Peer-reviewed article

A National Study of Common Planning Time Activities

David J. Lomascolo, Pamela S. Angelle · 7 May 2018

Abstract

Common planning time, an organizational component of schools practicing the middle school concept, is an attempt to be developmentally responsive to students ages 10–15, as recommended by the Association for Middle Level Education (National Middle School Association [NMSA], 2010). Common planning time (CPT) in schools allows teachers in interdisciplinary teams to fully immerse learning activities from professional development into their classrooms and provides opportunities for teachers to work and learn from each other. Although the concept of interdisciplinary teams utilizing CPT has been identified since the 1960s, until recently, there has been limited research on the effective use of this time (Cook & Faulkner, 2010).The Common Planning Time Project of the Middle Level Education Research Special Interest Group (MLER SIG) of the American Educational Research Association provided an avenue through which researchers from throughout the United States could investigate numerous aspects of common planning time in schools. Although several studies have investigated common planning time in singular states, few studies have examined the national data set looking both within and across the data. For example, Flowers and Mertens (2013) examined the national data set of the Common Planning Time Project of the MLER SIG and provided an overall view of common planning time across the United States. Merits of that study were many and are overviewed herein. However, many significant aspects of the national data set were not explored by Flowers and Mertens (2013). Consequently, the purpose of the present quantitative national study was to extend the work of Flowers and Mertens, examining differences between states regarding middle grades teachers’ activities during common planning time. This present study was guided by the following research questions:The present study is framed by the Association for Middle Level Education’s position paper, This We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents (NMSA, 2010). As part of the commitment to developmentally responsive education for students aged 10–15, this position paper outlines the organizational components, best practices, and teacher professional development necessary to best meet the needs of this age group. Two essential structural mechanisms include interdisciplinary teams and common planning time.Interdisciplinary teams are formed so that teachers may “share the same group of students, same part of the school building, same schedule and planning time, and the responsibility for planning, teaching, and evaluating curriculum and instruction for more than one academic subject area” (George, Lawrence, & Bushnell, 1998, pp. 248–249). In these collaborative networks, teachers meet with other teachers to engage in regular, collaborative discussions on specific topics, focused mostly on content, to further their knowledge in disciplines or pedagogical approaches (Chambers, Lam, & Mahitivanichcha, 2008). Teams who meet to share expertise and collaborate on effective pedagogy often work together on interdisciplinary teaching topics and teach together (Chambers et al., 2008).To effectively accomplish their objectives, teachers involved in CPT must share a common vision and mission with clearly defined goals for planning that are embraced and exemplified by all faculty and administrators (Cook & Faulkner, 2010). An essential element for establishing an effective team environment is the daily use of regularly scheduled CPT (Flowers, Mertens, & Mulhall, 1999; Mertens & Flowers, 2003; NMSA, 2010), which includes a specific, planned period of time during the school day in which teachers on the team have the opportunity to meet with one another to plan curriculum and assessments, share instructional strategies, organize team events, discuss student issues, and communicate with parents (Cook & Faulkner, 2010; George & Alexander, 2003; NMSA, 2010)Cook and Faulkner (2010) found that teachers who felt supported by administration in teaming activities during common planning time felt better prepared to meet the needs of their students. As Hansen (2009) noted, teams that are not provided direction often “stagnate and focus on issues that are only indirectly related to student learning” (p. 33). Common planning time also benefits students who are taught by teachers who participate in CPT. Mertens, Flowers, and Mulhall (1998) found that students taught by teachers using CPT were more satisfied with school, were more committed to classwork, and had more positive reactions to their teachers.Not all CPT teams work effectively, however. Unfocused planning time and unproductive sharing may be the result of a lack of teacher buy in, a lack of team leadership, low expectations by the principal for the outcomes of CPT, and low support of the school administration for CPT (Cook & Faulkner, 2010; Thompson, Franz, & Miller, 2009). Preliminary analyses from the Common Planning Time Project of the MLER SIG of the American Educational Research Association show that the most common activity teachers engage in during CPT meetings is discussing individual student needs (Mertens, Flowers, Anfara, & Caskey, 2010). Confirming these preliminary results, a study of two middle schools in Tennessee found that administrative tasks were the tasks most often performed during CPT, specifically, preparing progress reports and report cards and discussions of school-wide committee meetings (Angelle & Gaines, 2013). Teachers who participated in Angelle and Gaines’ (2013) study indicated that CPT was never used in their schools to develop service learning, never used for planning interdisciplinary units, and never used to integrate student assignments and assessments (Angelle & Gaines, 2013).Drolet (2009) reported that the Rhode Island middle school teachers using CPT were not engaging in interdisciplinary team teaching best practices, such as looking at student work or discussing instructional practices. The teachers in the Rhode Island study did not coordinate