Time and the Environments of Schooling

TIME AND SCHOOLING ENVIRONMENTS 1

Learning Environments Research 2: 1–19, 1999. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

BONNIE SHAPIRO, LINDA RICHARDS, NITA ROSS ANDKIM KENDAL-KNITTER

TIME AND THE ENVIRONMENTS OF SCHOOLING

Received 30 August 1998; accepted (in revised form) 8 December 1998

ABSTRACT. In this article, we explore questions related to the meaning and nature of timein schooling environments. Cultural, historical and ecological images inform our thinking,using concepts from postmodern perspectives such as semiotics and critical pedagogy. Webegin by reviewing the historical development of conceptions of time and describe what ismeant by framing our research and thinking in a postmodern vision of time. We examineideas about other potential meanings of time using semiotic and critical pedagogicalinterpretations. As the research and recommendations are of value to professional educatorsand policy makers, we discuss the value of nurturing intellectual relationships, the value ofcollaboration, and the importance of developing new ways to give voice to teachers to allowthem to articulate their views about what is most meaningful and significant in the organizationof learning environments.

KEY WORDS: collaboration, postmodernism, school environments, semiotics, time

1. INTRODUCTION: TOWARDS NEW WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT THE

ENVIRONMENTS OF EDUCATION

Fien (1993) noted that an important feature of the critique of curriculumresearch is the “acknowledgment of multiple discourses and contestationover the nature and meaning of educational activities” (p. 15). In ananalysis of the ideological bases of three approaches to the curriculum ofenvironmental education, he considered the philosophical emphases inthe thinking of approaches that concerned education about theenvironment, education through the environment, and education for theenvironment. Fien described the aims, objectives, and the kinds ofexperiences implied by each approach to curriculum. This article emergesfrom discussions in which a group of four of us have engaged as webrought into focus the challenge of new thinking about knowledge andlearning. Our attention has been with the environments of schooling itself.From the diverse perspectives of those who inhabit schools, we havesought to consider new principles emerging from postmodern ways ofthinking about learning environments that guide policies and practicessurrounding the ways in which we inhabit school learning environments.

Gough’s (1987) argument for the importance of an ecological understandingof education speaks to the heart of our concern as environmental educators:

B. SHAPIRO, L. RICHARDS, N. ROSS AND K. KENDAL-KNITTER2

To have a profoundly ecological understanding of education we must shift our attentionfrom the objects of environmental education (such as desired states of the environment orchanged human attitudes) to interrelationships – to the interactions between people andother people that we call ‘teaching’. (p. 50)

It is in this spirit that we have come together to consider how newperspectives and thinking influence the organization of interrelationships inthe environments of schooling. Our ideas about what is meant by learningenvironment include the physical milieu, its surroundings and the socialand intellectual interactions that exist there, but we also have been deeplyinterested in the philosophical principles, cultural values, ethics and moralpositions that direct the organization of those settings and, hence, driveschool organization policy regarding the use of time.

We begin with a story that served as an initial focus for our discussionsin which we sought to explore areas of teacher concern that, when not givenvoice in school settings, remain like hard knots in the stomach. Linda’s storywas written as part of her critical essay for the Master’s degree in educationat the University of Calgary (Richards, 1997):

Last year in a staff meeting, I sat facing some staff members and staring at the backs ofothers as we discussed next year’s timetable, a schedule that would bring about possibleactions and changes for the following year. During this meeting, it became apparent thatan emotional tidal wave was forming on the horizon. Obstacles emerged. We created themas we sought to find, and sought to understand, a meaningful pedagogical pathway througha proposed alteration of our school timetable.

For the female teaching staff and male administrative team, the tension was about therhythm of our school environment, specifically, the use of time and about the shifting ofpower relations within our teaching environment. Our new principal who had been at theschool for one year was recommending that the current timetable in use for many years bechanged from a cyclical, five-day rotating schedule to a linear, Monday to Friday pattern.

Debate ensued. Many staff attempted to speak of their concerns. They spoke of thebenefits of the cyclical timetable such as ensuring teachers’ prep time and facilitatinginstructional time allotments and continuity across subject areas. The administration, inturn, dismissed teacher concerns and responded with strategies to compensate for prepand program losses, but the issue of disruption to the flow of the system, and thefragmentation to the pattern of school life was ignored. We were not asked, nor did wevolunteer, to share our lived experience, our stories within both the linear and/or cyclicaltimetables.

