The Effect of Planning on Teachers and Learners an Introduction

Utilising effective planning is crucial in the educational sector as teacher preparedness often directly correlates to their learner's success. 

The teacher needs to have a solid foundation from their academic and professional experiences this is fundamental to give them the understanding of the subject they are delivering. Now in areas such as primary and high schools where the subjects are broad sourcing graduates from across their academic discipline, this could have negative ramifications as learners will be specialised in some areas lacking skills in others. In Further Education and Higher Education, the teachers are more specialised, however, their areas which the teacher will not be well versed in due to the level of specialism resulting in areas that they won't have explored therefore lacking in some areas. Now whilst in cases of schools, they can purchase some of the preparation on behalf of their staff this allows for teachers to alter the resources for their preferred delivery but best ensures uniformity (Grichland, 2017). However, alongside the teacher's academic ability the school needs to have confidence in the teacher's ability to convey their experiences and act as a role model for the next generation. Teachers need to be able to encourage their learners and in Further Education centre's this is often embedding wider career skills into the content of the lessons. The learners often reflect the teacher's beliefs in them so the teacher must be able to convey a positive ethos for the learner and management needs to be able to records this. Grichland, (2017) suggests that the teacher will allow the learners who lack the motivation to be inspired if they can present a positive message. This is most likely to happen if the teacher can embed the skills that reflect individuals who they admire in society these industry leaders can push the next generation and push the countries needs for greater productivity. It is often seen that tasks can establish a feeling of motivation and success in the learner so by making differentiated tasks that set the learner up to achieve as well as to fail without the fear of failure. The Attribution Retraining provides students a better focus and makes them more successful instead of focusing on failure. 

With the importance of policies nationally and internationally such as in the US where the "No Child Left Behind" whilst policies focus on learner attainment and holding individuals to account but a focus still needs to be on accountability. However, as with a lot of work carried out in the area, it focuses on accountability without specifically outlining what resources can be provided to the teacher (Fong-Yee and Normore, n.d.). Part of the problem in this area is how ongoing teacher training whilst it should be developmental often the grading systems emulate a more oppressive system that does not correctly identify the areas for improvement and staff competencies. In some areas, this needs to be enhanced as the systems which are currently available to management to provide resources to the likes of OFSTED result in greater pressure on staff whereas systems should be in a place that allows for a consistent approach to assessment (Burnell, 2016). This system should enable managers to track the content delivered by their staff and make meaningful steps. This, however, must be provided for the staff member in a way that enables their progress providing resources that assist the planning process whilst simultaneously being a tool for auditing progress. Research by Bailey and Colley, (2014) looked at areas in particular which addressed time constraints on new teachers. They found that often where centres tried to improve attainment by encouraging teachers to spend more time with particular cohorts to improve results from groups of learners this resulted in students from high achieving groups feeling like low achieving students were favoured. This type of preconception then added to the emotional pressure as well as physical pressures on the teacher. Greater use of systems to differentiate on behalf of the teacher for the learner is something necessary to safeguard staff members management of their time as this time is often drawn from their preparation time. This can and does affect their morale, as they can get disheartened that their progress is inherently linked to performance measures of the learner. This is both necessary as well as problematic. 

Bailey, G., and Colley, H., 2014. ‘Learner-centred’ assessment policies in further education: putting teachers’ time under pressure. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 67(2), pp.153-168.

Burnell, I., 2016. Teaching and learning in further education: The Ofsted factor. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 41(2), pp.227-237.

Fong-Yee, D., and Normore, A., n.d. The Impact Of Quality Teachers On Student Achievement. [online] Digitalcommons.fiu.edu. Available at: <https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1054&context=sferc> [Accessed 22 August 2020].

Grichland, 2017. How Does Your Child's Teacher Influence Academic Performance?. [online] Structured Literacy | Pride Reading Program. Available at: <https://pridereadingprogram.com/how-does-a-teacher-affect-student-performance/> [Accessed 22 August 2020].

