Blended learning programmes to ensure changes in practice

The diagram below illustrates the key features of a blended learning programme designed to bring about changes in classroom practice. Find out how our blended learning programmes are designed to meet best practice in professional development in order to ensure innovative and sustained practice. 

What does it take to grow innovative practice?

For the school to take on wholeheartedly the new roles and new paradigms that minute-to-minute and day-by-day build better learning requires far more than just the quick exposure to its principles and methods you have seen thus far. Development of this magnitude asks a lot of teachers. They have to go through a process of un-knowing, re-learning, unpacking and re-adjusting.

The programme we have compiled is a careful blend of:

1. Online learning sessions….that faithfully disseminate the researched content for building better learners;
2. Professional learning team sessions ….actioned by the school that provide sustained, meaningful assistance; learning with and from colleagues;
3. Trying things out for yourself in the classroom….because “learning by doing” is integral to the development of expertise and expertise cannot be developed quickly. It can only be developed if teachers have ample opportunity for practice, reflection, and adjustment.

This trio of learning opportunities work together to help teachers replace long-standing habituated practices with more effective ones.

Why online learning?

The online learning aspect provides the content of the Learning Power approach based on over 20 years of research and development in schools. It attempts to cut the big complex innovation of Building Learning Power into more bite size chunks that schools and teachers can make sense of and implement over time.

Why just reading a book won’t cut it. We’ve discovered over time that:

• schools have had a tendency to think of the approach as just a few tweaks in classroom practice. This translates into ‘lite’ versions that inevitably fizzle out;
• new emphasis on how to build learning-friendly cultures has given the approach a richer, more concrete vision of how to implement it across a school;
• research into how learners grow and progress as learners — the building bit of BLP — has made the approach more purposeful and practical. 

Thus, what the online courses and sessions do is:

• offer bite size chunks for schools to implement;
• faithfully offer the researched content in a do-able form i.e. you only get the bits we know work. This stops you wasting time twiddling about with stuff that might sound good but doesn’t do the job;
• structure professional learning sessions because these are the best way of supporting and delivering changes in classroom practice.

The blended learning courses will enable the school to build powerful learners ‘right, not lite’, make a complex set of ideas work on a practical level, and achieve better learner and school performance.

Why Learning Communities?

All the evidence shows that teachers change their practice when they work together and support each other in trying out new teaching strategies, within a culture of classroom-based action research. It is about teachers being empowered to explore together to find out what works with their students, in this context, at this time. As a consequence, the school learns its way forward, together.

Teacher learning communities provide a forum for supporting teachers in converting the information and ideas from the online learning sessions into “live” practices within their specific subjects and classrooms. Such communities provide a safe forum in which to:

• kick around ideas from the online content
• unpack its meaning when it’s unclear
• consider what’s do-able and appropriate for your students
• make plans for what and how you might incorporate the ideas into your practice
• share and unpack what you have tried in the classroom
• relate your triumphs and tribulations
• reflect on what you hope you might do differently.

Because Teacher Learning Communities are embedded in the day-to-day realities of classrooms they provide a time and place where teachers can hear real-life stories from colleagues that show the benefits of adopting these techniques in situations similar to your own. 

Teacher learning communities are the engines of teacher development.

We would be happy to welcome your school to the growing family of schools that are taking part in the online blended learning programmes. This section briefly explains the phases of the programme, the content and the learning process. We look forward to hearing from you if you are interested in taking this way forward.

Online blended learning programmes to support the development of powerful learners.

Building Better Learners: Training day start 

• Includes online course Stepping Stones Phase 1

• For Primary Schools

Find out more

Online only programmes 

We also have short online programmes and resources that would enable you to introduce Learning Power to staff without the need for face-to-face training or consultancy.

Building Better Learners: On-line start (for primary schools)

Building Learning Habits: Online start (for secondary schools)

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