ABSTRACT
The 1970s and 1980s saw a significant amount of research on how time is used in classrooms. Many educators felt this type of research produced somewhat obvious or trivial findings. Of course students need time to learn things: what could be more obvious? On the other hand, a number of researchers took the view that time constituted a meaningful variable that tells a good deal about individual teachers’ educational aims and methods. For example, David Berliner (1990, p. 30) noted that,
The expression of educational attitudes, opinions, and beliefs – one’s personal philosophy derived from normative conceptions of teaching or from experience – must result in duration of some kind in the classroom. If not, that philosophy is doomed to remain merely a verbal expression of belief, unrelated to behavior. Actions not only speak louder than words, they can be timed . . . Instructional time concepts can address issues of philosophy and quality, while simultaneously retaining their obvious simple and apparently pedestrian character.
