattern is similar for the other classes.
- In the afternoon sessions, students who do not attend, do not show up for any of the lessons. In talking with students, they say that they find spending six hours a day in class, five days a week, just too much.
- After some discussion in our learning circle, we concluded that that these students realize that they can't concentrate or be productive in class (which the research suggests is a sign of sleep deprivation) and as a result, they try to rest in their rooms in order to help them get enough energy for the next day.
The conventional reaction by most of our colleagues, and certainly the administration, is that the behavior of students in missing the first lessons of the day and not getting enough sleep to be prepared to learn in class is a result of:
- bad time management in being away from home for the first time,
- poor discipline in getting to bed on time, or
- students just being lazy and spending all hours on social media and online gaming.
When we reflected on this policy, it seems to us that what we are doing is treating the symptoms, rather than trying to understand and alleviate the underlying causes.
- In fact, when we followed up research on lesson start times, it appears that there is a biological reason for sleeping in class and other related undesirable student behavior caused by starting lessons too early. There have been numerous research studies that show that hormonal changes affect the biological ‘clocks’ of adolescents and young adults. Their 'body clocks' tend to shift two hours later than adults. See https://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/school-start-times.pdf which clearly and succinctly sets out the reasons why the start of lessons for adolescents and young adults need to be delayed, and the documented benefits in educational institutions who have implemented such policies including: increased attendance rates, higher student GPA and standardized assessment scores, and better levels of student attention. In addition, there were less disciplinary problems, fewer student-involved car accidents, and less student sleeping during instruction.
- As can be seen from the APA article and other examples in the literature, the benefits of delaying the start of lesson times are clear. Indeed, a number of high schools in the UK and the USA are now delaying the start of lessons to 09:40 or 10:00, and achieving positive results. @muratata confirmed that another English Preparatory School at the North Cyprus campus of Istanbul Technical University delayed their start time, and that the change was beneficial both for students and the teaching programme.
- A few instructors informally canvassed their students, and not surprisingly, all of the students agreed that starting at 09:40 would be beneficial. When pressed on the reasons, it was expected to hear "so I can stay up late and play computer games", but in fact, most students reported that they felt unable to concentrate in the morning, they became depressed because they couldn't learn the content from these lessons and this led them to think that they weren't good language learners.
- This self-doubt and lack of confidence became another factor for some to consider leaving METU as they felt they could not succeed in learning English. In other words, they were quite sincere about the problems they faced by starting lessons too early in the morning.
- We will be working together as a learning circle throughout the rest of the course to find how we can launch this innovation at our institution.
- The long-term hope is that this change will start a chain reaction in other areas which need to develop or improve to create a more powerful learning environment, and in time, a climate for change and innovation will percolate up from the teaching staff.
