Rethinking school times and rhythms

How much time do students spend in school and how is school time paced? Two essential questions of education in France that suggested to Agnès Cavet of the Service de Veille Scientifique et Technologique of the former Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique (now Institut Français de l'Education, Ifé) a dossier entitled "School rhythms: for a new dynamic of educational time".

In this February 2011 dossier d'actualité n°60, Agnès Cavet reports that over the past 30 years various reforms have succeeded one another in arranging school rhythms so as to improve the living and learning conditions of students. What are "school rhythms"? It is "periodic physiological, physical and psychological variations specific to the child and adolescent in a school situation, in other words biological and behavioral rhythms, which are studied clinically and experimentally by chronopsychobiology."

It is also "the alternation of moments of rest and activity imposed on students by school, college, high school, and university, in other words school schedules and calendars. This is an environmental rhythmicity, set by adults, which acts as a synchronizer of the biological and psychological rhythms of young people."

We owe these two definitions, cited in the dossier, to François Testu and Janvier Baptiste, two representatives of the so-called chronoscience school for which school rhythms are clearly an object of study. This school draws its theoretical references essentially from physiology and psychology and is distinguished by its advocacy of respect for the child's rhythms. The diagram proposed by one of these representatives, Hubert Montagner, is very edifying and should be able to be called upon in the debate.

However, it must be admitted that the debate on school rhythms has not always been aimed at the efficiency of school learning. Various issues have fueled this debate, including teachers' working time as "an adjustment variable for the employer to manage personnel." In any case, educational research has been able to refocus the debate each time and outline new modalities in the matter.

One of the interesting points of this Ifé dossier is the presentation of different alternative experiences in the organization of time and the management of school rhythms around the world. To cite a few:

• extra time in the United States, a successful experiment in increasing daily hours and/or increasing the number of school days in the year conducted in 36 states;
• the reorganization of the school year in the United Kingdom into six work periods, each punctuated by a week off;
• the continuous day (jornada continua) in Spain.

This issue concludes with the question "rethinking school time?"Obviously yes, if one agrees that there is a current tension between the school rhythm and the interests of adults, social life and the economy of countries, which does not sit well with concerns for educational success. However, it remains no less true that school time and rhythms must be negotiated with all of the school's social partners, with a view to reaching an "acceptable compromise," in the words of Guy Vermeil.

See: School rhythms: for a new dynamic of educational time, Agnès Cavet, Dossier d'actualité n°60, February 2011.

Illustration: GTD For Kids, Woodleywonderworks, CC BY 2.0