State of the art of time effectiveness

In this chapter comprehensive reviews and earlier meta-analyses are summarized to arrive at an impression of the effectiveness of the various ways in which educational time can be intensified, enhanced, and expanded. The chapter has three main sections, one on “within school time,” one on homework, and one on expanded school time, beyond regular lesson hours. In these three sections key publications will be used to provide a concise description of the way the time variable is defined and applied in regular school activities or special programs. Next, reviews and meta-analyses are used to establish the degree of impact of time related interventions on student achievement and other outcome indicators, including occasionally social and behavioral outcomes. The results show that regular school time, homework, and extra out-of-school time appear to have small to moderate positive effects on educational achievement in basic subjects, mathematics and reading. The average effect sizes (in terms of the d-coefficient) for these three “arena’s” for optimizing learning time are .37, .29, and .18, respectively