I prefer 20 - 30 and believe that is a good number to engage the students. Sadly, I have seen the trend where 20 - 30 is the target, but also witnessed 60 - 80 and in large setting 200 plus. In those cases, it is not about education, it is about the money.
Hi Hameed,
The answer will be dependent on where the school is; city, state, country etc. Different localities, states and countries have guidelines for class size.
If we should throw away all those and assume there are no restrictions and guidelines, I would not want to have more than 25 students in my class at any level.
I am attaching a file on a study someone did. Hopefully it helps. Good luck.
25 students in a class is manageable,but as Oswald mentioned it not only depends on geographical factors but also logistical problems.
Shanghai manages to have a high-performing education system with large class sizes (an article below sets out to explain how it manages this).
Most teachers would argue quite strongly that class size does make a difference to learners' success, progressively diminishing the opportunity to differentiate and meet the needs of individuals as a class gets bigger (see the teacher perceptions article below and the Korean article claiming improved student attainment as class sizes were reduced).
I recall one of my most successful secondary History classes had 36 students - great classroom atmosphere and engagement and high attainment overall, but even in this positive circumstance I fear that I probably paid insufficient attention to 10 or so quieter, able, but not top-notch students who did not push for my time.
Article Analysis of Different Class Sizes on Teaching Behaviors of E...
Book How Shanghai Does It: Insights and Lessons from the Highest-...
Article The Perception and Attitudes of Teachers Towards Class Sizes...
Article Effects of Class Size Reduction in Upper Grades: Evidence fr...
Article A Meta-Analysis of Class Sizes and Ratios in Early Childhood...
Thank you peter for your answer and valuable articles
Regards,Azzam
If I had my way, my preference will be for 25 to 30 students in my class.
In my situation, we teach maximum 24-25 students and I agree that it is a manageable number of students in a classroom given the fact that the physical conditions and things are sufficient. However, there are times I kind of feel happy when some students are absent in the classroom and when I have 18-20 students in the classroom. I feel that I can respond more to students, give more effective feedback and encourage more collaborative work.
It also depends on what you are teaching and the teaching method. Knowledge - teacher sending with hardly/no interaction could be hundreds. Creating an cognitive experience by having students work on a problem would be in the 20's and having students learn how to handle production equipment would be under 10. Having a students learn how to handle a car would be around 1 :-)
In my teaching experience, 25 - 30 in a standard mainstream class. In special school classes of children with social emotional and mental health difficulties - I would say 6-8 depending on their emotional maturity and personalities.
According to the requirement of variety proposed by Ross Ashby, it will depend on the ability of the teacher to absorb the variety that the students oppose.
It depends on the nature of the course, classroom size, students' characteristics, etc.
After spending 7 full years in the middle and high school setting (2 years teaching MS science and 5 teaching HS Algebra/Trig/Geometry), I would say if there were an ideal number, it would range from 15-20. Again, this is an ideal, and I am well aware that current resource allocation means this may be more of a dream than a reality.
In my experience there are rarely more than 4-5 students in any class, no matter how many are enrolled. The rest are just spectators. My classes tend to work best if I can have at least one student in each one.
That depends. Are you talking about college or K-12 classrooms? If it's k-12 classrooms, there shouldn't be more than 20, but then again that typically depends on grade levels. With undergraduates, I'd say the max is 20, but preferably no more than 12. For grad classes, in a seminar format I'd suggest no more than 6.
I'm strictly an on-line instructor and the ideal class size for me is 20. I teach management and as mentioned in a previous comment regardless of the overall size of the class there will only be a handfull who required more effort. Most students can navigate the site and complete the requirements but there are always a few 2-4 who for some reason can't grasp the requirements and require constant attention. Additionally, I respond to every students discussion question response so they know I'm not a spectator instructor. Feedback is important to students and if the class size is too large it can become labor intensive to respond to everyone if the class is larger than 20 to 25.
I think that 20 to 25 is an ideal size. Once you get to 30 students you start losing some of the students in terms of interaction and engagement.
This might sound very strange, but in a lot of cases, teaching drama and dance to absolute beginners (as is demanded in pre-service education courses) can be very exposing. I absolutely love teaching classes of 50 for a practical session sometimes. The energy is amazing, the ideas flow because there's enough creative capital in the room to show a range of responses, everyone walks away with a 'can-do' attitude. There are lots of times where we need more concentrated time with less students, but I don't think smaller is always better.