As the meeting proceeded, there was a fracturing of alliances between those on eitherside of the timetable issue and those who recognized the hidden issue, that of loyalty/compliance to administrative authority. Although those opposed questioned the integrityof the administrative initiative, they did so with a great deal of anxiety and fear.


Very quickly the petty politics of our institution and personalities began to operate inways that marked individuals as guilty by suspicion. For example, some were suspiciousof the principal’s motives for a timetable change. The underpinnings at play were thestaff’s knowledge of the principal’s frequent absences from school to attend systemmeetings and his difficulty working within the rotating timetable to compensate for thattime loss. Also, some staff members were aware that the two part-time job-share teacherspreferred a Monday to Friday schedule to facilitate their child care arrangements. Whilethese concerns are genuine for the particular individuals involved, and while each spoke ofthe relationships in which their lives were embedded, for many other members of staff, itdid not seem an appropriate focus for the common good of those who live full time in theplace. As these concerns were voiced, the principal dismissed them by emphatically stating,“After all, it’s about kids”.

His comment, “It’s about kids”, interested me, so I asked how a Monday to Friday timetablemet the needs of the learner better than the five-day rotating timetable. I wanted to knowhow the existing timetable was not about kids. His immediate response was that the rest ofthe world is on a Monday to Friday work week. I asked him to explain further the significanceand nature of that relationship as I was curious about how timetabling related to his conceptionof childhood. The conversation never did go deeper than this. It remained as flat an image asthe timetable on the physical piece of paper, the table of time, itself.

The meeting ended as time and teachers were running out . . . to go once again behindclosed doors to teach and to regret.

Linda’s story struck a chord within all of us because it reflected the sameexperiences that we have all had about the complexities of school life,about the anxiety of speaking up, and about the lack of time and opportunityfor teachers to articulate what they believe to be the most significant featuresof the environments of schooling. The first author, instructor in a coursewith the other three authors, encouraged a focus on the untying of knotsthrough discussion, scholarship and writing. We talked about the lack ofopportunity for teachers to voice their concerns about issues concerningdominance, power and control in school settings, about who will be heardand when, and about the need to explore issues that remain as knots untilthey are expressed as issues and concerns.

During the last two years, we have gathered informally to discuss mattersof mutual interest in environmental education, and there has developed avibrant and ongoing sense of collegiality and an interest in having significantand mutually nurturing intellectual conversations. Environmental images andconcepts from postmodern literature and thinking have informed thesediscussions. Our time together has resulted in three research and develop-ment projects in environmental education: one classroom-based project; avideo-exchange project with students in Costa Rica; and this article basedon our discussions on the environments of learning.


As a developing collaborative research group, we have engaged in aseries of discussions together to address the philosophical basis for someof the policies and local decisions that are made in schools that haveconcerned us and often distressed us as professional educators. We havepursued these discussions to untie strands of the ‘knots in the stomach’that we all experience when we know that something is wrong in theenvironments in which we work, but have yet to articulate and identifywhat is concerning us. We selected the topic, time as it is lived in theenvironments of schooling, because we found it to be a re-emerging themein our discussions and in the writing which we shared with one another. Indoing so, we found it useful to examine the ways in which our languageand culture provide resources that direct our thinking about, and hence orexperience of, time in institutional settings. We have therefore sought toidentify historical, institutional, social, cultural and political factors thatinfluence the creation of learning environments in school settings.

In the first part of this article, we present perspectives on conceptionsof time in the environment of schooling by first examining cultural andlinguistic features of time that direct our thinking in Western society. Wereview the historical development of conceptions of time in human history,religious and scientific perspectives of time and, finally, what is meant bypostmodern conceptions and a semiotic perspective on the nature of time.We describe themes that have arisen during our research and discussionson the meaning of time in schooling environments. Exploring issuessurrounding the idea of time and its organization has allowed us to developa focused conversation about reinhabiting schooling. Drawing on theframework of the research literature, we attempt to articulate our concernsabout the lack of connection that we see between what we consider to beeducationally meaningful events and what occurs in school learningenvironments. In this way, we strive to evoke both a new discussion andnew courage to contribute to the conversation about the ways in whichlearning environments might be organized and how educators and learnerscan engage differently in school settings.

