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walkitoutI’ve been thinking about flipped classrooms a lot lately. Our district’s choices during the pandemic have emphasized family choice within a context set in part by state mandates that have, at times, changed abruptly. I think that is broadly true, altho the details of the state mandates are obviously pretty variable, and budgetary constraints, as well as existing facility constraints also play a major role.
No matter the district, however, a lot of movement along the trend line of tech adoption has occurred more rapidly than was happening in the Before Times. Bloomberg had someone from McGraw-Hill on yesterday talking about what that company was expecting as children across the country return to in person schooling at all / more hours / more days of the week. He does not expect things to return to the Before Times, and then he started talking about interactive curricular materials, and how he believes they will be a big part of future schooling in that the software can help instructors identify what a student is struggling with and use in person time to focus on those particular areas of difficulty. And that’s why I’ve been thinking about flipped classrooms.
A major point of conflict within families with students and between families with students and educational systems is homework. Flipped classrooms replace exercises / writing assignments / etc. with consumption of curriculum normally presented in a classroom, and then use classroom time to do exercises with the teacher and potentially others available with difficulties. This is particularly useful for students who lack support in the home environment for working through difficulties with exercises, whether due to parents with work schedules that conflict, language barriers, students who have already surpassed the academic abilities of the other available people but still need help, etc. Flipped classrooms, during and shortly after the transition from “regular” instructional strategies also embed some time expectations. For example, it would not be reasonable for a teacher who has a 50 minute instructional period to assign curricular materials that would take more than 50 minutes to view, and which is to be completed in a single night. They’ve left their lane, and in an obvious way. Also, a teacher can rapidly get feedback about how long it takes to complete a certain number of exercises of a certain type — the bell rings at 50 minutes and that’s all the time there is. They can’t tell the kids to finish it at home; it will be done in the next session or not at all.
A lot of conflict within families revolves around, did the kid do the homework, does the parent know the kid is supposed to do the homework, once it is done, is it turned in. All that is fixed with the flip, albeit replaced by the curriculum to be consumed by reading or watching or whatever. However, the _time required_ is no longer in doubt. It _cannot be more_ than the 50 minutes that the teacher could have used to present the material or ask it to be read in a classroom bell schedule.
Finally, the total time volume of work now becomes visible. In a hypothetical 6 class, 50 minutes per class schedule, you can have up to 5 hours of work assigned, either to be done in the class or to be done at home. Teachers _routinely_ and not always intentionally, assign far more than this amount of work to be done at home, and that becomes a point of conflict (within families or between families and the teachers). Adding together the total volume of work in a school day, and if the maximum amount of curricular consumption time is added together, is on the order of 10 hours.
I mean, duh, that’s obviously too much.
So moving to a flipped classroom will set in motion some other changes. First, teachers will actually have a much better sense of what their students are struggling with and how long it takes to complete work. Second, it will rapidly become apparent how many hours are being devoted to school both in and out of school, and a discussion will ensue about whether that is the right number of hours. Previously, this debate was stymied by broad disagreement about the volume of time being spent. With the ability to measure the amount of curricular material assigned for home consumption (number of minutes to view or listen, number of pages to be read, etc.), and with the amount of time spent on exercises tightly constrained by the bell schedule, there will no longer be any doubt about how much time is being assigned. While some parents will always opt for more, and other parents will always opt for less, the location of the midpoint once known will _definitely_ be capped (and likely at less than 10 hours per day) and debate will likely move to attempting to ascertain an appropriate minimum. Whether or not project work can be assigned to be worked on outside of class session time will become an acute and ongoing debate; equity considerations will almost certainly win the day in public schools, and a large component of scandals will result from people who are pushing for outside work on projects turning out to be doing the projects for their kids.
I’m sure this is all wrong, however, it also was very fun to think about.
No matter the district, however, a lot of movement along the trend line of tech adoption has occurred more rapidly than was happening in the Before Times. Bloomberg had someone from McGraw-Hill on yesterday talking about what that company was expecting as children across the country return to in person schooling at all / more hours / more days of the week. He does not expect things to return to the Before Times, and then he started talking about interactive curricular materials, and how he believes they will be a big part of future schooling in that the software can help instructors identify what a student is struggling with and use in person time to focus on those particular areas of difficulty. And that’s why I’ve been thinking about flipped classrooms.
A major point of conflict within families with students and between families with students and educational systems is homework. Flipped classrooms replace exercises / writing assignments / etc. with consumption of curriculum normally presented in a classroom, and then use classroom time to do exercises with the teacher and potentially others available with difficulties. This is particularly useful for students who lack support in the home environment for working through difficulties with exercises, whether due to parents with work schedules that conflict, language barriers, students who have already surpassed the academic abilities of the other available people but still need help, etc. Flipped classrooms, during and shortly after the transition from “regular” instructional strategies also embed some time expectations. For example, it would not be reasonable for a teacher who has a 50 minute instructional period to assign curricular materials that would take more than 50 minutes to view, and which is to be completed in a single night. They’ve left their lane, and in an obvious way. Also, a teacher can rapidly get feedback about how long it takes to complete a certain number of exercises of a certain type — the bell rings at 50 minutes and that’s all the time there is. They can’t tell the kids to finish it at home; it will be done in the next session or not at all.
A lot of conflict within families revolves around, did the kid do the homework, does the parent know the kid is supposed to do the homework, once it is done, is it turned in. All that is fixed with the flip, albeit replaced by the curriculum to be consumed by reading or watching or whatever. However, the _time required_ is no longer in doubt. It _cannot be more_ than the 50 minutes that the teacher could have used to present the material or ask it to be read in a classroom bell schedule.
Finally, the total time volume of work now becomes visible. In a hypothetical 6 class, 50 minutes per class schedule, you can have up to 5 hours of work assigned, either to be done in the class or to be done at home. Teachers _routinely_ and not always intentionally, assign far more than this amount of work to be done at home, and that becomes a point of conflict (within families or between families and the teachers). Adding together the total volume of work in a school day, and if the maximum amount of curricular consumption time is added together, is on the order of 10 hours.
I mean, duh, that’s obviously too much.
So moving to a flipped classroom will set in motion some other changes. First, teachers will actually have a much better sense of what their students are struggling with and how long it takes to complete work. Second, it will rapidly become apparent how many hours are being devoted to school both in and out of school, and a discussion will ensue about whether that is the right number of hours. Previously, this debate was stymied by broad disagreement about the volume of time being spent. With the ability to measure the amount of curricular material assigned for home consumption (number of minutes to view or listen, number of pages to be read, etc.), and with the amount of time spent on exercises tightly constrained by the bell schedule, there will no longer be any doubt about how much time is being assigned. While some parents will always opt for more, and other parents will always opt for less, the location of the midpoint once known will _definitely_ be capped (and likely at less than 10 hours per day) and debate will likely move to attempting to ascertain an appropriate minimum. Whether or not project work can be assigned to be worked on outside of class session time will become an acute and ongoing debate; equity considerations will almost certainly win the day in public schools, and a large component of scandals will result from people who are pushing for outside work on projects turning out to be doing the projects for their kids.
I’m sure this is all wrong, however, it also was very fun to think about.