with other personnel in the school and did not coordinate with each other in pedagogy, sharing expertise, coteaching, or providing feedback on homework or assessments.The present study seeks to examine whether common planning time on a national scale affirms the findings from these state-by-state studies; that is, that CPT is more often used for administrative tasks and paperwork versus its more substantive use as a source of professional development, sharing expertise, and collaborative planning, as advocated by Association for Middle Level Education and their position paper, This We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents (NMSA, 2010).Survey data for the present study were collected as part of The Middle Level Education Research Special Interest Group (SIG) and the Center for Prevention Research and Development’s (CPRD) National Middle Grades Research Project on Common Planning Time, Phase II (Flowers, Mertens, Anfara, & Cas-key, 2009). After researchers in each state received informed consent from teachers, teachers were sent a link to an online survey. Teachers were asked to choose the top 3 CPT activities they most frequently engaged in. These items were then extracted for analysis using SPSS, Version 21. In addition, multiple Likert-type items measured how often teacher teams spend time engaging in specific CPT activities were grouped for purposes of examining both within and across states the emphasis on activities during common planning time. Variables measured with these items include curriculum and instruction, student centered activities, and quality of CPT time.We aggregated data by state, recoded them as necessary, and analyzed them through descriptive statistics to determine frequencies for each of the CPT activity variables. Results from the frequency counts were filtered into a new SPSS file with variables by state (1–7) and CPT activity (1–16). Frequency counts were conducted to assess differences across states regarding most commonly engaged in CPT activities. ANOVAs were used to examine differences among states according to aggregated data regarding how often teacher teams engaged in curriculum and instruction and student centered activities and to address the quality of CPT time as espoused by teacher respondents. Bivariate correlations were then conducted to examine the possible relationships between aggregated CPT variables, teacher certification level, and teacher engagement in teamwork during their student teaching programs.An online link to the National Middle Grades Research CPT Teacher Survey was forwarded to middle grades teachers in seven states (n = 564). States in which schools participated include Illinois (n = 118 teachers in 5 schools), Kentucky (n = 146 teachers in 9 schools), Maryland (n = 49 teachers in 1 school), North Carolina (n = 32 teachers in 2 schools), Ohio (n = 36 teachers in 1 school), Oregon (n = 46 teachers in 3 schools), and Tennessee (n = 131 teachers in 5 schools). The survey took approximately 20–30 minutes to complete and included items which measured teacher demographics, how teachers use common planning time, the extent to which aspects of collaboration work well, and perceptions of need for professional development. Survey items included fixed answer responses as well as Likert type responses.We initially sought to examine what activities teachers said they spent the most time on during CPT. Items were grouped and given a variable name to provide a lens through which to understand the type of agency in which teachers participated. The named variables were then used to analyze how often teams engaged in activities and how their understanding of quality CPT might vary across states. Variable 1 was named Curriculum and Instruction Activities. Specific activities under this variable included: plan special team projects and activities; set goals and objectives relating to student learning; coordinate and integrate curricula across subject areas; teach interdisciplinary units; and work together in the presentation of lesson. Variable 2 was named Student Centered Activities. This variable included activities which directly focused on work with students, such as: hold conferences with students to recognize their accomplishments; monitor and coordinate student homework across subjects; work together to develop a personal progress plan for each student; review/provide feedback on each other’s assessments of student performance; identify student learning styles in an effort to match instruction to student strengths and needs; and meet with individual students to address problems. Variable 3 was named Quality of CPT. This variable included statements that addressed the level of understanding teachers on teams had for what they considered quality CPT, such as: understand the purpose of common planning time, our team has enough time during our regular team meetings to achieve their goals; our team has an agenda or plan of action for each team meeting; the time our team meets together is usually well spent; we usually meet the goals/plans set forth in our team meetings; and team meetings are collegial.Descriptive statistics, presented in Table 1, were computed for all states (n = 7) with regard to the aggregated variables, curriculum and instruction, student-centered activities, and quality of CPT time. Items that measured how often teacher teams spend time engaging in specific CPT activities required responses on a 7-point Likert scale for scoring on ordinal scales, with 1 = never, 2 = once a year, 3 = several times a year, 4 = quarterly, 5 = monthly, 6 = weekly, and 7 = daily, for the variables of curriculum and instruction and student-centered activities. For quality of CPT, Likert items ranged on a 5-point scale, with 1 = strongly agree, 2 = strongly disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, and 5 = strongly agree.Mean scores indicated that teachers across states spend time engaging in CPT activities and several times a year and at most quarterly as opposed to monthly, weekly, or daily. Even those teachers in Illinois and Ohio, who had the highest mean scores across all states for curriculum and instruction, only