2. VISIONS OF TIME

2.1. Living By Metaphors of Time

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) see the dominant view of time in Westernculture as ‘time as valuable commodity’. As it has developed, the conceptof work is associated with the amount of time it takes to complete a job.Because we are able to quantify time so precisely, it has become customary


to pay people in terms of the exact amount of time spent on a task. Hencetime has become equivalent to money. In their book, Metaphors We LiveBy, Lakoff and Johnson describe how, through metaphor, we create a systemof thinking that determines how we live in the world. We can see throughexamples of our common language and expression, our lived metaphorsof time, and how the ways in which we view things guide speech andaction, as in ‘time as valuable commodity’. This view is lived throughcommon expressions used when referring to time:

I don’t have the time to give you.

How do you spend your time these days?

That flat tire cost me an hour.

I don’t have enough time to spare for that.

You need to budget your time.

Put aside some time for ping pong.

I’ve invested a lot of time in her.

You’re running out of time.

Is that worth your while?

He’s living on borrowed time.

I lost a lot of time when I got sick.

Thank you for your time. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 8)

Such phrases portray conceptions of our relationship to time through ideasabout spending, investing, budgeting, profiting, costing, using, using up,having enough of, running out of, giving, losing and thanking for whichcharacterize a coherent system of concepts and ways of living these ideas.These views are lived out in our daily life. We note that conceptions of ourrelationship with nature are viewed in a similar way and, in fact, our visionsof nature and the natural world, in terms of management of resources andresource allocation and sustainable development, are similar. Our visionsof time and nature inform one another in significant ways.

Covey et al. (1994) characterize the struggle with modern notions of timeas a contrast between two powerful metaphors, the clock and the compass.


The clock depicts time as commodity and directs how we will apportion,control, schedule and manage time. The compass presents the vision,direction and principles that we value. The image of the compass raisesquestions about how our lives are to be led (p. 19). The clock metaphoris about managing time. The compass metaphor is about leadership,about making decisions, keeping a vision with goals and purposes inmind. The authors suggest conceptualizing life as a jar filled with stonesand sand. The stones represent the visions and values that we hold tobe of greatest importance, and must be placed in the jar first, then thesmaller ones, and finally the grains of sand. If we were to fill the jarwith sand and small stones first, there would be no room for the largerstones. Our philosophical foundation must come first.

2.2. Historical, Scientific and Religious Ideas About Time

Mircea Eliade (1971) in Myth of the Eternal Return, cited by Berman(1984), shows how the premodern conception of time is cyclical. Paleolithichunter-foragers believe that “time was synchronous, folded into an eternalmythical present” (Oelschlaeger, 1991, p. 12). Early Christians broughtabout a view of time as “diachronic and headed somewhere” (Oelschlaeger,1991, pp. 65–66). For the Christian, time has two poles: the beginning (asdepicted in Genesis I); and the end, the day of Judgement when the deadshall rise. This view embodies the idea of the universe having been createdat a particular point in time (Oelschlaeger, 1991).

In the Middle Ages, seasons and events followed one another. The ideaof time as a linear experience was experientially alien to this world. Therewas little need to measure it. This was changing by the 13th century whenclocks in Italian cities struck at each hour. The phrase ‘time is money’ datesfrom the 16th century as the idea that time is in short supply and runningout. From the 17th century on, the clock became a metaphor for the universeitself. Boorstin (1983) writes that the marking of time in days, months,minutes, hours and seconds transformed human experience, “liberating”humankind from the “cyclical, monotony of nature” (p. l). Later, Boorstincomments:

So long as man marked his life only by the cycles of nature – the changing seasons, thewaxing and waning moon – he remained a prisoner of nature. If he was to go his ownway and fill his world with human novelties, he would have to make his own measures oftime. And these man-made cycles would be wonderfully varied. (p. 12)

Boorstin documents this liberation from the cyclical nature of day and night,stating that it was only by “escaping the sun’s tyranny that we could ever


learn to measure out time in universally uniform spoonfuls” (p. 28). He sawhumans as “slaves of the sun” who, in order to become “masters of time, neededto assimilate night into the day, to slice life into neat, useable portions” (p. 36).In order to do so, humankind needed to find a way to mark off precise smallportions – not only equal hours, but minutes and seconds and parts of seconds.The principal measure of distance in astronomy is now the parsec, equal to3.26 light years. Since the parsec explicitly refers to the distance light travelsin a particular period of time, distance is itself a reflection of time.

Thinking this way has allowed us to calculate the distance to the nearestgalaxy, Andromeda, and ultimately to gauge the age of the universe. Whencontemplating the universe, using new thinking in science, we are askedto think about time and space in ways that are counter-intuitive, remarkableand, for some, nearly unthinkable (Flanagan, 1988, p. 66).

