Welcome to the Thinking Differently About… series from NCEE. This series offers a different perspective on things we think about a lot in education. It’s primarily for education system designers and is meant to inspire, while also presenting global policies and practices that provide insights into how to improve success for students in the United States.

This brief is Part 1 of a two-part series on time. Part 1 covers Grades 1-9, and the second brief will cover upper secondary (Grades 10-12). Time is a powerful condition of successful teaching and learning.

We organized this brief around a set of time-related topics:

• Thinking differently about available time. How much total time is available to schools? How do leading systems provide adequate time for teaching and learning?
• Thinking differently about school schedules. How do schools organize time within the school day? How do schools structure schedules to enable success?
• Thinking differently about developing student agency for work and life. How do schools use time to support students in developing the competencies and habits that enable success in life and work?
• Thinking differently about personalization. How do leading systems build in flexibility and design time to enable personalization?
• Thinking differently about teaching time. How do systems balance time for teaching and non-teaching? How do systems use time productively to enable professional growth?
• Thinking differently about teaching conditions. How do systems create conditions that minimize teacher workloads and enable teacher success?

For each topic in this series, we:

• Surface thought-provoking observations about ways these systems approach things differently.
• Offer interesting examples of what global leaders do differently and how states and districts here at home are implementing similar strategies.
• Ask probing questions about the potential for thinking differently and what the policy implications might be.

Also in the Thinking Differently About…series: Thinking Differently About Math