AUTOMATED PLANNING SYSTEMS A METHOD TO INNOVATE THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Rationale for the Research

This report aims to examine whether automated planning procedures and systems can address the education systems in efficiencies using solutions that use management theory as well as document automation to generate a more effective model. The report will conduct a qualitative review of teacher time management evaluating how teachers spend their none student facing time, using data collected from management of different further education colleges as well as responses from teachers. The project will use this data to address time management in schools identifying area's for improvement which will improve teacher performance and their impact on students. The college group in question is looking at areas to innovate the sector to allow the students to achieve better results and by addressing teacher time management solutions in the field this report can outline innovative management systems. Wang and Lin, (2019) attempt to address matters of planning from an organisational point of view on how to gauge the experience and development of young teachers. However although the likes of this study looks out how to assess the development and management of staff members as well as how they grow in the role but also noting overall changes for those entering the field this not address ways to support or enhance teachers more record and review employees. What this report is aiming to look at is teachers efficiency and planning from alternative views not solely on their delivery of content as whilst this is important and is routinely reviewed this is always reflective and not proactive instead the report aims to look at methods of improving the structure of how teachers plan and develop their content. Telles Quezada, Inostroza Araos and Rosas-Maldonado, (2019) looked heavily at how reflective practice can point towards best attainment for the learner comparing common techniques which are used to build on lesson planning. Whilst they also suggest that effective planning allows for differentiation between the learner the paper does not address the different teaching ethos’ which if planning tools were more uniformed a combination of effective differentiation for learners and teacher individuality could be present alongside management uniformity needs (Anon, 2009). Research by Kersten and Israel, (2005) examined how the leaders of the educational sector evaluate the teachers and their progress. Yet their research also points to the fact that many of the business leaders tools to evaluate actually negates a lot of the benefits by putting extra constraints and burdens on teaching staff (Holmes, 2017). By referencing time and performance in this way the research will be of a great benefit to the educational training and ongoing development for the teachers as it will allow management to redistribute their time more effectively (Sahito et al., 2016; Holmes, 2017).

Research Focus

Research Rationale

The project aims to address whether elements from the business industry would make for effective tools to enable development of better planning infrastructure for key documentation used in education.

The report will conduct a survey of staff members to identify area's that staff find generate inefficiencies in their day and delay them from more direct learner engagement.

A separate survey will look at management pressures and demands of their staff and address how systems can observe teachers, generate meaningful actions then tracking improvement.

The final objective will be to look at policies which can be enacted across the education sector which can generate better results for students and resources for teachers.

The Formulation of the Papers?

The reports research focus is to address planning imbalances in the education sector addressing teacher and lecturer time management and efficiency.  Tamaki, Yamada, Kuwabara and Nakamura, (1998) looked at addressing efficiencies by allowing teachers to deliver lessons which allow for blended and flipped learning by encouraging learners to self-teach. This format allows teachers to provide guided direction and then focused supplementary documents to support a varied learner ability. Whilst management practices have developed extensively as have teaching delivery and learner management the synergy between both of these area's is largely unexplored (Holmes, 2017). Al-Shareef and Al-Qarni, (2016) looked at partially addressing the time constraints of planning by addressing the workload of teachers by offering a collaborative space for teachers to share best practice around their subject area to address areas of the delivery that learners responded well to. This allowed for effective review of progress of learners and feedback to teachers alongside reducing planning time with a shared by in from teachers. Similarly, the subject of the dissertation will address teacher efficiency and satisfaction through surveying staff across the college to distinguish what staff are perceiving a pressure and what management goals are for their team to address what area's for efficiency and improvement are necessary for improvement. The project will apply an inductive approach using the premise provided by Al-Shareef, and Al-Qarni, (2016) where teachers with better time management had better in class performance than those who did not. The aim will be to assess whether those using planning software or techniques to more effectively spend their time had greater success in their delivery over those using standard college planning tools. Planning software that looks at applying best practice for the user and uniformity to the institution should elevate student performance and teacher effectiveness. De Neve, (1991) now whilst the reports primary data will come from this survey it will also look at wider Human Resource data such as student and staff satisfaction considering that both of these quantitative measures reflect satisfaction, wellbeing and achievement. There are issues with data collection using both a new survey and existing collection methods the information may have validity issues if the surveys are filled in a rushed way and this is difficult to prevent occurring or even identifying where this occurs. To try to prevent this access to the raw data would be favourable and any surveys which are largely uniform with no discernible expression of opinion will be omitted from the sample. Teachers using the software will largely be from individuals who are in early training programs “new starters” or individuals who are aiming to further develop their skills so the data set will be unable to account for burnout, fatigue or other general problems common in the profession. Therefore the project aims to identify the common problems or challenges of the sample set using a pilot software program through interview feedback compared with general feedback from wider college survey data compared to the studies own survey of the wider institutions to address area's for improvement for teachers and develop a system to solve the problem. The software to address this area of research will be developed over the remaining summer months of 2020 and then implemented over the first term in a college which follows an academy style setup with multiple colleges under the brand. This allows for a less varied sample but with some variance in approach to delivering teaching content which will allow for a wider assessment of the problem whether its endemic to teams or schools or the wider education system. Initial surveys will be conducted with individuals carrying out the pilot compared with the wider college group by utilising this data to focus the report on recurring themes for various types of lecturing staff it will help to shape a solution for the planning problem which can be built upon and implemented. The long-term outcome of which would be to review the system at regular intervals throughout the academic year 2020/21 to conclude whether a system can be developed to resolve planning concerns.

