FK&Y’s Transforming Learning Study Continues to Grow

This ethnographic research is looking at the way teaching and learning is changing through the use of 1:1 mobile devices. On behalf of educational charity Techknowledge for Schools, the research is assessing the adoption of ‘flipped learning’ and ‘challenge based learning’ in some classes and how this impacts on teachers and students. Running in three schools since September 2014, so far the project has carried out 21 hours of classroom ethnographic observation, 18 in-depth interviews with teachers and 18 in-depth interviews with students. Our ethnographer Heidi Hasbrouk and Project Research Manager Siv Svanaes have been working hard on analysing the results.
Early findings show that in lessons using new methods of teaching there appears to be an increase in collaborative learning, student satisfaction and an ability to work at a student’s own level of ability. There are however doubts expressed by some teachers who are reluctant to spend time learning how to utilise the mobile devices in their teaching when they feel they have so many other demands on their time. The research continues and will focus next on students’ experience of using mobile devices in learning. The ethnographic film footage will be edited to produce a short film demonstrating some of the key findings which will be available on the new Techknowledge for Schools website.