How People Learn in K-8 Blended Learning Catholic Schools:

Floating, Failing, and Filling Tetris Gaps

By

Nathan D. Wills, csc

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis

at the

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

2015

Date of Final Oral Exam: 9/8/15 The dissertation is approved by the following members of the Final Oral Committee:

Richard R. Halverson, Professor, Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis Peter M. Miller, Associate Professor, Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis Carolyn J. Kelley, Professor, Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis Erica Halverson, Associate Professor, Curriculum & Instruction Julie Mead, Professor, Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis

i

Abstract

Over the past decade, blended learning has emerged as one of the most promising models of

schooling in the K-12 context to increase achievement and meaningfully engage technology in

the classroom, yet little is known about the pedagogical practices and outcomes of blended

learning schools. The conceptual heritage of blended learning can be traced back to the literature

regarding Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI), personalized learning, and game-based learning

and participatory culture, but there is still a paucity of empirical research regarding teaching,

learning, and the use of technology in these emerging contexts. Given this gap in the literature,

this paper addresses (1) what teaching and learning is like in blended learning schools, (2) how

and to what extent the pedagogical practices in blended learning schools align with the How

People Learn (HPL) framework for the effective design of learning environments, and (3) how

suitable the HPL framework is as a measure of effectiveness in blended learning schools. This

study addresses these questions with an analysis of three qualitative case studies, comprised of

interview and observation data from principals, teachers, blended learning coordinators, and

students in three different blended learning Catholic elementary schools throughout the Midwest.

Results from this study reveal the strengths of the HPL framework in focusing on measures of

effectiveness beyond traditional metrics of success as well as the limitations of the HPL

framework in capturing important data regarding leadership practices, levels of integration of

blended learning software, and some non-cognitive skills. The study concludes with several

recommendations for practitioners and researchers as to the possible future directions of blended

learning.

ii

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study ............................................................................................... 1

Chapter 2: Review of Literature ..................................................................................................... 5

Definition of Blended Learning .................................................................................................. 5

Effectiveness ............................................................................................................................. 13

Computer-Assisted Instruction ................................................................................................. 18

Personalized Learning ............................................................................................................... 24

Game-Based Learning and Participatory Culture ..................................................................... 31

Conclusion from Review of Literature ..................................................................................... 36

Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................. 36

Chapter 3: Methods ....................................................................................................................... 44

Design ....................................................................................................................................... 44

Site Selection ............................................................................................................................ 46

Participants ................................................................................................................................ 49

Data Collection Procedures ....................................................................................................... 51

Entry .......................................................................................................................................... 52

Instrumentation ......................................................................................................................... 52

Analysis ..................................................................................................................................... 55

Trustworthiness ......................................................................................................................... 57

Ethical Considerations .............................................................................................................. 58

Significance ............................................................................................................................... 59

Limitations ................................................................................................................................ 60

iii

Findings ......................................................................................................................................... 63

Data overview ........................................................................................................................... 63

Case 1: St. Mary’s ......................................................................................................................... 67

Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 67

Background ............................................................................................................................... 70

Design ....................................................................................................................................... 77

Learner-centered ....................................................................................................................... 82

Assessment-centered ................................................................................................................. 88

Knowledge-centered ................................................................................................................. 92

Community-centered ................................................................................................................. 95

Summary ................................................................................................................................. 101

Case 2: Holy Trinity .................................................................................................................... 105

Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 105

Background ............................................................................................................................. 109

Design ..................................................................................................................................... 115

Learner-centered ..................................................................................................................... 123

Assessment-centered ............................................................................................................... 128

Knowledge-centered ............................................................................................................... 131

Community-centered ............................................................................................................... 135

Summary ................................................................................................................................. 138

Case 3: St. Stephen’s ................................................................................................................... 140

Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 140

Background ............................................................................................................................. 143

iv

Design ..................................................................................................................................... 148

Learner-centered ..................................................................................................................... 154

Assessment-centered ............................................................................................................... 159

Knowledge-centered ............................................................................................................... 162

Community-centered ............................................................................................................... 166

Summary ................................................................................................................................. 170

Discussion and Recommendations ............................................................................................. 173

Discussion ............................................................................................................................... 173

Toward defining “Powered Learning” ................................................................................ 174

Results of the HPL Framework ........................................................................................... 176

Learner-centered: filling in skill gaps, maximizing time, from floaters to swimmers, and

age-appropriate content ....................................................................................................... 176

Assessment-centered: instant feedback, limited data use, and paper-and-pencil

metacognition ...................................................................................................................... 178

Knowledge-centered: skill fluency, offline heavy lifting, and educational pitching machines

............................................................................................................................................. 180

Community-centered: freedom to fail, failure to connect ................................................... 182

Re-visualizing the HPL framework based on these data .................................................... 183

Suitability of the framework ............................................................................................... 186

Implications for practice ......................................................................................................... 196

Teachers should use interest, fiero, and transformation as a starting point of blended

learning designs and pedagogical practice .......................................................................... 197

Schools should proactively use blended learning to diagnose and fill “Tetris gaps” ......... 198

v

Schools should use blended learning to help students succeed in college and beyond ...... 199

Catholic schools should consider adopting blended learning as a matter of social justice and

inclusion .............................................................................................................................. 200

Implications for research ..................................................................................................... 202

Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 204

References ................................................................................................................................... 206

Appendices .................................................................................................................................. 215

vi

List of Tables Table 1: Coding Notations ............................................................................................................ 55

Table 2: Interviewees .................................................................................................................... 63

Table 3: School Demographic Information .................................................................................. 65

Table 4: Data Reflection and Suport ........................................................................................... 179

Table 5: Instructional Outcomes of Blended Larning Use Across Tools and Instructional Types

..................................................................................................................................................... 191

vii

List of Figures Figure 1: Blended Learning Matrix (Staker, 2011) ........................................................................ 6

Figure 2: Blended Learning Taxonomy (Staker & Horn, 2012) ..................................................... 9

Figure 3: Blended Learning Publications (Halverson et al., 2012) ............................................... 15

Figure 4: Student Performance for the Spring-Quarter Final Examination in First-Year Russian

(Van Campen, 1968) ..................................................................................................................... 20

Figure 5: Achievement Distribution for Students Under Conventional, Mastery Learning, and

Tutorial Instruction (Bloom, 1984) ............................................................................................... 24

Figure 6: How People Learn Framework (Bransford et al., 2000) ............................................... 37

