I was 14 years old, working in a group with my peers who talked excitedly among themselves, flipping between social interactions and just enough focus on what we were supposed to be doing to avoid the attention of our teacher.

We were quickly reprimanded by the teacher who decided, as a punishment for our focus on non-academic matters, that we must now work in silence. “Be quiet and do your work.”

The group sighed audibly at this instruction and I knew that, to fit in socially, I would need to do the same. I rolled my eyes, picked up my pen with as much visible disdain as possible and put pen to paper.

However, internally I was absolutely delighted.

Some quiet time

On reflection, my 14-year-old self was a victim of one of many educational initiatives that cater towards the world of the extrovert.

Working in groups, chatting through our work in pairs and creating noisy learning environments were very popular teaching methods when I was a student at school but they were detrimental to my ability to make progress.

I spent the majority of the time when working collaboratively with others in fight or flight mode, petrified of being called upon to contribute.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have something to offer, it was simply that the medium through which I would communicate this (group discussions, for example) was holy unsuited to my introverted personality.

Solitude matters 

Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, said the following: “Solitude matters, and for some people, it’s the air they breathe.” I’m a big believer in this and, when I am planning my curriculum, I try to think of how it can be appropriate for pupils with more extroverted behaviours but also for the more introverted.

I don’t believe that this is the case in much of mainstream education. This is a symptom of a larger problem where educational research, with a few exceptions, largely focuses on building schools for extraverts.

One of the benefits of the current pandemic, and the subsequent need for distance learning, is the emergence of silence in classrooms.

This isn’t something that educators were aiming for. It is, in many cases, an unfortunate by-product of the method of instruction that has to balance pupils working remotely or, in some nations, pupils in a mix of in-class and at-home learning.

Thinking quietly

However, with it comes an opportunity to reflect on the need for silence in our classrooms.

What I have seen in my own practice is that some students have really benefited from a quieter classroom, with a greater ability to focus. Jamie Thom’s book A Quiet Education is a wake-up call for school leaders.

He stresses the need for “quiet” for some students and even for some staff, too (I can relate).

The positive experience of many distance learners through the pandemic, as a result of quieter environments (and the enhanced ability to focus), must surely give food for thought about how we do things when we return to the traditional classroom and supports the main thesis behind Thom’s book.

Everyone is different 

Speaking to one school leader recently, he remarked on how one of his daughters found distance learning to be a total nightmare as she loves those incidental conversations across the table mixed in with curriculum dialogue.

His other daughter, quite the opposite, has found the whole experience to be much more fitting to the way she works and learns.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which one is the extrovert and which one is the introvert, and why the different kind of experience that distance learning brings would impact them differently.

The thing is, I know from speaking to teachers that this is something many of them would support. However, the current zeitgeist for all things active and collaborative makes it difficult to speak up for a quieter education.

The irony isn’t lost on me that it’s the introverts we are relying on in this instance to speak up.

How to help

So, what can you do to support a curriculum that is kinder and more appropriate for our introverted learners?

First, don’t think of our quiet students in terms of threats to attainment and progress, think of them as opportunities.

Build in opportunities for quiet reflection as opposed to group discussion, allow significant chunks of time for independent work as opposed to many chunks with multiple opportunities for whole-class feedback.

Continue with your use of cold calling when questioning but don’t use this all of the time and, most important of all, get to know which students would benefit from a quieter education.

Also, just let them be quiet and do their work.

Paul Gardner is secondary school deputy headteacher at DIS Dubai. He tweets at @DubaiDeputy