The postmodern view of time challenges the Newtonian clockworkperspective from classical physics, which builds on a vision of the universeas having been created in a particular time and space, as opposed to the ideaof time and space being interwoven into the essence of the cosmos (Slattery,1995, p. 613). The postmodern view sees the universe as having been createdwith time rather than at a specific point in time and space.

Spiritual perspectives on time promote the value of setting aside specificdays or periods to be considered as ‘sacred time’, which is measured anddistinct from regular daily activities, and is organized to promote renewalor to value higher aspects of human development. For example, manyorganizations set aside regular periods for fasting, rituals or personal andcommunal prayer. Individual needs and values unrelated to religious concernsalso create the need for periods of time that are untouched by other demandsfor uninterrupted personal use. Examples are ‘quality time’ to be spent withfamily members or personal periods to be used for meditation or relaxation.

2.3. Modern Perspectives on the Nature of Time and theOrganization of Learning Environments

Slattery (1995) notes that the philosophy of modernity has resulted in anexaggerated emphasis on the manipulation of time in studies of schoollearning, with the appearance of such terms as “time on task”, “wait time”,“time out”, and “contact hours” (p. 612). This view of time as an object tobe carefully controlled keeps us from being attentive to what it means tobe a being who lives in time. Slattery notes that most educators areconcerned with time as an external force that constrains them, resulting inan insatiable desire for more and more time, with the addition of morecurriculum topics. Following this model of time, as educators are asked to


accomplish more goals in less and less time, their work becomes drivenby time constraints rather than by concerns for the quality and depth ofmaterial covered in a given period of time (Slattery, 1995).

Slattery suggests that the modernist solution to this problem has beento develop technology and organizational structures that facilitate thereallocation of time ever more efficiently. The problem of putting more andmore into less and less time is further compounded as advancements intechnology allow us to more precisely and rigorously count increments of time.Temporality is construed as a series of linear events that can be broken downand segmented into units, then evaluated. This can encourage the evaluationof trivial bits and pieces rather than deep understandings of subject matter.

As Slattery notes, those involved in school settings know that randomnessand chaos more accurately define their lives than predictability and stability,and yet modern schools remain organized around the modern conceptionof time as controllable and manageable. We know that a rigid managementof order is not possible in school settings. We suggest that it is also not themost useful basis for the organization of school learning environments andargue the need for a new way of thinking about and living with time in schools.Through the clarification of these contrasting perspectives on time and the waysin which we live time, we seek new recognition of the need for a more complexview – one that encompasses a postmodern conception of time.

2.4. Postmodern Perspectives and Concern With Images ofBecoming

In a modernist perspective on time and the evaluation of learning, the focusis on the outcomes of learning. Questions about the learner’s experience oflearning and the process of becoming are secondary. In response to theNational Education Commission report (U.S. Government Printing Office,1994), Prisoners of Time, Slattery (1995, p. 614–615) remarks that “thechallenge is to integrate the past and the future into the existential present”– or what Martin Heidegger (Krell, 1993) refers to as a focus on presence.Heidegger is concerned with the process of becoming. In relation to learning,the metaphor is one of emergence. At the foundation of Whitehead’s (1960)work, we also find a fundamental concern with issues of process and theimportance of individual emergence. We would prefer to incorporate such aperspective into a vision of time and our work with learners in school settings.

2.5. Semiotic Interpretive Views of Time

A semiotic consideration of time and its interpretation in school learningsettings brings us closer to questioning how students interpret time as a


part of a set of signification systems. Semiotics, when applied to education(Shapiro, 1998; Shapiro & Kirby, 1997, 1998) explores how teachers andstudents work together to make meaning in school settings, and examineshow their ways of working together are representative of the values andactivities of the larger culture. As Danesi (1994) notes, cultures are socialterritories as well as ideological entities. Architecture, for example, is the“art of imbuing living spaces with symbolic meaning” (p. 186). Buildingheight conveys a specific kind of meaning. Buildings with the greateststature in Western modern culture are those holding financial power.Teachers use these culturally accepted meanings in the design ofcommunication settings usually standing at the front of a classroom,sometimes on an elevated platform while students are seated. This actionspeaks a message about who holds the authority in the setting. Thearchitectural code is read by the learner as a part of a system of significationor representation of space.