For face-to-face university classes a dozen students is a good size, so everyone gets to speak. Online this can be doubled to two dozen. Allowing for the loss of students early in a course a practical upper limit ins thirty. Of course on-line the students can be segmented, so you can have any number of students divided into classes of this size.
Interesting question you ask. I guess in an ideal world, perhaps a private school setting, the ideal student class size to receive optimal attention and academic learning outcomes for students would be 10-15 students. However, in public school settings, such an ideal situation is not really possible because of state and federal mandates and budgets.
أفضل أن يكون عدد طلاب الصف من 15 إلى 20 طالب لأي الفرصة للطالبة للبحث والتطوير ومناقشة موضوع الدرس مناقشة جيدة
The major lecture with hundred and more students one the one side, and the small exercise course on the other with, let us say, 20 students is the normal situation, at a larger university. I have no objections!
It all depends upon the nature area and so many other factors of the school under consideration. Ideally, there should not be more than 25 students in a class for their holistic/ overall development.
I think 25 is quite ideal so that the teacher can get to interact fully with the students when it is necessary. Though this is rarely the case, students knowing that the teacher can interact with them one on one keeps them on their toes and equally makes them try to put in their best in their studies . If the best is not good enough , it is then left for the teacher to know an alternative approach to adopt in his/her subsequent meetings with the students.
Class size should be minimum of 25 students and maximum of 35 students for better classroom management. There is need to control individual differences in the class and if a teacher is unable to manage and control his/her class it will affect the behavioral objectives. secondly, a conducive environment helps in easy transfer of learning. Moreover, the class size should be put into consideration when determining the number of students in a class.
class size of upto 30 for three seater and 40 for two seater students is not bad so long as you are able to cater for individual differences and also if you are able to take control.
It depends entirely on the stage and area of learning in my experience. For K-2 when initial core skills are being developed an upper limit of 20 is around ideal. For primary 3-6 and middle school 7-10 an ideal maximum of 25 but for practical subjects such as sciences, technologies, etc. Where there are extra inherent risks, 20 would be my preferred limit. For matriculation classes, i.e. 11-12 here in Australia, I think 16 is the ideal class size to develop students as individuals and ensure that they achieve their own level of excellence. Once students move to undergraduate level and become more independent, en mass lectures of 100 with tutorials and labgroups of around 20-30 seems reasonable.
of course I am thinking here in an ideal world where resources such as sufficient rooms, high quality specialist teachers, and infrastructure is not the limiting factor. In my utopia money is also not a valid constraint!
For lectures in the University may be 100 and 200, all depends on the equipment of the audience. For laboratory work no more than 12 events, seminars, 25-30, for learning foreign languages no more than 10
Ideally, 20 max.
It provides more individualized attention, more room for students to ask questions and have these answered, more space for participation in class.
In any setting of classroom teaching and learning to be more effective, I would suggest that the number of students should not be more than 15. It will be more focused and effective if the number of students in classrooms are small.
Of course, the answer depends on the subjects taught, applied teaching methodologies and the level of students. According to my own experience at university, the optimal number of students in engineering specialities should be no more than 15-20. In this case you can be more supportive to students' questions and provide more efficient, customised guidance.
It also depends on the subject you teach. Teaching school subjects (expect the group subject teaching eg. foreign languages, technical subjects) with the whole class no more than 20-22 students is a good quantity (in my country educational system in junior secondary school there were max 26 students according to the law, in high school it was different, even 30-32 students) Such a number of students allows conducting discussion, applying very varied methods of teaching, gives more chances to overcome barriers, especially working with modest students, develop their interest, adjust the curriculum to them. Nowadays working with academic students, I can observe higher motivation, participation in lectures while working with a number of them not exceeding 40-max 50 students.
I agree with Maria. The issue of class size can be determined by education policy, method of teaching, level of education (i.e. pre-primary, primary, post primary and higher education levels), etc.
One of the outstanding issues in Spanish education is the reduction of the number of students in the classroom. There can currently be up to 30 children in a Primary Education class. In my classroom there are 27 and it is very different from other groups where there were 20 or 22. I hope that in the coming years it will return to the situation before the crisis, where the maximum was 25.
