Exploring Learning

Conversations about technology in schools often begin from a place of legitimate concern. Families and educators are right to ask questions about distraction, wellbeing, social media, sleep, attention, and the amount of time young people spend in front of screens. These concerns should not be dismissed. They matter because children’s digital lives are complex, and schools have a responsibility to think carefully about how technology shapes learning, relationships, identity, and wellbeing.  However, one distinction is often blurred: Unmanaged recreational screen use is not the same as intentionally designed digital learning. Passive scrolling is not the same as collaborative inquiry. Social media consumption is not the same as learners using digital tools to research, create, communicate, receive feedback, organise ideas, or participate in meaningful communities. When all screen-based experiences are treated as the same, schools risk making decisions based on anxiety rather than on ...

From Brain-Based Learning to Heutagogy: Designing Agency With Care How do we design learning that develops agency without assuming learners are already fully independent? In my research this week, I found myself returning to the same question: how do we design learning that supports agency without assuming that learners are already fully self-directed or self-determined? The readings move from brain-based learning, to the space between pedagogy and andragogy, to the history of andragogy, and finally to heutagogy. Taken together, they challenge the idea that teaching and learning models can be neatly organised by age or stage. Instead, I see that they suggest effective learning design depends on context, readiness, purpose, motivation, and the kind of support learners need to grow. Jang et al. (2022) provide a useful starting point, reminding me that learning design needs to be grounded in how learning actually occurs. Their review of brain-based learning research highlights the import...

Belonging is not granted after learners prove they can access the curriculum. Belonging is created through the way curriculum, instruction, assessment, relationships, and evidence-informed responses are designed. That idea has been sitting with me deeply. In schools, we often talk about belonging as something relational, cultural, or pastoral. Whilst it is, of course, all of those things, I also think belonging is a curriculum and learning design issue. Learners experience belonging, or exclusion, through the tasks they are given, the examples they see, the feedback they receive, the ways they are invited to participate, and the assumptions adults make about what they can do. Inclusion, then, cannot sit only in intervention structures or individual support plans. These matter, of course; some learners need targeted and specialist support, and schools need strong systems to provide it. But if inclusion begins only after a learner struggles, we have already accepted a design problem as a...