The structuring and regulation of time is also a part of the significationsystem of the institution of schooling. Its structuring is part of a shared systemof meaning conveying a commonly understood set of rules of inference andimplication (Worth, 1981, p. 74). A semiotic consideration of events is basedon the idea that reality is not disclosed directly but is experienced throughsymbols and activities mediated by culture and language. Patterns and routineorganization of learning activities, such as ‘typical’ lesson structure, dialoguepatterns or patterns of interaction, speak a message to students. In examiningthe reading of time in classroom settings, we might note the amount of timedevoted to a particular topic as speaking a message about the value attributedto that subject. An increase in time, for example, has recently been officiallyallotted to the teaching of science in elementary schools in some Canadianprovinces. The fragmentation of the school day into individual subject areasis a meaning-making practice that stresses the differences rather than thelinks and points of interest between subject disciplines. The amount of timedevoted to examination preparation and test taking relative to instructionspeaks a message about the importance of doing well on competitiveexaminations as opposed to spending time understanding subject matter.

3. THE NEED TO INCORPORATE BOTH NEW VISIONS AND NEW VOICES

IN DISCUSSION OF TIME IN ENVIRONMENTS OF SCHOOLING

We have attempted to articulate concerns about the administration ofschool settings by introducing new thinking about time in schoolenvironments. In doing this, as Fien (1993, p. 15) suggested, we ask for


“acknowledgement of multiple discourses and contestation over the natureand meaning of educational activities”. We have examined historical andpostmodern literature for insight into the arguments of new perspectives ontime and seek ways to help those who work in educational settings on a day-to-day basis to develop new and courageous conversations about its use.

In the next section, we present an example of a postmodern reading ofone aspect of time use in schools, namely, the ‘timetable’. We then makefour recommendations about how educators might facilitate and encouragethis conversation: Valuing talk and critical analysis of the daily life of schooling;refreshment and rejuvenation through engagement in research on the life ofschooling; turning to ecological images to inform our thinking; and building apolitics of hope.

3.1. ‘The Table of Time’

We have attempted to provide some suggestions to help us look at time inthe environments of schooling in new ways, to transform the timetablefrom its existence as a one-dimensional object, a ‘table of time’, to a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional vehicle which allows the rich creation of eventsby the teacher and others within the school. We do not suggest a quick fixapproach to the organization of time, but to inspire new ways ofconceptualizing time and its meanings by those who inhabit school settings.The organization of time, following the standard modern timetable, createsa kind of predictable experience and a hierarchical organization of subjects.Giroux (1994) notes that structures such as timetables are forms of regulationthat perpetuate the norms and values of the dominant culture. Use of thetimetable in school environments, on the one hand, helps us to organizebut, on the other hand, demands that we follow a specific order orprearranged schedule. The assumptions of this model do not valuedivergence, chaos, any sort of intellectual meandering (or spontaneousplanning to allow the extensive time needed for a meandering approach),or the benefits of the time needed for a deep experience in learning. In thisway, the timetable is a form for managing predetermined rituals, implyingthat teachers and students know little about its proper or wise use and thatour time of learning together must be programmed for us.

When teachers and students refer to the value of spending time in the‘real’ world outside of school or on field studies, they could be speakingless of the differences between what goes on in school settings and theworking world, and more about the benefits of breaking the routine andpattern of rigid school timetables. We believe that educators are capable ofand need to participate in the discussion of how time is valued and therefore


used in school environments. Our concern is that this discussion is usuallyless about what is important in considerations of learning experiences andis more about the efficient segmentation of days and weeks. The questionthen arises, “How can we most effectively bring new voices and new ideasinto the discussion?”

3.2. Valuing Talk and a Critical Approach to Analysis ofOrganization of Learning Environments

In this article, we have described our discussions of concern and suggestednew thinking about the nature of time and timetabling in the environmentsof schooling. This exploration has allowed us to identify more fundamentalissues about how school environments are organized, leading to discussionsof issues of power, control. This leads to the gaining of strength in thevoices of teachers in recommending change and being involved in decisionsabout what is most meaningful in schooling. Such issues go beyondconceptions of time and address how new ideas and values about theorganization of learning environments are raised and influence policy-making. In many ways, we have taken a critical theoretical approach toconsidering these deeper pedagogical issues. Critical theory is basedon an attempt to find democratic ways to improve society. It attemptsto open up ideas, question and examine the status quo and therebydevelop a critical understanding of a situation. It is also concernedwith working towards finding a way to hear the voices of all partiesand to avoid the oppression of anyone concerned. We wouldencourage educators reflecting on issues to consider asking questionssuggested by Apple and Beane (1995) to open up a critique: “Who saidthis? Why did they say it? Why should you believe it? Who benefits if webelieve this and act upon it?” (p. 14).

