Class size & Learning: Problems of Larger-Size Class

Class size & Learning: Problems of Larger-Size Class

From students’ perspective

Easier to misbehavior and be off-task

My personal experience as a student is that I love to be in a class where there are many students because it means that my friends and I could often get away with irresponsible behavior such as passing notes, not being on task and my teacher will not be able to catch me at it. Even if the teacher is aware of it, she cannot do anything because she needs to continue teaching for whenever she stopped teaching to reprimand us, it is time-out for the others act up. I believe in the end , my teacher chose to ignore us because she became indifferent to our misbehavior. –Dorothy, January 29, 2008, EDCI 6304

Weaker interpersonal relationship with the teacher

For the last three years, I have experienced very large groups and realized that I did not have a strong teacher-relationship with my students. The groups were too large that even trying to get to know one thing about them would take half of the class time and left very little time for the content. —Aaron, January 29, 2008, EDCI 6304

I have noticed the difference class size makes while I was in college. The basic courses were always filled with 60 or more people. This makes it harder for each and every student to interact with the professor; I definitely sat near the professor to hear the lectures.— Mayra Garcia January 31, 2008, EDCI 6304

Feeling more uncomfortable

When the classes are too large the learning environment is too uncomfortable for both the teacher and student.—Aaron, January 29, 2008, EDCI 6304

From teachers’ perspective

More work

If we add up the amount of work a teacher has to do per student, we will see that sometimes it can be overwhelming. Each student must cover math, English, science, reading, spelling, social studies, and writing, that is seven assignments per student x the number of students in his/her class, that is a lot of work for a teacher with a large class size.—Ernesto Guillen February 4, 2008, EDCI 6304

Harder to reach all students

As a teacher whose regular class size is 40 and a small class size is 36, the effect class size has on my teaching is the tendency to teach to the middle. It is the hope that in teaching to the middle, you can get at least 70% to understand what you are teaching. Since I cannot meet all the needs of the students, (per instructions from the administrator) interventions were undertaken for the students who score at the bottom 20% .–Dorothy, January 29, 2008, EDCI 6304

I teach physical education and we also struggle with large class sizes. On average I have 60 to 70 students per grade level. Can you imagine having 60 to 70 pre kindergarten students and trying to do an activity with out them getting hurt? —Ernesto Guillen February 4, 2008, EDCI 6304

Poorer learning

I have seen first-hand the effects of students being in large classes with my current group of 8th graders. Last year, due to staffing shortages at my campus, they were crammed in classrooms that averaged 35 students per class. It was harder for their teachers to do labs and hands-on activities effectively with these large groups. Consequently, their performance this year is being affected. —Carlos Moreno February 5, 2008, EDCI 6304

As for the effect on students’ learning , I now believe that it was disastrous. I taught two English classes; each with 40 students. In the exit examinations (an external paper that is set and marked in United Kingdom), out of the 80 students that I taught , only 10 passed the English language test. Students were considered to have failed the grade if they received a failing grade in the English exam. Trying to help the bottom 20 % only meant that in the end I could not help anyone at all. There was no way, no time to help students read better and learn the right reading strategies for the different content material. We had no problem with the writing, it was the reading comprehension tests that stumped my students. –Dorothy, January 29, 2008, EDCI 6304

Harder to discipline/manage

I believe that class size significantly impacts student learning. The greater the size the class, the more likely that student learning is affected negatively. Part of the reason has to be due to classroom management issues. Having control of the classroom is essential to creating a good learning environment, which gets harder to do when the size of the class increases.—Carlos Moreno February 5, 2008, EDCI 6304

I remember my mom telling me that when she went to school in Matamoros, her class sizes were up to 50! Imagine having 50 first graders in one classroom with only one teacher...that is insane. She says the only reason students stayed on task was because they had very strict teachers and very strict parents that they were afraid of back in the 60s.—Mayra Garcia January 31, 2008, EDCI 6304

When I have a big class, there are more distractions and more whispering when I am teaching. It takes a little longer to get them focused on the lesson. —Henry, February 4, 2008, EDCI 6304

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