Figure 7: Student Learning Trajectory: Grade 6-8 Mathematics .................................................. 79

Figure 8: How People Learn Framework (Bransford et al., 2000) ............................................. 184

Figure 9: How People Learn Framework (modified) ................................................................. 185

Figure 10: How People Learn Framework (modified to represent learning practices in this study)

..................................................................................................................................................... 185

1

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study

The number of K-12 students enrolled in online learning courses in the United States has

steadily risen to 1,816,400 in 2011 (NCES, 2011). Fifty-five percent of public school districts in

the United States reported having students enrolled in distance education courses in 2009-2010,

and four states (Alabama, Florida, Michigan, and Virginia) require students to complete an

online course to graduate (Watson, Murin, Vashaw, Gemin, & Rapp, 2013). Amidst these rising

numbers, some have predicted that by 2019, nearly half of the courses that students take will be

online (Christensen, 2008). Yet the staggering attrition rates for online courses, the negligible

gains (Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia, & Jones, 2009), and the benefits of socialization and

teacher interaction in bricks-and-mortar schools (Dziuban, Hartman, & Moskal, 2004) have

drawn many school leaders to consider a new model of schooling that incorporates online

courses and the data they report into traditional classrooms to create a data-driven, personalized

educational experience for students. This is called “blended learning.”

The practice of blended learning within K-12 schools seems to be growing, although

whole-school integrations of blended learning are still rather rare, present almost exclusively in

charter and private schools. Yet recently, more public districts are exploring this option. For

example, Washington, D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) launched two elementary schools and one

middle school that use a whole-school blended learning approach for all core content areas.

Further, they hired a “director of blended learning” and rolled out a program at the beginning of

the 2013-2014 school year that gave all DCPS the opportunity to utilize blended learning in their

classrooms (Lautzenheiser & Hochleitner, 2014). This example of the growing presence of

blended learning approaches throughout the nation underscores the need for researchers to

2

explore its affordances, challenges, and effectiveness, yet the nascence of this new model of

schooling and its many iterations has led to a scarcity of empirical evidence and high quality

studies on blended learning (Halverson, Graham, Spring, & Drysdale, 2012; Means et al., 2009).

As this model has emerged, many have proposed new ways of studying, understanding,

and evaluating this new way of teaching and learning. Some, like the Sloan Consortium, have

identified potential benefits of blended learning, ranging from cost effectiveness to faculty

satisfaction (Moore, 2005). But few have yet actually systematically chronicled what are the

actual challenges and benefits of this innovative approach. As blended learning began to emerge,

researchers such as Shea (2007) proposed several frameworks for understanding blended

learning, yet much of the conversation surrounding the understanding of blended learning has

centered around two ideas: effectiveness and the affordances of technology.

The first common way of understanding blended learning regards “effectiveness.” As

with any model of innovation in education, there are always basic questions about how this type

of teaching or learning aligns with what educational researchers currently know about effective

instruction and cognition. Are blended learning schools addressing the needs of their learners? Is

this model of teaching actually helping teachers differentiate instruction or is it simply

cumbersome to them? How are computers enhancing or inhibiting students’ ability to read, write,

and/or demonstrate competency in mathematics, science, and other domains? How do students

make connections with one another and situate their knowledge within broader ideas in blended

learning classrooms? Is instruction in blended learning schools focused too much on the

technology and not enough on interaction? These and other questions as to the effectiveness of

blended learning need to be studied.

3

A second way of looking at blended learning is based on its extensive use of technology.

For some, the “effectiveness” question of blended learning may be the only real question that

determines its relevance and future utility, regardless how technology is used in these schools.

For others, blended learning is a promising model of schooling that has the potential to use

technology to truly “transform teaching and learning” (U.S. Department of Education, 2010). But

using technology itself will not guarantee this kind of transformation. Despite the prevalence of

1:1 laptop or tablet programs and their monumental cost to schools and districts, there is little

evidence to prove most schools in the U.S. have moved beyond Larry Cuban’s critique that

computers in schools were being “oversold and underused” (Cuban, 2001). In fact, based on his

extensive research K-16 schools, Cuban concluded that technology in most schools was “used in

limited ways to simply maintain rather than transform prevailing instructional practices” (Cuban,

2001, p. 73). This does not come as a surprise to many of the most innovative thinkers in

educational technology who have moved their interest and research beyond the bounds of

traditional school settings (Gee, 2003; Jenkins 2007) where innovation seems to be contained or

diffused (Collins & Halverson, 2010).

Yet blended learning represents the possibility of using technology to personalize

education for students, give teachers access to mountains of data in an actionable and simplified

way, and release some of constraints of schooling that have shown little change in the last

century in the U.S. (Collins & Halverson, 2010). But in reality, is this happening in these

schools? Are they truly places of innovation and creation that many have hoped they might be?

Are they using the affordances of technology to revolutionize rather than reinforce traditional,

one-size-fits-all instruction and schooling?

To begin this exploration of these questions, I will first discuss how the term “blended

4

learning” has emerged and the research that has been conducted on blended learning. I will then

review three areas that have anticipated the current emergence of blended learning models: CAI,

personalized learning, and game-based learning and participatory culture. I then turn to a

discussion of the methods I use to address my research questions and introduce the How People

Learn (HPL) framework (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999) as a conceptual framework for

understanding teaching and learning in blended learning schools. Using the four characteristics

of effective design of learning environments from the HPL framework as a guiding insight, I

then describe that qualitative interview and observational data I gathered from each of the three

K-8 blended learning schools I studied using these research questions:

1. What are the characteristics of teaching and learning in blended learning schools?

2. What (if any) evidence of the four characteristics of effectively designed learning

environments in the How People Learn (HPL) framework can be found in blended

learning schools?

3. How suitable is the HPL framework as a measure of effectiveness for blended learning

schools?

After exploring these individual findings, I discuss the overall themes that emerged in the data

and then discuss the suitability of using the HPL framework as a way of understanding blended

learning. Finally, I discuss some potential implications for practitioners and researchers as a

result of this study. I now turn to the literature regarding blended learning and several related

fields of study.

5

Chapter 2: Review of Literature

In this chapter, I discuss the emergence of the term “blended learning” and the research

that has been conducted on blended learning. I will then review three areas that have anticipated

the current emergence of blended learning models: CAI, personalized learning, and game-based

learning and participatory culture.

