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Rethinking the time spent at school: Could flexibility improve engagement and performance for students and teachers?

Published by

Yong Zhao

August 5, 2023

Is it possible to reduce the time students spend in classrooms and schools? Would such a reduction be better for learning and retaining teachers? How should learning be more flexibly enacted in the post-pandemic era? Why are some schools have moved to 4 days a week?

Jim and I wrote this article to discuss the possibilities of rethinking school participation and calls for schools to reconsider the necessity and costs/benefits of forcing students and teachers to be physically present in schools for the traditional 5 days a week. It was published in Prospects and you can read the whole article here.

More about Yong Zhao

Dr. Yong Zhao is a Foundation Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas. He previously served as the Presidential Chair, Associate Dean, and Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon, where he was also a Professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy, and Leadership. Prior to Oregon, Yong Zhao was University Distinguished Professor at the College of Education, Michigan State University, where he also served as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology, executive director of the Confucius Institute, as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence. Additionally, he worked as a professor of educational leadership in the Faculty of Education at University of Melbourne and senior researcher at the Mitchell Institute of Victoria University in Australia. He was a visiting Global Professor at University of Bath and a visiting scholar at Warwick University in the UK.