Ethical Implications?

The main ethical implications of the report are how handle user data from the surveys as well as the using the data to identify demographic trends. Majority of the data will be sourced through the colleges HR and Research teams as this is the pathway that both the data is sourced for the colleges productivity measures as well as ensuring it is compliant with ethical and legal content. By using these pathways, it ensures that the data collected is both effective for the report, secure and disseminated through the college. Although there will be aspects which could make the staff members and personnel identifiable, but this will be limited to where necessary.

References:

Al-Shareef, S. and Al-Qarni, R., 2016. The Effectiveness of Using Teacher-Teacher Wikis in Collaborative Lesson Planning and Its impact on Teacher’s Classroom Performance. English Language Teaching, 9(4), p.186. 

Anon, 2009. AFT puts teacher voice in 'Race to the Top' planning. American Teacher, 94(2).

De Neve, H., 1991. University teachers' thinking about lecturing: student evaluation of lecturing as an improvement perspective for the lecturer. Higher Education, 22(1), pp.63-89.

Grissom, J., Loeb, S. and Nakashima, N., 2013. Strategic Involuntary Teacher Transfers and Teacher Performance: Examining Equity and Efficiency. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 33(1), pp.112-140.

Hafiz Muhammad, A.K., Muhammad Tahir, K.F., Khalil, A. & Faisal, I. 2016, Exploring Relationship of Time Management with Teachers' Performance Research, Bulletin of Education and Research, 38, 2

Holmes, B., 2017. The management of teachers’ non-directed time in a secondary school. Management in Education, 31(1), pp.39-42.

Kersten, T. and Israel, M., 2005. TEACHER EVALUATION: PRINCIPALS' INSIGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT. Planning and Changing, 36(1), pp.47-61.

Sahito, Z., Khawaja, M., Panhwar, U., Siddiqui, A. and Saeed, H., 2016. Teachers’ Time Management and the Performance of Students: A Comparison of Government and Private Schools of Hyderabad, Sindh, Pakistan. World Journal of Education, 6(6).

Tamaki, M., Yamada, K., Kuwabara, T. and Nakamura, Y., 1998. Network-based education system designed to allow individual student progress and improve teacher efficiency. Proceedings. 3rd Asia Pacific Computer Human Interaction.

Telles Quezada, N., Inostroza Araos, M. and Rosas-Maldonado, M., 2019. Points of Improvement: Reflective Strategy to Support Chilean EFL Pre-Service Teachers’ Lesson Planning. HOW, 26(2), pp.88-105.

Wang, T. and Lin, J., 2019. Research on Young Teachers’ Planning and Teaching Ability Improvement in Independent Colleges. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1325, p.012052.