engaged in these activities on a quarterly basis while teachers in Oregon only participated between once and several times a year. Teachers in Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, and Ohio tended to agree with statements concerning their understanding of quality CPT whereas teachers in Illinois, Oregon, and Tennessee tended to neither agree nor disagree, thus suggesting that a national understanding of quality CPT is varied and quite possibly unclear to many teachers across states. Next, a one-way ANOVA was used to test for common planning time differences among all states (n = 7) included in this study. For all aggregated CPT variables, ANOVA results showed strong differences existed between states. Tukey post hoc comparisons were then conducted to determine which specific groups differed significantly according to aggregated CPT variables.Differences for how teachers engaged in curriculum and instruction activities during common planning time differed significantly across states, F(6, 531) = 11.88, p = .000. Tukey post hoc comparisons of the seven states indicated that Illinois (M = 3.95, 95% CI [3.76, 4.15]) differed significantly from Kentucky (M = 3.16, 95% CI [2.96, 3.36]), Maryland (M = 3.01, 95% CI [2.65, 3.38]), Oregon (M = 2.84, 95% CI [2.49, 3.19]), and Tennessee (M = 3.38, 95% CI [3.14, 3.62]). Teachers in Illinois tended to spend more time on curriculum and instruction activities during designated common planning times, though teachers only reported a mean score of quarterly attention to curriculum and instruction activities.With regard to student centered activities, slight differences existed among states, F(6, 519) = 3.27, p = .004. A Tukey post hoc comparison indicated a difference between Oregon (M = 3.31, 95% CI [2.92, 3.71]) and Ohio (M = 4.25, 95% CI [3.88, 4.62]) (MD = .94) as teachers in Oregon tended to spend more time on student-centered activities. Further, statistically significant differences existed between states with regards to teacher understanding of quality CPT, F (6, 538) = 6.17,p = .00. Tukey post hoc comparisons indicated statistically significant differences between Kentucky (M = 4.19, 95% CI [4.08, 4.30]) and Illinois (M = 3.93, 95% CI [3.81, 4.06]), Oregon (M = 3.65, 95% CI [3.4, 3.9]), and Tennessee (M = 3.9, 95% CI [3.77, 4.02]), as well as between Maryland (M = 4.25, 95% CI [4.09, 4.41]) and Oregon, and Maryland and Tennessee. Finally, statistically significant differences were found between Ohio (M = 4.18, 95% CI [3.99, 4.38]) and Oregon.We then sought to examine what teachers selected as the top 3 activities they engaged in most frequently during designated CPT. The top three activities identified by teachers across states as most frequently occurring during their designated common planning times were discussing student learning problems/issues (72%), discussing student behavior problems/issues (77%), and planning special team activities Table 2 the data for most frequently occurring CPT activities across the most commonly selected CPT activities by teachers were identified across states, the top by teachers were then examined by state and across states. Table 3 these reported in Table 3 how states to all states with regard to a specific CPT and the of teacher that selected that specific CPT activity as one of their top 3 most frequently For example, of all teacher who planning special team activities across all states from Illinois, and of the teachers who in Illinois that specifically, to other states, of teachers in Kentucky and in Illinois selected planning special team activities as one of their top 3 CPT activities. to other states, the of teachers in Kentucky and Illinois selected discussing student behavior problems/issues as one of their top 3 CPT activities. However, across states, Tennessee teachers most frequently selected discussing student learning problems/issues as one of their top 3 CPT activities. across states for the top 3 CPT activities show that teachers in Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee selected planning special team activities, discussing student behavior and discussing student learning problems/issues as their top 3 most common CPT activities. in states such as Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, and Oregon, the for of those activities across states. However, within state data related to discussing student learning problems/issues and discussing student behavior issues showed for all states in the study. The of all teacher in Illinois Kentucky Maryland North Carolina Ohio and Oregon to only of teachers in selected discussing student learning problems/issues as one of their top 3 CPT activities. Further, the of teachers in all states selected discussing student behavior problems/issues as one of their top 3 CPT activities. However, the of teachers in Illinois and Ohio selected planning special team activities as one of their top 3 CPT significant differences between and within states regarding curriculum and instruction related activities, what teachers quality CPT, and frequency results showed teachers did not choose activities related to curriculum and instruction as one of their top 3 activities. This to this might be we correlations to examine the possible between most time spent on aggregated CPT variables and teacher certification we sought to teacher engagement in teamwork during their with their engagement in CPT aggregated variables and what they quality CPT. were computed to assess the relationships among the aggregated CPT variables and instruction, student centered activities, and quality of teacher certification level middle school special and other and whether teachers said they in teams while student teaching as part of their teacher For purposes of these certification level was into seven variables, one for each of For each were a of 1 they that certification and a they did from the indicated statistically significant relationships between special education teaching administrative and CPT aggregated variables. special education certification was with curriculum and instruction, = p and student centered activities, = p In addition, an administrative