education – Halfbaked.Education

What NP3 Taught Us About Children, Digital Technology, and Schools 1

PeterTJune 15, 2026June 15, 20261 Comment

Between 2014 and 2017, a team of researchers from the Open University, Lancaster, and Manchester Metropolitan universities set out to explore the ways children use digital technology outside school and the extent to which that connects with what happens inside school.

The project was called NP3 — New Purposes, New Practices, New Pedagogy. It was funded by the Society for Educational Studies and ran over two years across 13 primary schools in England and Scotland. More than 100 children and 60 teachers took part. Forty-three 'log children' used digital cameras to capture their home digital technology use and were interviewed individually. More than 20 of their carers were also interviewed. Thirty-one teachers were each observed teaching at least one lesson and interviewed at least twice. It was a substantial piece of work.

What it found was, in retrospect, predictable, but the evidence matters. Schools and children were, in effect, living in parallel digital worlds.

Is teaching a profession?

PeterTJune 7, 2026June 7, 2026Leave a comment

[This post was originally published in 2014]

We assume that digital technology can improve education and that ‘the challenge’ is how to bring innovative technology and educational professionals together. However, the research evidence shows that despite massive investment digital technology has not resulted in significant improvements in learning experiences or attainment in education (e.g. Luckin et al., 2012) [http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/decoding-learning].

Sociocultural theory – the best explanation of how we learn

PeterTApril 16, 2026June 7, 2026Leave a comment

In Comparing Pedagogical Stances I set out the defining elements of four 'learning theories':

Traditional (A mix of Behaviourism and Information Processing)
Individual Constructivist
Social Constroctivist
Sociocultural

In another post (Analysing 'learning theories') I identified strengths and weaknesses of each of these four pedagogical stances.

SOLO 2.0

PeterTMarch 11, 2026June 7, 2026Leave a comment

^{Originally published 24 Oct 2022}

The Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy was developed by John Biggs and Kevin Collis (1982) to support the assessment of learning, by identifying the sophistication of the learner’s understanding (mental model). This post suggests a couple of shortcomings of the taxonomy and a revised taxonomy (SOLO_2.0) which helps to address them.

PedTech Misconceptions

PeterTMarch 11, 2026June 7, 2026Leave a comment

_{Originally posted 26 Sept 2023}

A growing number of people are starting to talk and write about PedTech – a new approach to thinking about digital technology in education that Fiona Aubrey-Smith and I introduce and explain in our recent book - From EdTech to PedTech: Changing the way we think about digital technologyOpens in a new window. However, it is becoming clear that some of them have misconceptions about the PedTech approach. This post aims to realign some of these mis-understandings.

Comparing pedagogical stances

PeterTJuly 30, 2025June 7, 2026Leave a comment

There are four dominant pedagogical stances — ways of understanding how people learn. Each of these is a full theory of learning, built on distinct and interconnected assumptions about knowledge, learners, learning, teaching, and the purpose of education. The four theories are:

Traditional (a mix of behaviourism and cognitive theories)
Individual constructivist (think Piaget)
Social constructivist (think Vygotsky)
Sociocultural (think Lave and Wenger)

The table below, adapted from Aubrey-Smith & Twining (2024, pp. 131–132), outlines the key assumptions made by each theory.

Alignment matters

PeterTJuly 26, 2025June 7, 2026Leave a comment

This is the first of three brief videos about the importance of alignment in schools. It addresses the questions 'Why does alignment matter?' and 'What needs to be aligned?' as well as defining some key terms.