Enquiry overview

Education in these times has demanded critical and innovative thinking around what learners need and how and why we provide learning experiences. At Peter Lea Primary School, we were determined not only to adapt and improve our learning provision through this period, but also to capitalise on the opportunities it presented. As a result, we have engaged in a research opportunity that will help us to analyse and develop new ways of teaching and learning, rooted in blended approaches, for use in the future. In order to do this, we asked the question ‘What is blended learning in a primary school context?’

As a partner school, we are developing our roles as researchers with support from our lead enquiry school as well as HEI. Both our lead enquiry school and other partner schools within our SIG are engaging with the same enquiry question due to its relevance in all our contexts and the opportunity to gain a richer, more diverse set of data that will give deeper insights. This gave us our rationale for close collaboration and using the same research question, albeit in our separate contexts.

We wanted to capture qualitative data around the experiences of colleagues to refine our thinking and understanding around blended learning and as such, decided that a participatory methodology would be most appropriate. In order to capture the qualitative data needed, we decided to use a focus group method, which took place in April 2021 via Microsoft Teams. Peter Lea staff who work in a variety of roles across the primary age and with different levels of experience volunteered to participate. They undertook professional reading and were provided with the enquiry question and sub-questions in advance, in order to focus their thinking and reflections.

The focus group revealed that initially staff saw blended learning as a requiring a radical overhaul of the school’s pedagogy and culture with digital technology playing a much more significant and central role in teaching and learning, possibly by enabling pupils to learn remotely. Whilst staff identified benefits in terms of pupil independence, personalisation and ownership, many felt that the scale of change required to achieve this was overwhelming. However, through the professional discussion, a shared understanding emerged of blended learning being an integration of teaching approaches, such as traditional face-to-face direct instruction, project-based learning and the use of digital technology as a means to provide both instruction and opportunities for pupils to respond and engage in different ways. Viewing blended learning through this lens allowed staff to recognise that it would be possible to move towards this in smaller steps and only when pedagogically appropriate. Participants felt that this approach was similar to Foundation Phase pedagogy and would arguably be a more significant change for Key Stage 2 colleagues. They also felt that staff fears around the scale of change and use of technology would be a key issue to address and overcome, as well as the technological requirements and infrastructure needed to ensure a reliable and consistent digital provision.