was significantly with teachers’ understanding of quality CPT, = p during student teaching was significantly with middle school, = p and school, = p Further, quality of CPT was significantly with in teams while student teaching, = p Table 4 these present study examined middle school teacher responses regarding common planning time in seven states. indicated that teachers on the activities that took during CPT. items that student learning issues and problems. responses indicated CPT was spent in academic activity such as student assignments and assessments and and interdisciplinary Even CPT meetings focused on principal related tasks such as from the present study the findings of research (Angelle & Gaines, Flowers & Mertens, that is, that while common planning time is provided to middle school teachers, few common planning time teams this time to focus on teaching, and evaluating curriculum and instruction for more than one academic subject area” et al., 1998, pp. as recommended in the the than on academic issues and interdisciplinary a of reported the common planning time focus was on student learning and issues and student behavior and issues This of the best of the middle level position paper, This We (NMSA, only of teachers in all states said they participated in student centered activities during designated CPT. varied in how their in CPT activities related to curriculum and instruction in that teachers in Illinois and Ohio tended to spend the most time on curriculum and instruction activities whereas teachers in Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Oregon, and Tennessee tended to spend time on curriculum and instruction activities several times or only once a year. differences also existed between what teachers considered to be quality CPT and how those teachers spent their time on activities during CPT. For example, teachers in Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, and Ohio to have a understanding of quality CPT while teachers in Illinois, Oregon, and Tennessee neither nor with statements concerning what quality CPT. for those states in which teachers had unclear of quality CPT, the teachers tended to spend time on curriculum and instruction and student-centered activities. Further, the most frequently selected activities by teachers were and related to student behavior or learning problems. that teachers in all states that discussing of student issues was one of their top 3 CPT activities, teachers may that they spend the of their time on student centered activities. In this teachers across and within states may have of what quality CPT and may lack an understanding of best as in This We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents (NMSA, indicated that special education teacher certification was with of activities and administrative certification was with what teachers is quality CPT. However, middle school, and school had with how often CPT activities are nor were such related to what teachers considered CPT activities. Further, results that teachers are to CPT and activities during their teacher certification many to engage in recommended CPT activities once they are time research on the state level has also indicated that teachers not use common planning time with or in with the that the purposes of CPT are to collaborate with level from disciplines and to discuss with the of their pedagogy and knowledge (Chambers et al., 2008). Teams of teachers, use CPT to share their expertise, to in to student of the of CPT activities focus on student behavior and than on teacher is is to focus on the that teachers are not in the of common planning time or may not understand what quality CPT However, in the present teachers reported that CPT was a part of their and further indicated that with teams and CPT took during their student in schools as time teachers, these same teachers indicated that to the concept of CPT was This to a between and School into this is so and the present study also found an to the in the CPT concept was found among those teachers with certification in special An of the work of special education and the of sharing expertise and teaming with may as to teachers with special education certification their in teaming to their agency as teachers with administrative certification reported a understanding of what quality common planning time This is of further guided by such as: an understanding of the school as a into a understanding of collaborative to teacher planning time that with to the in This We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents (NMSA, provides benefits not only to teachers also the students who are taught by teachers who participate in CPT. As noted, Mertens et (1998) found that students taught by teachers were more satisfied with school, were more committed to classwork, and had more positive reactions to their These as well as the findings from the present to school and school level might to the of and required administrative on are the school in teachers may to using CPT to meet these than using the time to school may to investigate whether or lack of personnel to CPT used for activities other than the of CPT. School level might to determine whether collaboration during CPT is to issues or administrative to teachers to complete other tasks during of common planning time has been frequently to and in middle schools (Chambers et al., Flowers et al., 1999; George et al., Mertens & Flowers, 2003; NMSA, 2010). However, a of middle schools is that the of common planning time and interdisciplinary teaming is not with on a national are among faculty in teacher school and school the of common planning time within effective middle schools that work to the education of presented at the of the American Educational Research This research was conducted as part of the National Middle Grades Research Project on common planning time, Phase The was and is by the Middle Level Education Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research The Center for Prevention Research and at the of Illinois is a with the MLER SIG on this and all and of the survey in this study. The statements and are the responsibility of the