Definition of Blended Learning

The term “blended learning” has only been in use since 2000 (Güzer & Caner, 2014), yet

a lively debate has arisen among those involved in the study and practice of blended learning

regarding the definition of what, exactly, constitutes “blended learning.” In fact, the murky

nature of what this type of learning might be called has presented a challenge to researchers who

are trying to systematically study blended learning.

One of the earliest definitions of blended learning emerged from the Sloan-Consortium

research workshops. An initial working definition developed collaboratively by several scholars

was: “Blended courses integrate online with face to face instruction in a planned, pedagogically

valuable manner; and do not just combine but trade-off face to face time with online activity (or

vice versa)” (Otte & Niemiec, 2005, p. 38). As a follow-up to this definition (also from the

Sloan-C meetings), Picciano defines what, exactly, is meant by “blended.” He states, “The term

‘blended’ refers to this form of instruction that combines online instruction with traditional face-

to-face instruction. Also known as ‘hybrid,’ ‘mixed-mode,’ and ‘flexible learning,’ blended

learning appears to be gaining in popularity” (Picciano in Picciano & Dziuban, 2007). The term

“hybrid learning” has come to be nearly synonymous with “blended learning” (Dziuban et al.,

2004) though it remains to be seen which term becomes dominant in coming years.

6

In their groundbreaking work, The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning, Horn and Staker

(2011) endeavor to classify and organize the many existing models of blended learning. Along

with the work of classification, they also propose a definition for blended learning: “Blended

Learning is any time a student learns at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location

away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student

control over time, place, path, and/or pace” (p. 3). This definition was operative in Staker (2011)

wherein she described 40 emerging models of K-12 blended learning. Staker introduces a simple

matrix in which to locate exactly how blended a school might be (see Figure 1). On the x-axis,

she plots the geographic location of the school from 100% “Supervised brick-and-mortar” to

100% “Remote.” On the y-axis, she plots the percentage of time that a typical student in the

program learns online, ranging from 100% online learning to 100% offline (Staker, 2011). She

then goes on to locate each of the 40 schools that she profiles somewhere in the matrix to give a

sense of the exact type of blended learning that is happening at each of these schools.

Figure 1. Blended Learning Matrix. (Staker, 2011)

7

As the term “blended learning” has developed, it has come to include more than just

content delivery and geographic location. Staker’s definition was updated in Staker and Horn

(2012) where they refined their definition to differentiate it from purely online learning while

incorporating language from the definition of online learning from the International Association

of K-12 Online Learning (INACOL): “Blended learning is a formal education program in which

a student learns at least in part through online delivery of content and instruction with some

element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace and at least in part at a supervised

brick-and-mortar location away from home” (Staker & Horn, 2012, p. 3). This evolution of the

definition added the key phrase “formal education” to distinguish blended learning from informal

online learning spaces (such as students using online enrichment tools, playing educational video

games, and after school programs) and “with some element of student control over time, place,

path, and/or pace” (p. 3) to distinguish it from technology-rich instruction. Additionally, some of

the words were reordered to emphasize the importance of the “brick-and-mortar” part of the

definition (Staker & Horn, 2012). This refined definition helps create a shared understanding of

blended learning by eliminating the extremes of educational programs that contain 0% or 100%

online learning. Staker and Horn (2012) note that some researches argued for the additional

phrase “and the modalities along each student’s learning path within a course or subject are

connected to provide an integrated learning experience” to ensure that programs of blended

learning would link online learning to their face-to-face learning (and vice versa), by definition.

Graham (in Moore, 2013) wades into the waters of the discussion over quantifying what

is and is not blended learning based on a percentage of online content delivery for a student. He

writes,

8

Several authors have acknowledged this issue by defining the boundary between BL and

other modalities as a proportion of content delivered online. For example, Allen &

Seaman (2007) categorized traditional as having 0% of content delivered online, web

facilitated as 1-29% online, blended as 30-79% online, and online as 80% or more.

Similarly, Watson et al. (2010) set a threshold of 30% online delivery of content for an

environment to be considered blended. A challenge with percentage thresholds is the

difficulty in measuring something that is not easily or accurately quantifiable.

Additionally, even if a percentage could be accurately determined, what practical

difference would exist between courses with 29% versus 30% of content delivered

online? (p. 334)

Ultimately, Graham avoids the tangle of percentages and settles on the simple definition: blended

learning is “defined as learning experiences that combine face-to-face and online instruction”

(Graham, 2012, p. 7). Dziuban and colleagues (2004) similarly eschew this discussion of

percentages and define blended learning as primarily a new pedagogical approach that combines

the best of traditional schooling—effectiveness and socialization—with technology enhanced

active learning possibilities. Their definition uniquely includes a shift to student-centered

instruction, an increase in student-teacher (as well as student-student) interaction, and integrated

assessment mechanisms for both teachers and students. This compelling and thorough definition

highlights the revolutionary nature of blended learning for teachers and students and explicitly

states some of the requirements and affordances of interaction, assessment, and a student-

centered focus. While Dziuban, and colleagues’ (2004) definition was still in the very early

stages of blended learning, it is still one of the best because of its bold and thoughtful articulation.

Yet it has not gained the same traction as other definitions, perhaps feeling too prescriptive in

9

defining an increased student-teacher/student-student interaction or perhaps too narrow to

blended learning innovators.

While Graham’s (2012) definition is perhaps the most parsimonious, Staker and Horn’s

(2012) definition (including the proposed addendum that emphasizes an integrated learning

experience), stands out in its succinct statement of student-centered variables (time, place, path,

and/or pace) and their careful delineation between blended learning and other modalities that

share some characteristics with blended learning: technology-rich instruction, informal online

leaning, and full-time virtual learning. Consequently, it has become the preferred definition of

blended learning that many practitioners and researchers have adopted (Watson et al., 2013) and

indeed it will be the operational definition of blended learning used in this paper.

Notably, many researchers predict that any definition of blended learning may become

obsolete in the near future since this way of teaching and learning with technology will simply

become the norm: “blended learning” will simply be known as “learning” (Cross, 2006; Graham,

2006; Norberg, Dziuban, & Moskal, 2011; Patrick, Kennedy, & Powell, 2013).

In an attempt to understand and define blended learning in a more embodied way, Staker

and Horn (2012) created a taxonomy of the different types of blended learning they saw taking

place in schools throughout the nation. As they chronicled these, they saw four predominant

categories of blended learning models: rotation model, flex model, self-blend model, and

enriched-virtual model. These fall within a continuum with “brick-and-mortar” on one end and

“online learning” on the other end (See Figure 2).

