pedagogy – Halfbaked.Education

Teachers have more power than they think

PeterTJuly 3, 2026Leave a comment

Originally posted 18th April 2019

Schools and teachers are constrained by accountability and assessment regimes. However, in my experience schools and teachers have a great deal of agency - they can and do respond very differently to similar external pressures. For example, in one school I visited the children were doing addition problems on a drill and skill maths app. Once they completed the set of questions the app indicated which were correct/incorrect. The children then proceeded to copy the sums into their exercise books for the teacher to mark. When I asked the teacher why they did this she explained that they needed a paper trail for Ofsted.

In contrast, in another school that I visited the head teacher strongly resisted changing practice for the benefit of the inspectors:the head teacher strongly resisted changing practice for the benefit of the inspectors:

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.

PedTech misconceptions: PedTech is NOT a Thing

PeterTMay 29, 2026June 7, 2026Leave a comment

The title is, on the face of it, an odd claim. PedTech clearly is a thing — there is a book about it, a series of posts on this blog unpacking its implications, and a growing body of practice around it. So what does it mean to say PedTech is not a thing?

PedTech is not a thing in the way that EdTech is a thing. It is not a tool. You cannot pick it up, deploy it, or choose between versions of it.

PedTech Misconceptions: PedTech Tools

PeterTApril 14, 2026June 7, 2026Leave a comment

The notion that you can have a 'PedTech tool' is fundamentally flawed. Let me explain why.

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.