We have attempted to ask such questions and to add historical andphilosophical insights. To summarize our discussion, the modern Westernconception of time is asynchronous; timetabling represents a particularrepresentation of reality that does not value the chaos, messiness, diversityand time needed to have a deep experience. Schooling represents ritualizedactivity, but we are concerned that such activity might sometimes lead toa lack of consciousness. This brings us to a discussion about the ways inwhich teachers engage in talk about their work in school settings and howthis talk might transform their work. As Biklen (1995) notes in her studyof the institutional talk of teachers:

What teachers do and how they talk about what they do are partially constructed by whatschools do to teachers as teachers spend time there. Schools as institutions provide certain


boundaries to construct acceptable or unacceptable behavior, to promote one kind of actingover another. These boundaries also frame the teachers’ choices. Within these boundaries,teachers can make certain decisions and still stay within the framework of the acceptable.Teachers disciplined and regulated each other through talk as they increased their agencywhen they talked with each other about the subversive. They also nourished and engagedeach other through talk. (p. 144)

It has been through talk and through the strength which we have gained inour own relationships of mutual support and engagement that we haveselected the topic of time and made the decision to work together to writethis article. We cannot stress strongly enough the value of talk and thecreation of community and the intellectual stimulation that we haveexperienced through this critique of time in schooling environments.

We would like to suggest other ways in which educators might build thisstrength. One approach is to be refreshed and rejuvenated by the researchand thought of those who work at the level of schooling. Another is to turnto other fields of study, such as ecology, or to other cultures, such as NativeAmerican culture, for images that help to analyze, rethink and reconnect withthe life of schools.

3.3. Refreshment and Rejuvenation Through Engagement inResearch and Thought of Others Studying School Life

One way for educators to build strength in the articulation of ideas is tosearch for researchers and writers who tackle issues that are of concern.We found, for example, that David Elkind’s (1981) work, The HurriedChild: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon, resonated with our own. Elkindrefers to time use in our culture as reflecting an asynchronous perspective.In Elkind’s view, modern schools reflect the contemporary bias towardhaving children grow up too fast. He believes that this has happened becauseour schools have become increasingly industrialized and product-oriented,standardized, unitized and mechanized. He attributes the industrializationof schooling as an effort to prepare children for new ways of living thatwere a product of industrialization, yet the need for industrialization, asreflected in factory work, is now obsolete. Elkind argues that schools aretherefore out of synch and behind the times because they transmitaccumulated knowledge and skills when the needs of a knowledge explosionand technological revolution demand far different approaches (Elkind,1981).

Elkind notes that schools hurry children because administrators are understress to produce better products. He recounts how the intensity of parents’and educators’ interests even in such activities as children’s play can rob


the activity of its playfulness and pleasure for children. The same is trueof academic pursuits. There is little opportunity for children to discoverareas of their own interest and even less time to spend with a child who isstruggling. When children are able to discover areas of interest and areprovided with significant blocks of time to explore a topic or subject, theyhave a deep experience. The real questions about the organization of schoollearning settings are those that allow us to provide the quality of experiencethat allows children to have a deep experience, not only of the subject matterthat we provide, but in the development of knowledge and confidence inthemselves and their relationships with others.

Turning to the thought and literature of those who write about the creativeprocess leads to rich sources of insight into the variety of time needs by thoseengaged in learning activities. Cameron and Bryan (1992) write about thetime needs of the artist:

An artist must have downtime, time to do nothing. Defending our right to such time takescourage, conviction, and resiliency. Such time, space and quiet will strike our family andfriends as withdrawal. It is. For an artist, withdrawal is necessary. Without it, the artist inus feels vexed, angry and out of sorts. (p. 96)

Norman Cousins (1975) argues that we consider how we value time spentin the habit of thought:

. . . (W)e seem to have everything we need except the most important thing of all – timeto think and the habit of thought . . . Thought is the basic energy of human history.Civilization is put together not by machines but by thought. Similarly, man’s uniquenessis represented not by his ability to make objects but to sort them and relate them. Leadershiptoday requires . . . an understanding of the lessons of human experience. It requires aprofound knowledge of the diseases of civilizations. It requires the ability to anticipatethe effects of actions. In short, it requires thought . . . The real question, however, concernsnot the time or lack of it we provide for thought, but the value we place on thought.(Saturday Review, March 26, p. 6)