10

Figure 2. Blended Learning Taxonomy (Staker & Horn, 2012)

The four types of blended learning are situated within this continuum so that the rotation model

is closest to a brick-and-mortar school where students are using computers as one rotation within

their traditional classroom, while on the other end of the continuum, the enriched-virtual model

is closest to the online learning side of the continuum because students in this model are

essentially doing cyberschooling but use a brick-and-mortar structure when they need teacher

help and support. Staker & Horn (2012) provide these helpful descriptions of each of these

models of blended learning:

1. Rotation model – a program in which within a given course or subject (e.g., math),

students rotate on a fixed schedule or at the teacher’s discretion between learning

modalities, at least one of which is online learning. Other modalities might include

activities such as small-group or full-class instruction, group projects, individual tutoring,

and pencil-and-paper assignments.

a. Station Rotation – a Rotation-model implementation in which within a given

course or subject (e.g., math), students rotate on a fixed schedule or at the

11

teacher’s discretion among classroom-based learning modalities. The rotation

includes at least one station for online learning. Other stations might include

activities such as small-group or full-class instruction, group projects, individual

tutoring, and pencil-and-paper assignments. Some implementations involve the

entire class alternating among activities together, whereas others divide the class

into small-group or one-by-one rotations. The Station-Rotation model differs from

the Individual-Rotation model because students rotate through all of the stations,

not only those on their custom schedules.

b. Lab Rotation – a Rotation-model implementation in which within a given course

or subject (e.g., math), students rotate on a fixed schedule or at the teacher’s

discretion among locations on the brick-and-mortar campus. At least one of these

spaces is a learning lab for predominantly online learning, while the additional

classroom(s) house other learning modalities. The Lab-Rotation model differs

from the Station-Rotation model because students rotate among locations on the

campus instead of staying in one classroom for the blended course or subject.

c. Flipped Classroom – a Rotation-model implementation in which within a given

course or subject (e.g., math), students rotate on a fixed schedule between face-to-

face teacher-guided practice (or projects) on campus during the standard school

day and online delivery of content and instruction of the same subject from a

remote location (often home) after school. The primary delivery of content and

instruction is online, which differentiates a Flipped Classroom from students who

are merely doing homework practice online at night. The Flipped-Classroom

model accords with the idea that blended learning includes some element of

12

student control over time, place, path, and/or pace because the model allows

students to choose the location where they receive content and instruction online

and to control the pace at which they move through the online elements.

d. Individual Rotation – a Rotation-model implementation in which within a given

course or subject (e.g., math), students rotate on an individually customized, fixed

schedule among learning modalities, at least one of which is online learning. An

algorithm or teacher(s) sets individual student schedules. The Individual-Rotation

model differs from the other Rotation models because students do not necessarily

rotate to each available station or modality.

2. Flex model – a program in which content and instruction are delivered primarily by the

Internet, students move on an individually customized, fluid schedule among learning

modalities, and the teacher-of-record is on-site. The teacher-of-record or other adults

provide face-to-face support on a flexible and adaptive as-needed basis through activities

such as small-group instruction, group projects, and individual tutoring. Some

implementations have substantial face-to-face support, while others have minimal support.

For example, some flex models may have face-to-face certified teachers who supplement

the online learning on a daily basis, whereas others may provide little face-to-face

enrichment. Still others may have different staffing combinations. These variations are

useful modifiers to describe a particular Flex model.

3. Self-Blend model – describes a scenario in which students choose to take one or more

courses entirely online to supplement their traditional courses and the teacher-of-record is

the online teacher. Students may take the online courses either on the brick-and-mortar

campus or off-site. This differs from full-time online learning and the Enriched-Virtual

13

model (see the next definition) because it is not a whole-school experience. Students self-

blend some individual online courses and take other courses at a brick-and-mortar

campus with face-to-face teachers.

4. Enriched-Virtual model – a whole-school experience in which within each course (e.g.,

math), students divide their time between attending a brick-and-mortar campus and

learning remotely using online delivery of content and instruction. Many Enriched-

Virtual programs began as full-time online schools and then developed blended programs

to provide students with brick-and-mortar school experiences. The Enriched-Virtual

model differs from the Flipped Classroom because in Enriched-Virtual programs,

students seldom attend the brick-and-mortar campus every weekday. It differs from the

Self-Blend model because it is a whole-school experience, not a course-by-course model.

These four models and the rotation sub-models provide helpful categories into which differing

models of blended learning implementations fit and flesh-out the concept of blended learning in

a helpful way.

While the discourse surrounding a definition of blended learning and its models is

nearing a point of relative agreement among scholars, the effectiveness of this approach in the K-

12 environment remains a topic of vigorous debate. For practitioners and policy-makers, the

question of effectiveness may be the most important one of all.

Effectiveness

The literature on blended learning has gravitated toward discussing and researching its

positive qualities, namely the ones defined by Moore (2005) called the “Sloan Consortium Five

Quality Pillars” (p. 3). They are: (1) learning effectiveness, (2) cost effectiveness and

institutional commitment, (3) access, (4) faculty satisfaction, and (5) student satisfaction. These

14

five pillars regarding the possible advantages of blended learning have led researchers to directly

assess one (or more) of these variables in the online and blended contexts have also served as

organizing ideas for much of the existing research on blended learning (Graham, 2013). While

all of these are potentially helpful ways of studying the promise of blended learning, the first

pillar in particular has captured the attention of researchers in higher education, K-12 education,

and the effectiveness of corporate training programs. This research has revealed varying results

in the effectiveness of blended and online learning in helping students learn.

Assessing whether or not blended learning environments are effective has become

something of a tennis match of educational researchers finding significant gains in fully online

courses (Wu & Hiltz, 2004 in Vignare, 2007), then others disproving or being critical of the

findings (Means, 2009). For many researchers and educators, blended learning seemed to be the

“goldilocks” solution: not completely online and removed from educational professionals and

not simply face-to-face instruction that eschewed the affordances of technology in the classroom

(Dziuban et al. 2004). Yet the question of effectiveness still remains an open question for many

researchers (Vignare, 2007).

