Using blended learning to support whole-of-school improvement: The need for contextualisation

A newly published article reports on findings from the application of BL to a school improvement project involving two K-12 international schools in Japan. These findings relate to six research questions concerning how involvement with this project impacted teachers’ ICT confidence, how change management was perceived for the project, how this project sought to repurpose teaching and learning arrangements, how the project was aligned with the mission and goals of the schools’ improvement agenda, how it affected student achievement and how it was contextualised as a particular response to the imperatives of the Knowledge Economy. The implications of these findings are that successful BL implementation requires an involved and consistent leadership team, specific teacher training to build confidence, a means of directing the repurposing elements of teaching and learning, being able to evaluate alignment between the implementation of BL and school improvement, dedicated achievement measures for student learning and some way of being able to position the purpose and function of applied BL in relation to the Knowledge Economy. A key recommendation of the report is that schools need to intentionally contextualise BL in order to maximise its success. Suggestions concerning how to do this are provided. See: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338928732_Using_blended_learning_to_support_whole-of-school_improvement_The_need_for_contextualisation