The first author recalls attending a conference in which John Goodladspoke at a plenary session about the importance of having a special place inthe school where anyone could go to have a quiet time out; not a place fordisciplining, but a kind of sanctuary from the mechanical marking of time.These examples show the need for the creation of a system of organizingtime which is multi-dimensional, that is, it has the scope and flexibility toallow for a wide range of purposes, from activities that reflect the needs ofthe physical to intellectual and creative pursuits. Images from other fieldsand cultural perspectives can provide new ways of thinking about time andtime use.


Native elder, Dayton Edmunds (personal communication, 1997), notesthat we have a need to reconsider what it is that determines the blossomingand ripening of all life. It is the sun, the rain, and the events of every day,not time. He encourages us to consider ‘spatial living’ rather than thecurrent focus on ‘time living’ which governs us. When we consider spatialliving, we come back into relationship with nature. He speaks of nature astimeless. We speak of life and death and say that this is evidence of time’sexistence, but it is more a proof of our relationship with nature and withthe circle of life. Other spiritual perspectives also blend ecological andspiritual perspectives, as in Gandhi’s perception linking changing time withspiritual forces. As cited by Bastedo (1994, p. 84), Gandhi (1982) connectedthe creation of time with a larger power: “. . . whilst everything around meis ever-changing, ever-dying, there is, underlying all that change a livingpower that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, andrecreates”.

3.4. Turning to Ecology for Images to Inform our Thinking

The need for new sources of imagery and insight is even greater when werealize, as Foltz (1995) reminds us, that “technology threatens to becomefor us the only manner of revealing” (p. 105). He notes that this is evenmore dangerous because “technology conceals not only the character of itsown revealing, but, more importantly, its own character as a kind ofrevealing” (p. 105). A technological perspective dominates our culture andhence the ways in which we think about and organize institutional time.The dominance of technology and the linear pattern of organization oftime alienate us from the natural ebbs and flows of nature, life and deathcycles, from each other and from the present moment. In the school setting,linear conceptions of time play out in the segregation and fragmentationof subject areas in the curriculum, in organizing children into classes basedon their existence in time (with six-year-olds in one class and eight-year-olds in another and for many good and sound reasons). But are there notalso good and perhaps even better reasons for doing things differently?What we ask is for a deeper look at the way in which time is organizedand consideration that ideas of those who are most directly involved arealso important in making policy and planning decisions.

Macy (1991) reiterates this perspective and suggests that we might moreconsciously create new ways of thinking about our environments, by drawingon what she refers to as ecological images:

We are hidden from ourselves by patterns of perception. Our thought forms, our language,encourage us to see ourselves or a plant or an animal as an isolated sac, a thing, a contained


self, whereas the epidermis of the skin is ecologically like a pond surface or a forest soil,not a shell so much as a delicate interpretation. (p. 33)

Macy sees taking a serious view of the ecological perspective describedabove as a matter of survival because we as a species have no futureapart from the health of the environment in which we live. She urgesthat we begin to think in ecological ways now:

And we don’t need to wait ‘till we have created new institutions. We can begin now; bychoice and mindfulness of our experience of time, we can become friendly with time. Wecan watch its rhythm in the breathing moment, and sense how its very passage, far fromrobbing us of life, connects us with the past and future ones. They become to us likeunseen companions as we reinhabit time. (p. 219)

Ecological images help us to see new ways to engage time or, asOelschlaeger (1991) writes, “to engage time – the flow of life – like achild” (p. 155). Technological images move us away from the flow of lifeto a linear marking of time. We find that drawing on ecological images toask questions about what it is that we want to be the message of time inschool settings helps in considering how to teach children about the valueof time in their lives, about their own uses of time and how we, as beingsin time, organize and control it in our world.