Despite the enthusiasm about the possibilities of K-12 blended learning in the media,

private entities (cf. The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, The Gates Foundation), and

innovation think tanks (cf. The Clayton Christiansen Institute [formerly Innosight Institute],

Lexington Institute), there is what Halverson et al. (2012) call “a dearth of K-12 research in

blended learning, in nonacademic as well as academic settings” (p. 391). In their meta-analysis

of blended learning, Halverson et al. (2012) found that 66.1% of the publications uncovered in

their research focused solely on the higher education setting, while only 1.8% focused on

blended learning in the K-12 context (see Figure 3). This reveals a true dearth of research in this

15

field, particularly in the K-12 educational space.

Figure 3. Blended Learning Publications (Halverson et al., 2012)

Currently, Picciano and Seaman (2007) provide one of the only publications to collect

data on and compare fully online and blended learning in K-12 schools. The authors devised an

instrument that surveyed 366 school districts and their attitudes toward online and blended

learning. The study revealed that most school leaders saw the advantage of online or blended

learning as (1) offering courses not otherwise available at the school, (2) meeting the needs of

specific groups of students, (3) offering AP courses, and (4) reducing scheduling conflicts. In

responding to the statement, “online and blended offerings are pedagogically more beneficial,”

small and nearly equal number marked not important and important with overwhelming majority

of respondents marking neutral for this statement. Financial benefits were also near the bottom

of the survey in terms of importance. From this work, the advantages and affordances of online

and blended learning are perceived as broadening the course offerings and providing greater

access to students. Additionally, this survey revealed school districts were concerned about

16

course quality, purchasing costs, teacher training in implementing online and blended learning

approaches.

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education conducted a meta-analysis of online and

blended instruction. This study, led by Means and colleagues, has become one of the most

widely cited pieces of research on blended learning in recent years (Halverson et al., 2012). Their

meta-analysis considered all of the high-quality empirical studies available from both the

educational realm of K-12 and higher education and the private sector industry that utilizes

blended and online learning for training and learning purposes. Of their key findings, two in

particular seem to have caught the attention of advocates for a blended and online approach: (1)

“Students in online conditions performed modestly better, on average, than those learning the

same material through traditional face-to-face instruction” and (2) “Instruction combining online

and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face- to-face instruction than

did purely online instruction.” (Means et al., 2009, pp. xiv-xvi). However, despite the fact that

many have used this as an argument to advocate for a blended learning approach, the

implications for the K-12 educational setting is not as clear and optimistic as many have

portrayed its conclusions. The report includes an overwhelming number of studies (43 of the 50)

that were drawn from research with older learners (higher education and beyond) and the authors

are clear to limit the generalizability of their finding in a K-12 context. They state, “Although

this meta-analysis did not find a significant effect by learner type, when learners’ age groups are

considered separately, the mean effect size is significantly positive for undergraduate and other

older learners but not for K-12 students” (Means et al., 2009, p. xviii). Given their struggle to

find high-quality empirical studies regarding learning effectiveness at the K-12 level, one of their

key findings was that more research of this type should be conducted.

17

Reports of individual blended learning schools increasing student test scores is often the

way effectiveness is reported to parents, funding agencies, school leaders, and lawmakers.

Kennedy and Soifer (2013) point to examples like Oakland Unified schools that, before

incorporating blended learning, scored 592 out of 1,000 on the state of California’s Academic

Performance Index (API). After a blended learning initiative in 2012, “Oakland Unified’s API

score had risen to 730 out of 1,000 – with significant gains in all student categories including

socioeconomic disadvantaged, English language learners (ELL), and students with disabilities”

(p. 6-7). To be sure, gains like this are incredible victories for the children who are learning as

well as the teachers and administrators who are involved with Oakland Unified and the

increasing number of successful blended learning schools. Yet outcome-based results like this

create a “black box” of innovation that fails to illuminate the specific characteristics of teaching

and learning in these environments that contribute to or detract from effectiveness.

We can draw two very clear conclusions from the literature on effectiveness in blended

learning environments: (1) there is clearly a need for more research in this area. If online and

blended learning will indeed explode in popularity in coming years as Christensen (2008) and

others have predicted, this will be a critically important field of study. And (2) the literature on

effectiveness in blended learning environments focuses almost completely on gains or losses on

standardized test scores. This focus on quantitative data is understandable and important. In the

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) accountability era, these scores are the “coin of the realm” that

allow school leaders to make apples-to-apples comparisons across and among schools. But as

these models of blended learning continue to grow, mature, and adapt, we need ways to measure

the success of these models beyond simply how much they can improve students’ Lexile or

18

computational scores or by defining students by where they are on the performance indicators set

forth by the standards movement.

While research on blended learning environments is rather thin, there is a deep

knowledge of some of the underlying principles from which blended learning has emerged.

Blended learning stands on the shoulders of research throughout the last century in (a) computer-

aided instruction (CAI), (b) personalized learning, and (c) game-based learning and participatory

culture.

Computer-Assisted Instruction

While recent developments in computing capabilities and accessibility have allowed the

blended learning model to emerge, the concept of learning with computers reaches back to the

1950s and 60s. Blended learning stands on the shoulders of the earliest work done in so-called

“Computer-Assisted Instruction” (CAI), which utilized rudimentary IBM mainframes connected

by phone lines to help elementary students learn mathematics (Atkinson, 1968; Suppes &

Morningstar, 1969, 1972). This first instructional program of CAI was developed at Stanford

University in 1963 and involved four sixth-grade students who came to the university campus to

learn an elementary mathematical logic program. They first learned the coding scheme and how

the program worked from the researchers and then were given practice problems on the computer.

The first iteration of this program consisted of two lessons consisting of 23 problems each.

Students were give problems on a screen and then used a code to enter their answer. If they

answered the question correctly, they moved on to the next problem. If incorrectly, they received

an immediate explanation of the correct answer. Suppes’ (1972) hope was to create a system that

used the computer to provide immediate feedback, mimicking a personalized tutor or coach.

19

Students spent several hours on the rudimentary programs that proved successful (though the

students had been hand-picked for their exceptional intelligence).

The program was further developed over the course of the next several years, and by

1965, Suppes and his colleagues were able to create a remotely controlled system that gave 41

fourth-grade children in the Cupertino Union School District daily drill-and-practice arithmetic

lessons. They installed two teletype machines in the school (essentially large electric typewriters)

that were able to connect back to the main terminal at Stanford over phone lines. The students

received their practice problems, typed in their answers, and received immediate feedback.

