Sue Creagh Archives

Decisions, decisions: Why do teachers feel time poor?

The first school term for 2025 is ramping up, and many teachers are returning to complex and tiring – if extremely important and fulfilling work. A key part of this work is making decisions: from long-term, considered decisions, to those which occur ‘in the moment’, consciously or subconsciously during classroom interactions. Indeed, there’s a common understanding that teachers make a lot of decisions. In the 1960s, sociologist Philip W. Jackson estimated the number to be about 1500 in a single day.

But while Jackson was interested in documenting ‘life in classrooms’, he was not really focused on the question of how decision making is experienced by teachers, or how it might be a factor in understanding concerning recent reports of work overload and intensification. Indeed, most scholarly work on teacher decision making so far has positioned it as part of what makes teaching effective; as something that changes over time with growth in professional knowledge; and/or as a resource – a source of professional control and autonomy.

In our research, we sought to ask the question of whether decision making might be part of the subjective intensity of teaching work. To do this we used an app developed for the Teachers and Time Poverty project. The app asked teachers to report on the number of decisions made within a time-sampled 30-minute period, and the stakes and time pressure associated with these decisions. In a recent chapter for a book two of us edited on time poverty, we present these decision making data from a trial of the app with 138 teachers reporting on 280 30-minute timeslots.

How many decisions?

In our trial, most teacher respondents (189/68%) estimated that they had made 30 decisions or less within their assigned 30-minute period (with the most common response being 11-20 decisions, and the average being 21-30). This is somewhat low, if we consider Jackson’s estimation of 1500 a day, which would equate to at least 130 decisions in half an hour. This result may be because decisions that become automatic are harder to recall, and/or because stressful or complex situations may make it harder to recall the process of making a decision. Importantly, Jackson was observing teachers – not doing the teaching himself and trying to self-report his decision making.

How pressured were these decisions?

Questions about pressure to make decisions quickly, or make high stakes decisions, were measured using a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 was ‘not at all’ and 7 was ‘to a great extent’. In terms of pressure to make decisions quickly, most responses ranged from 4-7 out of 7. Leaders reported more pressure (83% in the range of 4-7) than teachers (71%).

In terms of pressure to make high-stakes decisions, responses were more evenly distributed. Leaders tended to report greater pressure here (67% in the range of 4-7), compared to teachers (48%).

These findings around decision making pressure suggest that it’s not just the number of decisions, but the nature of those decisions that contribute to the teachers’ and school leaders’ experiences of working time.

Do teachers have enough time?

A further question we consider in our chapter is whether participants felt they had enough time to complete everything they intended to do within the 30 minutes they were reporting upon. Responses from over half the group (58%) tended toward ‘not at all’, with 19% selecting 3, 23% selecting 2, and 16% selecting 1 out of 7.

Is this unusual?

We also asked teachers how typical their day was overall. The majority of responses confirmed that theirs had been more or less a typical day, with a median response of 5 on the 7-point scale. This indicates that not having enough time to do all they need to do, and needing to make decisions quickly – some of which are high-stakes – is a commonplace experience in teaching. Teachers also reported undertaking a very wide range of activities during their allocated 30-minute time slots, including face-to-face teaching, preparation and administration, student wellbeing responsibilities, and other activities outside the classroom – and often more than one of these categories within the same 30-minute block. We wonder if this ‘typical’ kind of variability, including as it relates to decision making, may be a further dimension of the intensity of teachers’ working time.

Decision making and time poverty

Our work sees decision making not in terms of how teaching works and how to make it work better, but instead, as part of how it is experienced: a window into understanding the texture of teachers’ time at work. The data we gathered indicate a clear sense of participants feeling rushed and not having ‘enough’ time, with decision making experienced as consistently, if not evenly pressurised (both in time and stakes), and conducted across a wide range of activities.

Our analysis therefore contributes to our broader argument in the Teachers and Time Poverty project that time poverty for teachers is not simply about a lack of available ‘clock time’, but rather, how the nature of the time teachers currently spend at work is constituted, and the considerable variability of this.

Complexity

This highlights the complexity of what teachers do: the wide range of tasks they undertake, the kinds of decision making these demand, and the ‘typical’ unevenness and lack of predictability that require teachers to make these decisions. We think this might be a key part of what makes teaching such an exhausting (albeit worthwhile and fulfilling) job. It also points to why ‘quick fixes’ like a little less playground duty, or less after school meetings cannot, on their own, solve the enduring problem of teacher time poverty.

