learning theory – 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.

The Innovative Pedagogy Framework

PeterTJune 15, 2026June 15, 2026Leave a comment

Originally posted 5th December 2018

One of the challenges facing the NP3 team was how to describe and differentiate between the pedagogical practices in the classrooms that we were researching. In essence, what were the key features of practice that needed to be considered in order to differentiate between the teaching in each setting? The obvious answer seemed to be to use core theories of learning and development as the basis for a framework to help us compare pedagogy across contexts. Patricia Murphy therefore devised the Innovative Pedagogy Framework, starting with the following theoretical positions:

Traditional (Behaviourist/Information Processing)
Constructivist
- Cognitive/Piagetian
- Radical
- Social
Innovative (Sociocultural)

Which Pedagogical Stance Should You Adopt If You Are Working in a Traditional Education System? 1

PeterTJune 7, 2026June 7, 20261 Comment

The PedTech framework, as set out in From EdTech to PedTech (Aubrey-Smith and Twining, 2024), starts with values and beliefs. Everything else - purpose, curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and the role of digital technology - flows from there. One implication of this, which I have explored in earlier posts, is that alignment matters. Your pedagogical stance needs to be consistent with the system you are operating in, otherwise the coherence that makes a PedTech approach powerful breaks down.

However, this raises an uncomfortable question.

Is teaching atheoretical?

PeterTApril 18, 2026June 7, 2026Leave a comment

A common claim, often heard from teachers themselves, is that teaching is atheoretical. The argument runs that what teachers do in classrooms is craft, judgement, and experience, not theory. Theory is for academics. Practice is what counts.

There may be an element of truth in this, however the claim, taken at face value, is wrong, and the way it is wrong matters.

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.

PedTech Misconceptions: Start with your learning intention

PeterTApril 11, 2026June 7, 2026Leave a comment

This is part of a series addressing common misconceptions about what a PedTech approach actually involves. The first post in the series includes three misconceptions:

Misconception 1 PedTech and EdTech complement each other
Misconception 2 EdTech is about 'system level' technology whilst PedTech is about 'classroom' or 'learner level' technology
Misconception 3 PedTech advocates a particular pedagogical stance

This post goes deeper — to a mistake that is easy to make precisely because it looks like good practice.

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.