Notably, this program allowed students to use mathematical proof codes to build a multi-step

argument, so this was not simply a multiple-choice selection. While students were not learning

new content from this program, they were able to drill-and-practice problems for mastery in the

schools themselves, away from the computer labs on Stanford’s campus. This groundbreaking

work expanded into an algebra curriculum for high school students (Suppes, 1972) and

eventually into an exceptionally successful introductory course in Russian for undergraduate

students at Stanford (Van Campen, 1968). The movement beyond teaching mathematics was an

enormous leap in CAI research and the results of the Russian course were striking and hopeful.

The number of errors that regular students made on examinations numbered far higher than

students who were able to practice on computer programs with Cyrillic keyboards. The

significant learning results from this course are shown below in Figure 4.

20

Figure 4. Student performance for the spring-quarter final examination in first-year Russian (Van Campen, 1968)

With striking results like this, the hopes for CAI were high throughout the 1970s. The National

Science Foundation funded the development of PLATO, a CAI system that presented scenarios

with interactive text, graphics, and simple animations (Lacey, 1977). Several large universities

throughout the United States offered CAI courses (chronicled in Suppes & Macken, 1978) and

no matter the content area, the ability to practice skills and/or knowledge and receive immediate

feedback seemed to produce positive results for learners. By the late 1970s, however, researchers

lamented the de-funding of such research projects and the shift of development to the private

sector (Suppes & Macken, 1978). The enormous cost of software development and hardware

installation proved prohibitive for most, particularly in the K-12 space. As a result, CAI did not

receive mainstream adoption at that time.

21

The rise of the personal computer in the mid-1980s and the marriage of CAI and Item

Response Theory (IRT) in the late 1980s produced another generation of computer adaptive

testing. Van der Linden and Glas (2000) chronicle the way IRT (Birnbaum, 1968 cited in van der

Liden & Glas, 2000) was used by learning scientists and computer programmers to develop

computer adaptive testing programs, such as the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and the

Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT). IRT is a psychometric method that uses the

difficulty of each question to deliver appropriately more challenging questions until a weighted

score can be determined (Birnbaum, 1968). As statistical models for gathering and understanding

responses developed further into the 1990s and 2000s, Bayesian approaches of data analysis

were employed and sophisticated simulations that adapted to user input became a reality.

Foremost among them was the creation of Cisco’s NetPASS assessment and training system that

used Evidence Centered Design (ECD) to create a simulation that helped thousands of students

learn how to troubleshoot and fix complex network problems through a computer simulation

environment (Bauer, Williamson, Mislevy, & Behrens, 2003).

Beyond testing, communication technology, such as the cognitive apprenticeship model

of instruction (Collins, Hawkins, & Carver, 1991) helped make metacognitive processes

transparent. Through software prompts that asked the learner to chronicle their thinking

processes, teachers were given a powerful tool to understand student achievement and

misconceptions (Collins et al., 1991). While previous CAI programs used the computer programs

to help students practice and solidify concepts from the classroom, the cognitive apprenticeship

model formed a bridge between student performance and instruction as it gave teachers more

than a student’s score of right or wrong answers, it helped them understand the conceptual gaps

in student metacognition.

22

The next iteration of CAI came when advances in cognitive psychology and brain

development was brought to bear on the ideas of CAI, giving birth to Cognitive Tutors

(Anderson, Boyle, Corbett, & Lewis, 1990; Anderson, Corbett, Koedinger, & Pelletier, 1995).

Cognitive Tutors are computer programs that allow students to practice mathematics skills while

getting immediate and formative feedback on their progress. In essence, they try to mimic two

principal tasks of human tutoring: “(1) monitoring the student’s performance and providing

context-specific instruction just when the individual student needs it, and (2) monitoring the

student’s learning and selecting problem-solving activities involving knowledge goals just

within the individual student’s reach” (Koedinger & Corbett, 2006). The results of this

technology were as exciting as the gains CAI researchers saw in the 1960s and 1970s. Cognitive

Tutors not only improved student performance (when used correctly), but researchers found that

“average, below-average, and under-achieving high-ability students with little confidence in their

math skills benefitted most” from using Geometry Tutor (Wertheimer, 1990 cited in Bransford,

et al., 2000, p. 224). Further, Schofield (1997) talks about the positive effects of using the

GPTutor CAI program for mathematics instruction on students (she cites increased enjoyment

and engagement because of the challenge) as well as teachers. In summarizing the effects of a

study on this program in an urban setting, she states, “Teachers began to devote more time to the

slower students. They also began to act in a somewhat more collegial fashion and to provide

more individualized help. In addition, they weighted effort more heavily when computing

students’ grades” (Schofield, 1997, p. 58). Clearly, a new generation of CAI was producing

effects beyond increased performance on standardized test scores. Yet the push to quantify

educational gains brought about by the No Child Left Behind and What Works Clearinghouse

23

eras of education has reduced much of the conversation about CAI and Cognitive Tutors to one

of efficiency and effectiveness.

A recent meta-analysis of CAI reading interventions over traditional methods reported a

generally positive, though small effect (Cheung & Slavin, 2012), which is consistent with

findings that had a similar focus in the past decades (Kulik, 2003; Kulik & Kulik, 1991; Soe,

Koki, & Chang, 2000). Yet this study, similar to most like it, cautions educators from believing

in the panacea of technology or computer-based interventions. Effectiveness of the technology-

enhanced interventions depend greatly what Cheung and Slavin (2012) call “non-technology

components of reading instruction” (p. 22). They conclude that research shows that simply using

the CAI by itself shows no significant gains for readers, but “uses of technology to support and

facilitate teachers’ instruction could potentially reap greater gains than either technologies or

teaching by themselves” (Cheung & Slavin, 2012, p. 22). Thus, research in CAI for reading

effectiveness points to the possibilities of significant gains through a blended learning approach.

Similarly, the combination of the aforementioned Cognitive Tutors with the recent rise of

powerful educational data mining tools has pushed the field even further in helping make

mathematics software even more efficient and effective (Cen, Koedinger, & Junker, 2007). By

optimizing a geometry Cognitive Tutor used by over 475,000 secondary school students in the

US (2006 estimate), Cen and colleagues used the Learning Factors Analysis data-mining method

to automate question selection. This resulted in a more accelerated rate of learning when the

computer chose the type and difficulty of questions versus the hand-set parameters (Cen et al.,

2007). The authors speak about the results this ability to analyze and then customize learning

activities for individual students in terms of increased efficiency, but this kind of curation and

differentiation represents a movement toward a personalization in education that is

24

unprecedented and truly revolutionary. This is one of the foundations of blended learning and it

is to this concept of personalization that we now turn our attention.

