Interruptions are the enemies of teaching and learning - but they don’t always look the way we expect them to.

When we think of classroom interruptions, we tend to focus on things students do that bring learning to a halt. For example, you might envisage a situation whereby you’re in the middle of explaining a complex idea only to have a student stick up their hand and ask to go to the toilet.

Just like that, your train of thought has been derailed. You forget your point. The lesson-flow tap is abruptly turned off.

In another scenario, you might be outlining important instructions for a task when a student announces they’ve forgotten their booklet and asks if they could please have another copy. You find yourself scrabbling about for a spare booklet, while the rest of the class is waiting to begin.

Student interruptions

These scenarios are classic student interruptions. Caused by poor pupil organisation, these occurrences inhibit learning and frustrate teachers in the process. Other commonplace student interruptions include:

• Irrelevant questions
• Saying they feel unwell and asking to see the nurse
• Forgetting their password
• Not catching up with work when absent.

That’s without even mentioning low-level behaviour issues. Off-task chatter, poor punctuality, unauthorised phone use: all can cause huge disruption.

As a result, teachers and school leaders understandably prioritise eliminating student interruptions.

However, recent research indicates that when teachers and leaders address only student disruption, they miss out on the opportunity to minimise other significant distractions.

External interruptions

In a 2021 paper, researchers Matthew Kraft and Manuel Monti-Nussbaum investigated the frequency, type and duration of less obvious distractions in an American school district (Providence Public School District in the state of Rhode Island).

Avoiding the well-trodden ground of student interruptions, Kraft and Monti-Nussbaum instead focused on external interruptions, which they defined as “intrusions from outside the classroom that are not under the direct control of classroom teachers”.

Examples of external interruptions that teachers can do little about include:

• Calls to classroom phones
• Senior leadership team learning walks
• Students being taken out of lessons
• Emails for which a response is expected during that period.

The study was conducted in the US, so intercom announcements during lessons were also highlighted as a particular bugbear.

Thankfully, UK schools don’t use intercoms to give Rydell High-style xylophone-chime messages - but we do have our own equally annoying brand of external interruption.

How many times, for example, have you abandoned teaching while a message is passed on about hockey training times? How many telephone calls have you received attempting to reunite a stray packed lunch with its peckish owner?

Indeed, Kraft and Monti-Nussbaum’s research makes clear that external interruptions are a major issue, numbering more than 2,000 a year in a typical classroom.

And the impact on learning? According to Kraft and Monti-Nussbaum, the negative effects are massive, with the disruptions they cause resulting “in the loss of between 10 and 20 days of instructional time” over the course of the year.

But why are these apparently small interruptions so problematic? After all, two to four weeks of wasted teaching time does seem excessive. How can these seemingly minor incidents lead to so much lost learning?

The key factor here is the snowball effect of little interruptions. A colleague calling into the class to grab spare textbooks might only take 10 seconds but the after-effects can last much longer. 

As Kraft and Monti-Nussbaum explain: “At the most basic level, interruptions take away from time in class. More importantly, they provide an opening for further disruptions to the classroom learning environment…

“Teachers’ concern over losing lesson momentum likely reflects the cognitive tax that small interruptions can levy on students’ learning.”

In other words, students lose focus and struggle to regain it long after the initial break in concentration. While the powerful tremor of disruption has gone, aftershocks of inattention continue to ripple.

Minimising external distractions

External interruptions are out of teachers’ control but that doesn’t mean they should simply be tolerated.

School leaders can, for example, ask support staff not to make classroom calls unless absolutely necessary. They can curtail leaf blowing near classrooms during lessons. They can ensure their own classroom visits help to improve rather than impede learning. They can patrol the school to keep corridors quiet. And they can create a culture in which ignoring emails while teaching is considered a good, not a bad, thing.  

Teacher interruptions

In our ideal world, we’ve sorted out low-level disruption and have asked colleagues to think twice before bursting into our classroom to borrow a hole punch. Interruption-free learning can now take place, right? Well, not quite.

You see, when it comes to interruptions, teachers are sometimes the worst culprits. Our students are on task, the class next door are working silently and then we go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like “just one more thing…”.

Kraft and Monti-Nussbaum’s paper focused solely on interruptions from external sources; they didn’t account for teachers disrupting their own classes. But I’d be happy to bet that, like student behaviour and other outside factors, teachers contribute heavily to lost learning time, too. 

As with external disruption causing longer-term inattention, teacher interruptions likely also come with a similar “cognitive tax”. How frequently have your students been working quietly, only for you to stop them and add “just one more thing” for them to consider? Over the years, I’ve been as guilty of this error as anyone. 

Yet there are plenty of other ways teachers hinder their students’ thinking, such as:

• Intrusive circulation
• Loud individual feedback
• Unnecessary time countdowns
• Collecting homework while the class are on task.

Reducing teacher interruptions

Changing your teaching habits is never easy but avoiding unnecessary interruptions is vital.

Teachers will always need to circulate, provide diagnostic feedback and take in homework, for example. But if we’re going to help rather than hold back, we must reflect on our pedagogical approach to these tasks. 

This might mean circulating stealthily and only giving whispered feedback while students are working silently. It might be conducting homework discussions while students are packing up, rather than focused on a task.

It might be improving the clarity of instructions, to avoid having to pause and explain again. It will definitely involve forcing ourselves to stop adding “one more thing” when students are busy.

Ultimately, teachers need to reflect continually on their interruptions to learning. Do time countdowns, for instance, spur productivity or distract those thinking deeply about how to finish? Are their digressions fascinating forays into the hinterland of knowledge or are they unhelpful diversions from the key information students need to know?

These are not easy questions. That we need to minimise distractions by pupils is obvious. That we need to reduce external intrusions is, in light of Kraft and Monti-Nussbaum’s research, equally clear. 

But deciding which teacher pauses are useful, and which are unnecessary, is less straightforward. 

It’s only through careful evaluation of different types of teacher interruption that we can stop ourselves becoming one of the biggest learning disruptors in the room.

Mark Roberts is director of research and English teacher at Carrickfergus Grammar School in Northern Ireland