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.
Ask most teachers where a lesson design process begins, and they will tell you: with the learning intention. What do I want pupils to learn? It is, after all, what frameworks like backward design, learning objectives taxonomies, and countless teacher training programmes have drilled into the profession for decades. So it is understandable that when people encounter the PedTech approach (described in From EdTech to PedTech: changing the way we think about digital technology) they assume the learning intention is the starting point there too.
It is not. And the difference matters more than it might appear.
Values and beliefs come first
A PedTech approach begins with your values and beliefs. Not your learning intention. Not your choice of technology. Not even your lesson plan. Your values and beliefs — about how people learn, and about what they need to learn.
These are two distinct things, and it is worth being precise about each.
The first is your pedagogical stance: your beliefs about how learning happens. Do you believe that knowledge is primarily transmitted from expert to novice, or that it is constructed through experience and social interaction? Do you think learners need high levels of structure and guidance, or that they learn best when given agency and autonomy? Do you see assessment as something that measures learning after the fact, or as something that is integral to the learning process itself? These are not trivial questions with obvious answers. They are contested, evidence-informed positions that thoughtful educators hold with varying degrees of confidence. Your pedagogical stance is the lens through which every subsequent decision in a PedTech approach is made.
The second is your beliefs about what people need to learn. This is broader than any single lesson or unit. It reflects your understanding of what competencies (knowledge, skills, dispositions, and ways of thinking) are genuinely valuable for the learners in front of you — not just what happens to be next in a scheme of work.
So where does the learning intention fit?
Once you understand that a PedTech approach starts with these values and beliefs, the role of the learning intention becomes clearer — and more honest.
Your learning intention may be a direct expression of your beliefs about what learners need. You know your pupils well, you have a considered view about where they are in their learning and what would be most valuable for them next, and you set your learning intention accordingly. In this case, the intention flows from your beliefs. It is downstream, not upstream.
But there is a second, very common scenario: you are implementing a specified curriculum. A National Curriculum, an exam specification, a school scheme of work. The learning intention is, in a real sense, given to you. You did not derive it from first principles — it arrived as a requirement.
This is not a failure of professional agency. It is simply the reality of teaching in most institutional contexts. The point is that even here, your pedagogical stance still drives everything that follows. Two teachers can share an identical learning intention and yet design entirely different learning experiences, because they hold different beliefs about how learning works and what their pupils most need. The learning intention constrains the destination. It says nothing about the journey.
Why this ordering matters
Getting the ordering wrong has practical consequences. If you treat the learning intention as your starting point, you risk designing backwards from a target without ever interrogating whether the target is the right one, or whether your assumptions about how learners will reach it are well-founded. Technology choices, in particular, tend to default to the familiar or the available rather than the pedagogically appropriate.
A PedTech approach asks you to slow down before you get to "what will we learn?" and spend time with the harder questions: What do I believe about how learning happens? What do I genuinely think these learners need? Only then does the learning intention - whether self-determined or curriculum-specified - sit in the right relationship to everything else.
The learning intention is not the foundation. Your values and beliefs are. The distinction sounds philosophical. In practice, it changes everything about how you design for learning.
For a full account of the PedTech approach, see From EdTech to PedTech: changing the way we thinkg about digital technology (Aubrey-Smith & Twining, 2024).
To explore your own personal pedagogical stance (which of four 'learning theories' you believe) try the 'My Pedagogical Stance' activity on the Belief2Practice website.