Teachers’ Time Allocation: Our Insights
Language teachers manage a variety of tasks as part of their professional responsibilities. To better understand how they allocate their time, we conducted a study with 30 participants. 15 individual online tutors and 15 classroom teachers working in schools at different levels. We specifically talked to those who teach English as a second language (ESL). These people, aged 25–40, were based in various locations, including the USA, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, UAE, Indonesia, China, Thailand, and Malaysia.
The study aimed to explore the differences in time distribution across tasks such as teaching, grading, lesson preparation, and administrative duties. The results offer a useful perspective on how teachers spend their working hours.
Results of the Study
Here is a summary of the median weekly time allocation for both school teachers and individual tutors:
Observations from the Study
1. Time Spent on Teaching
Teaching in the classroom or during online sessions obviously takes up the largest share of teachers’ working time—71.1% for school teachers and 79.4% for tutors. This reflects the core focus of their roles, though the remaining time is distributed across other important tasks.
2. Grading and Homework Checking
School teachers spend more time (22.2%) on grading and homework checking compared to tutors (8.8%). This is due to the obligatory nature of home assignments and significantly larger class sizes in school settings, which require more time for assessment-related activities.
3. Lesson Preparation
Tutors allocate more time (8.8%) to preparing lesson materials than school teachers (2.2%). This difference is likely influenced by the more personalized and flexible approach required in one-on-one tutoring compared to standardized curricula in schools.
4. Administrative Duties
Administrative tasks occupy a smaller portion of teachers’ time—4.4% for school teachers and 2.9% for tutors. While these tasks are necessary, they take less time compared to other activities and are not of much interest for our analysis.
These observations reveal that while teaching takes up the majority of ESL teachers’ working hours, non-teaching activities—particularly grading, preparation, and administrative duties—account for a significant portion of their workload, more than we expected. The balance between these tasks also varies depending on teaching contexts, with individual tutors facing different challenges than school teachers.
How AI Can Support Teachers
So let’s have a look at how AI can help:
• Grading and Feedback: AI can automate grading, offering instant feedback and freeing up hours spent on assessments.
• Lesson Preparation: AI can generate lesson plans, quizzes, and tailored materials based on student levels or learning goals, saving time on research and customization.
• Personalized Teaching: By analyzing student progress, AI can recommend resources or activities, enabling teachers to create more effective and individualized learning experiences.
• Administrative Tasks: AI tools can automate routine tasks like filling out class registers, generating reports, and scheduling, reducing the burden of paperwork.
These applications of AI can help focus more on engaging with students and less on repetitive and boring tasks.
We Are Here to Help
To help teachers adopt these technologies, InAction AI Academy offers a course “AI-Powered Teaching.” It is designed specifically for language teachers and introduces educators to tools and techniques that can streamline their work, including:
• Automating grading and creating assessments.
• Generating and customizing lesson materials.
• Analyzing student performance to tailor teaching strategies.
• Simplifying administrative tasks like scheduling and communication.
By learning to use AI tools, teachers can optimize their time and focus more on supporting students.
To Sum Up
We made an attempt to provide an overview of how language teachers allocate their working hours, highlighting differences between school teachers and individual tutors. While teaching occupies most of their time, more than a quarter goes to non-core monotonous tasks that can be delegated to AI.
AI tools offer practical solutions to reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks, allowing teachers to focus more on their students and teaching goals. At InAction AI Academy, our course is designed to support educators in integrating AI into their workflows, helping them work more efficiently and effectively.