Personalized Learning

Personalization of instruction is certainly not a new concept in education. As Koedinger

and Corbett (2006) point out, individual tutoring was perhaps the first instructional method,

employed by Socrates in the fifth century BC. Nearly two and a half millennia later, Bloom

(1984) and his colleagues proved the efficacy of this ancient method as they set forth “The 2

Sigma Problem.” Bloom cites the work of Anania (1982, 1983) and Burke (1984) that randomly

sorted students into three groups to study student learning (1) in a conventional classroom, (2) in

a mastery-based learning approach, and (3) with an individual tutor. Astoundingly, students with

a tutor performed an average of two standard deviations above the control (conventional) class

(see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Achievement distribution for students under conventional, mastery learning, and tutorial instruction (Bloom, 1984)

25

Additionally, students receiving individual tutoring spent more time on task and exhibited the

most positive attitudes and levels of interest. Bloom states, “the tutoring process demonstrates

that most of the students do have the potential to reach this high level of learning” (1984, p. 4).

So how can researchers and teachers “seek ways of accomplishing this under more practical and

realistic conditions than the one-to-one tutoring, which is too costly for most societies to bear on

a large scale” (Bloom, 1984, p. 4)? This, simply put, is “The 2 Sigma Problem.” Bloom and his

colleagues tried to crack open the black box of tutoring to find what, exactly, produced such

monumental gains. The effect sizes of variables such as reinforcement, cues and explanations,

student classroom participation, cooperative learning, student time on task, homework, and home

environment interventions all produced incremental gains, but none as significant as one-to-one

tutoring (Bloom, 1984). As Horn & Staker (2015) point out, the results of this conclusion have

been revisited by VanLehn (2011) in a more recent meta-analysis which suggests the effect of

human tutoring may be closer to 0.79 standard deviations. Yet even with this revision, the effect

tutoring has on learning is substantial.

The link between the “2 Sigma Problem” and blended learning was made by Patrick,

Kennedy, and Powell (2013) as they critiqued the one-size-fits-all nature of current traditional

education models. They point to the need for learners to be involved in designing their own

learning process (Campbell & Robinson, 2007, cited in Patrick et al., 2013) and claim,

“differentiation is part of personalizing learning, and it is essential in education” (Patrick et al.,

2013, p. 5). Further, they highlight the importance of variety and choice in personalization and

the way it puts the focus of learning on students while giving them agency in their own learning

process. While many have conflated personalized learning and blended learning approaches, they

are careful to draw some helpful distinctions:

26

Simply, blended learning is a delivery mechanism for personalized learning….It is

possible to do personalized learning without technology — but it is very difficult to scale

personalized learning for each student in a classroom and school without effective and

meaningful applications of technology to enable the differentiation and flexibility in

pacing required (p. 14).

So blended learning, when properly implemented, can be the mechanism for personalized

learning at scale and at least a step toward addressing the “2 Sigma Problem” as the combination

of individualized learning trajectories and small group instruction can happen in the context of a

large number of students in a classroom. And while much of traditional schooling presents math

problems, science questions, and language exercises in an environment that is agnostic to the

individual learner, personalized content presented to students on computers has the potential to

give students an element of choice in their learning and situate concepts dynamically in a context

that interests students.

One of the essential aspects of blended learning is located in the Staker and Horn (2012)

definition that blended learning involves “some element of student control over time, place, path,

and/or pace” (p. 3). This kind of student agency allows students the ability to make at least some

choices about their learning and introduces a level of personalization familiar to proponents of

Montessori education. In a word, blended learning involves choice. In her book, Reality is

Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Jane McGonigal

(2011) writes about work, games, motivation, and happiness. She describes what, exactly, is so

fun and engaging about games and why most people don’t, can’t, or won’t bring the kind of

enthusiasm they have for playing World of Warcraft to their 9-5 job. For McGonigal, it’s not that

work itself is unpleasant or uninteresting. In fact, it is precisely the opposite.

27

McGonigal cites the work of psychologists who use the experience sampling method

(ESM) to determine how people feel during different parts of their day. A common finding

among researchers employing this method is that almost every activity that we would think of as

“having fun” during the day is actually mildly depressing. Subjects reported that after watching

television, eating chocolate, or just chilling out they were “less motivated, less confident and less

engaged overall” (Csíkszentmihályi, 1991, 1989; Kubey et al., 1996, cited in McGonigal, 2011, p.

31). People often seek out these activities to lift their spirits, but when we’re passively

entertained or minimally engaged, it has the opposite effect on us. She says, “We go from stress

and anxiety straight to boredom and depression. We’d be much better off avoiding easy fun and

seeking out hard fun, or hard work that we enjoy, instead” (McGonigal, 2011, p. 32). So what is

the difference between work that is drudgery and work that is enjoyable? McGonigal says that

tedious work is unpleasant because it lacks choice.

When we don’t choose hard work for ourselves, it’s usually not the right work, at the

right time, for the right person. It’s not perfectly customized for our strengths, we’re not

in control of the work flow, we don’t have a clear picture of what we’re contributing to,

and we never see how it pays off in the end. (McGonigal, 2011, p. 29)

Conversely, what McGonigal calls “the right hard work” (2011, p. 29, emphasis added) is

immensely satisfying and exciting for us. We experience physiological and neurological rush of

positively-framed stress, called “eustress,” when we feel capable of facing the challenge before

us. This is why well-balanced and “leveled” video games (like Blizzard’s Starcraft and Diablo

series) are so delightfully engrossing—they present a level of challenge to players that is just

beyond their expertise, but still within their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Vygotsgy,

1978). These games present difficult tasks at the right time, for the right person, with a clear goal

28

in sight. In these moments, eustress quickens the pulse and activates attention and reward centers

in the brain (McGonigal, 2011, p. 32).