Meghan Stacey is associate professor and ARC DECRA Fellow in the UNSW School of Education, where she researches the critical policy sociology of teachers’ work. Sue Creagh has most recently worked as a senior research fellow at QUT. Sue’s research interests are in education policy, national testing, and English as an Additional Language/TESOL. Nicole Mockler is professor of education at the University of Sydney. Her research interests are in education policy and politics, professional learning and curriculum and pedagogy. Anna Hogan is associate professor and ARC DECRA research fellow in the School of Teacher Education & Leadership at QUT. Anna’s research interests are in education policy and practice, and in particular the privatisation and commercialisation of schooling. Greg Thompson is professor in the School of Teacher Education & Leadership at QUT. His research focuses on the philosophy of education and educational theory.

Australia’s most disadvantaged children invisible in official NAPLAN results

It seems simple enough. The idea behind the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) testing program is to keep tabs on standards. Governments and school systems can see who needs help and target policy, funding and teaching support so that all Australian students get the same opportunity to progress and be successful at school.

However the official gathering and use of NAPLAN data is not so simple. In fact it is highly complex and aspects of it are regularly challenged. The issue that took my interest was the officially announced, and widely reported in mainstream media finding that students with language backgrounds other than English (LBOTE) were doing better than students from English-speaking backgrounds (also known as non-LBOTE) in both literacy and numeracy.

My research involved looking at the LBOTE category and the widely accepted conclusion that LBOTE students were doing well. I discovered that this generalization is very unhelpful.

Some students who are speakers of language other than English are performing well on NAPLAN. On the other hand others are highly disadvantaged and their disadvantage, even their existence, is hidden in the LBOTE category.

If we are really worried about getting good results for all Australian children, educators and policy makers need to be looking at a finer grained analysis of LBOTE results in detail.

To begin the LBOTE category is very broad. It identifies all students who speak a language other than English at home, or whose parents speak a language other than English at home. What the category does not identify is the level of bilingual capacity of the student – that is, their level of proficiency in English and in their first language. The consequence of this is that LBOTE potentially includes students who are fully proficient in English, along with students in the early stages of developing academic English language proficiency- a process which can take a number of years, and more than the one year NAPLAN exemption allowed for newly arrived students.

Getting back to the bigger picture given to us by official NAPLAN results. It is not surprising that there is little difference between the average performance of LBOTE and non-LBOTE students; in fact, as reported with much fanfare, on a number of categories of the test LBOTE students appear to be doing better than non-LBOTE students. This is simply because averages are used. However a closer look shows there is a larger range of performance across the LBOTE group. There is a big tail of poor performers. So what is needed here is to find the students who are at the lower part of the range, and have a closer look to see how they are doing.

When I studied data from Queensland state schools I discovered there were indeed very distinct groups hidden in the LBOTE category and that some of these groups are performing at the lowest levels of the NAPLAN test.

One of the ways I analyzed the data was by looking at the performance of LBOTE students according to their visa category. All people who come to live in Australia from other countries (except NZ) require a visa, and these fall into two broad groups: skilled and family migrants, and refugees or those in refugee-like situations. The refugee LBOTE children were on average, performing at a much lower level than LBOTE students of migrant background.

This is a group of students who are among our most disadvantaged and in the generalised NAPLAN data given to us they are invisible.

I believe LBOTE is too simplistic a classification for reporting the complex interaction of language with NAPLAN performance. A much finer grained analysis is required if teachers, schools and systems are able to provide appropriate targeted response and ultimately, enable equity of outcome for all students.

An added layer of concern is that there have been considerable changes made to the funding of English language programs over the preceding decade.

All federally allocated government school funding for English as a Second Language (ESL) programs has now been collapsed into revised funding arrangements between state and federal governments. Some of this funding has been allocated on the basis of improvement in literacy and numeracy, as measured by NAPLAN. However, mainstream literacy intervention, which is the standard response to poor NAPLAN performance, is not helpful for ESL students, refugee children in particular. These children need specialised support to develop literacy in English as their second or additional language.

The danger is that the invisibility of language learners in current targeted programs and the use of the too broad LBOTE category for NAPLAN results is leading to a loss of focus on, or, unhelpful intervention for some of the most disadvantaged students in our school systems.

Sue Creagh is a research fellow and lecturer in TESOL at the Institute for Social Science Research and the School of Education at the University of Queensland. Before completing her PhD in 2013, Sue worked for many years as an ESL teacher with newly arrived migrant and refugee young people. Her research interests are in education policy in the field of ESL, and in the relationship between disadvantage and educational outcomes.