Óscar Navarro
Dear Azzam,
Any response to your question -- how many students would you prefer to be in the class you are teaching? -- depends on a myriad of factors, namely the city, country, state where the school is located. I know that different countries have different guidelines on this issue, mainly because of their economic, finanancial, and human resources. In my country, primary and secondary schools have, on the average, about 25 students. At the university level, ungraduated classes generally have around 100 students. At the graduate level (Master and PhH), the number of students per classroom ranges from about 8 to about 20.
Best regards,
Orlando
It depends on various factors. For me, what works can vary from less than 10 to more than 400. The latter class size requires particular teaching-related expertise on the part of the lecturer.
In my opinion and from my experience, the number largely depends on the nature of the course. However in most cases, the fewer the number of students the better.
25 undergraduate students maximum and 5 postgraduate students maximum.
Regards, Emad
An upper limit that is often suggested as a reasonable compromise is 25 students. With this small class size, students will get noticed, better results, learning will be enhanced, classes will become a community, opportunities to participate, students and teachers can work one-on-one, ideas will be shared .
It definitely will depend on where you teach and what you teach. The other issue is the size of the classroom. When we cram 30 - 35 high school students in a small classroom it is difficult to keep everyone comfortable and in a learning atmosphere. I teach students with more severe disabilities so I have a smaller group than the usual classroom. The one issue that I have noticed is people assume that if you have a small class in special education, you can teach in a smaller space. Not always true depending on individual disabilities and needs of the students. I think teaching can occur with larger groups of students but it takes good classroom management: organization, expectations, etc.
In a lecture class you can accommodate more students than in a skills class. I teach criminal justice. While 30 students is optimum, 40 is really no problem in a lecture class although it does increase the faculty workload due to having to grade the writing assignments. However, having 40 students in a CSI lab class or in firearms proficiency would be problematic.
Gregg, the University of Sydney's X-lab (a wet lab) can accommodate 240 students. There are screens at each station so the student can see the instructor and directional loudspeakers so they can hear. There are eight instructor stations, so there could be 30 students in smaller classes simultaneously. http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2017/01/university-of-sydney-x-lab.html
Tom, I wish we had such nice facilities here in Missouri. We do have a computer lab for CJ students and have good support in getting what we need for the most part. However, due to budgetary concerns some of our equipment seems to have to last a long time.
To get the energy & enthusiasm to teach, I need at least a dozen. And beyond 25, I start loosing the personal connect with the students and it impacts my performance.
Last weekend I helped out at the TechLauncher "Bootcamp" at the Australian National University in Canberra. There were three hundred students in the room, who had been formed into fifty teams of six students each. There was one instructor for the class in the morning, one in the afternoon and about ten tutors helping. This was using a large flat floor classroom. http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2018/02/anu-project-bootcamp-with-lego-and-user.html
El número de alumnos en sala es más bien relativo, 20, 30, 40, etc. depende de la capacidad del docente en cuanto al manejo que pueda hacer de la "Ley de requisito de variedad" propuesta por Ross Ashby: "Solo variedad absorbe variedad".
Por ejemplo ver caso del profesor Jaime Escalante en México para comprobar como dominó un curso bastante complejo usando su gran capacidad para GENERAR variedad suficiente para ABSORBER la que le oponía el curso.
I prefer 20 - 30 and believe that is a good number to engage the students. Sadly, I have seen the trend where 20 - 30 is the target, but also witnessed 60 - 80 and in large setting 200 plus. In those cases, it is not about education, it is about the money.
Of course small classes offer the best instructional setting. As stated by David McElreath, colleges and universities are in business today to make money and large classes generate revenue.
I have experience of teaching both large as well as small classes and I observed from my 8 years experience that I can easily manage 20 to 25 students' class. if the size is increased then I can not get the feedback as well as cant carry different tasks easily in the class.
Having not more than 8-12 students at a seminar-like classes allows to have close student-teacher relation. But if the lesson is a discussion or mixed-up, I prefer to have 18-20 students. When I conduct a traditional lecture, the number of students does not matter, provided that I am well-heard and have eye contact with every person in the room.
Sometime in our classroom setting of large classes, I feel like McDonalds with over 1 Billion served.
Well it depends on what we are teaching. For instance, I am a language teacher; therefore, an ideal number of students in my classroom would be between 20-25 students.
For undergraduate classes, I prefer the smaller classes (15-30 students) as it facilitates greater interaction with the students, and it's far easier to establish and maintain a rapport with the students as individuals .... for graduate courses that I've offered, 10 to 15 students in a single class was preferable.
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