4. EMBRACING A POLITICS OF HOPE: SRENGTHENING OUR VOICES

Our discussion on the meaning of time in school environments has broughtus back once again to the need for educators to make their voices heard andto give thoughtful attention to deeper issues behind the kind of story thatLinda has told and that are experienced by all of us. We have attempted tochallenge the cultural values and policies that drive the organization oflearning environments. The development of our arguments is based onrecognition of McLaren’s (1991) observation: “Every ideological guarantee– or idea that goes unquestioned in public discourse and social practice –carries with it unstated assumptions, unsuspected consequences, shroudedin ethical and epistemological issues” (p. 17). We have attempted to articulateand organize our thoughts about conceptions of time, and to go deeply intothe hard emotional knot that is created when we do not speak our minds andour truth, or are silenced in our attempts to do so. This deep focus on thediversity of ideas about the seemingly neutral topic, time, leads us to question,“How do we learn to articulate and present our views about the organizationand operation of school environments?” We have attempted to provide,through discussion and scholarship, historical perspective and root


assumptions about the meaning of time in our culture. We have exploredour own values and thinking about how an exploration of the meaning oftime brings us to what is most meaningful and significant in our lives inschooling. Through a critical appraisal of our assumptions and views of apostmodern perspective of time, our conclusion is in agreement with Purpel(1993): “Our work as educators ought to have little to do with increasingproductivity, patriotism and pride, but much more to do with meeting ourresponsibilities to create a compassionate consciousness” (p. 89). With greaterand greater dissatisfaction with schools and new efforts being made to createnew approaches to building learning environments, we believe that thisconsciousness must be brought into discussions about how learningenvironments can be more meaningfully organized.

Recognition of the political nature of promoting new ideas has helped usto value the practice of a critical pedagogical approach in an inquiry into theuse of time in school settings. We have raised our conversation to the levelof critique, working hard to create an environment of positive interpersonalrelationships, respecting one another’s beliefs and values. Purpel notes thata critical pedagogical approach puts “. . . a great deal of reliance on raisingthe consciousness of people’s lived experiences, particularly as they relateto issues of power, freedom, equality, and justice” (p. 81). We believe thatnot only must we help one another to value the intellectual articulation ofthoughts and ideas, but we must become more politically astute in thepresentation of those ideas. We consider this awareness to be at the heartof what we very deliberately identify as our hopeful approach not just topolitics, but to pedagogy. As Mohanty (1994) writes, such an approach topedagogy “. . . is an attempt to get students to think critically about theirplace in relation to the knowledge which they gain and to transform theirworldview fundamentally by taking the politics of knowledge seriously.It is a pedagogy that attempts to link knowledge, social responsibility, andcollective struggle, and it does so by emphasizing the risks that educationinvolves, the struggles for institutional change, and the strategies forchallenging forms of domination and by creating more equitable and justpublic spheres within and outside educational institutions” (p. 152).

Frank (1995) notes that the challenge is to make this a “multivocal ethic”that recognizes “multiple voices and affords each full legitimacy in reachinga consensus that is not only workable in achieving minimal compliance ofall parties, but is also moral in the sense of respecting the values of all whosecompliance is required” (p. 146). Decisions such as those made by membersof school staff, in order to truly be multivocal, must allow each person tohave the space and time to reflect and comment before decisions are made.When the administration comes to the meeting with decisions already made


on issues that profoundly affect everyone in the school, they might silence,devalue and even demean the opinions of those who attempt to look at thingsin a different way.

This article has been born as much out of a need to consider the natureof time and school environments as it has been to consider how new ideasabout school environments might emerge and be nurtured. The article arisesfrom the need to speak in new ways about the environment of schoolingand about the place of educators in speaking. It has resulted in an affirmationof our joy and hope in doing so to create the time and place in schoolenvironments where new voices can be heard. This thinking is rootedin the postmodern valuing of human beings growing and becoming.Galeano (1989) beautifully expresses this hopefulness:

When it is genuine, when it is borne of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice.When denied a mouth, it speaks with the hands or the eyes, or the pores, or anything atall. Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something thatdeserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others. (p. 25)

It has been through our talk, reading and discussion and through the waysthat we have built relationships with one another that we gain strengthand are encouraged and inspired. It is with hopefulness and sensitivity tothe interrelationships within our working environments that we attempt tointerweave arguments for newer, deeper understandings of time, for a neworganization of learning settings, and for a way to proceed consciously tohave this conversation with one another.

5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Resources for the development of this article were made possible withgrants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canadaand the Alberta Advisory Committee for Educational Studies. Weacknowledge these organizations with gratitude.

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BONNIE SHAPIRO, LINDA RICHARDS, NITA ROSS AND KIM KENDAL-KNITTER

1102 EDT The University of CalgaryCalgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada(Correspondence to: Bonni Shapiro)


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Time and the Environments of Schooling