The resulting sense of accomplishment for overcoming one of these challenges causes a

reaction in three sets of reward circuitry in the brain and causes a rush that few other activities

produce (Hoeft, et al., 2008, cited in McGonigal, 2011). This sense of epic accomplishment that

comes after successfully completing “the right hard work” has no English equivalent. Instead,

McGonigal uses the Italian word for “fierce pride” or “personal triumph” to describe this sense

of victorious satisfaction: “fiero.” This term, first coined by Lazzaro (2004), is an essential part

of what gamers find so engrossing about video games. Lazzaro’s work (primarily with game

designers) focuses on what gamers like most about gaming. She and her team studied 15

hardcore gamers, 15 casual gamers, and 15 non-gamers in search of keys to releasing emotions

in games. They identified “Hard Fun,” “Easy Fun,” “Altered States,” and “the People Factor” as

the keys to emotional engagement and chronicled the emotions that players experienced while

playing a variety of games. While players displayed a number of diverse reactions including fear,

surprise, wonder, naches (pride in one’s child or mentee), and schadenfreude (delight in the

misfortune of another), none was more satisfying than fiero. This emotional state, she concludes,

is not only satisfying and motivating, it’s addictive (as shown through brain scans in Hoeft,

Watson, Kesler, Bettinger, & Reiss, 2008; Griffiths & Hunt, 1998). As such, she suggests “fiero”

should be the ultimate goal and gold-standard for game designers: to provide “opportunities for

challenge, mastery, and feelings of accomplishment” (Lazzaro, 2004).

McGonigal uses this concept as a foil for the modern working environment that is rarely

designed around instilling a sense of fiero in accomplishing choice-driven, right hard work. She

goes on to suggest ways that people can find their own ways to use technology to gamify their

29

lives to create some life-giving and motivating “fiero” moments in the everyday, “broken” world.

The introduction of choice into a learning environment can potentially activate these senses of

emotional engagement as students gain agency over what “right hard work” they might do during

the school day. The sense of fiero might be particularly illusive for students on the top and

bottom quartiles of their classes. When lessons, assignments, or classroom discussions are either

too fast or too slow for students, it is difficult to generate eustress in students. The potential for a

greater sense of fiero in blended learning environments as students are given control over the

“time, place, path, and/or pace” (Staker & Horn, 2012) of their learning is among its most

exciting and potentially revolutionary affordances.

Personalized learning, in addition to providing students with a sense of choice in their

education, utilizes students’ interest in order to increase engagement and deepen learning.

Walkington (2013) provides a thorough overview of the literature regarding the consistently

positive effects of personalization on mathematics education. Her own work tested the

effectiveness of interest-based learning in the context of an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS).

Like CAI and cognitive tutors, ITSs present computer-based problems and scenarios for learners,

increases in difficulty as the user gets the right answer, and gives explanations and hints for

students who are struggling, right when they need help. While she found a wealth of evidence

that “the activation of interest is associated with improved learning (Ainley, Hillman, & Hidi,

2002; Ainley, Hidi, & Bendorff, 2002; Harackiewicz et al., 2008; Schiefele 1990, 1991), as well

as with increased attention (McDaniel, Waddill, Finstad, & Bourg, 2000; Renninger & Wozinak,

1985), persistence (Ainley et al., 2002), engagement (Flowerday et al., 2004)” (Walkington,

2013, p. 934), she noticed that few of these researchers have studied interest-based learning in

the context of adaptive technology environments.

30

Walkington (2013) found that personalization based on student interest combined with an

ITS resulted in significant learning gains that persisted months later, particularly for students

who otherwise struggled with algebra. She argues that personalization is a scaffold that allows

students to build competency in their area of comfort so that they can later apply the skills to

more complex problems without the benefit of the personalized content.

Personalized learning based on student interests can also have a significant effect on a

student’s reading ability (Steinkuehler, 2011). In a series of studies that involved students in an

after-school program who were at or below grade-level in reading, Steinkuehler wanted to know

what effect using interest-based texts had on comprehension and Lexile fluency. She and her

colleagues first assessed the reading level of several online texts relating to World of Warcraft

(WoW) from popular discussion boards and found that the most prevalent texts related to WoW

are written at an average grade level of 11.8. Using these grade-leveled texts, she then conducted

a second study to compare students’ comprehension and reading fluency on a passage from a

social studies textbook and a passage from a grade-leveled text related to playing WoW. They

found no significant gains for both non-struggling and struggling readers between the two texts.

A final study asked students to choose three topics related to content in WoW that they wanted to

read more about. The researchers then chose articles based on their area of interest that were at

least two grade levels above their current reading level. This time, non-struggling readers read

texts that were an average of 3.5 grade levels above their competency while struggling readers

read texts that were an average of 6.2 grade levels above their tested reading ability.

The researchers attributed the dramatic increases to the self-correction rates (a positive

reading strategy), which doubled from the previous study where students had simply been given

a text based on their reading level. The ability to choose a topic that interested the student

31

(despite actually increasing the levels of difficulty) resulted in a reading fluency that made non-

struggling readers push up to a college level and struggling readers rocket up to a non-struggling

level. From this, researchers concluded, “interest does matter” (Steinkuehler, 2011, p. 13) in

increasing performance on reading and comprehension.

Personalized learning engages student interest and gives students agency in their

education that not only improves student learning, it has the potential to replicate the success of

1-to-1 tutoring programs and create a sense of fiero in learners. Blended learning’s promising

ability to use computers to personalize learning and allow teachers to focus on small-group

instruction and targeted remediation represents a potential solution to Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem.

In addition to these ideas about personalization, blended learning draws on some of the same

foundational ideas of game-based learning. We now turn our attention to this field of inquiry.

Game-Based Learning and Participatory Culture

Over the past decade, educators have begun to take video games seriously. Already, there

is an enormous and growing field of scholarship that considers the important lessons that

educational institutions can learn from video game design (Gee, 2003; Shaffer, Squire,

Halverson & Gee, 2005; Squire, 2006) as well as considerations of what can be learned from

playing the video games themselves. The latter is beyond the scope of this paper, yet the former

gives us some insight into one of the building blocks of blended learning: game-based learning

and participatory culture. Gee’s (2003) discussion of what can be learned from video games

posed an interesting question to educators: why was it not uncommon for kids who can’t pay

attention to a math worksheet to be immersed in a good video game for 40-50 hours until they

beat it? Gee eloquently laid out some compelling arguments through the lens of his past

scholarship in semiotics, language acquisition, and cognition. His list of 36 learning principles

32

gave educators in the early 2000s an insight into what makes video games so engaging and

satisfying for players and what could be possible for education. Yet these ideas (for the most

part) have not guided the design of learning environments and curriculum since its publication.

Some of these ideas, while perhaps not possible in a traditional classroom, are possible when

students are engaged in digital learning environments in blended learning classrooms.

Seven of these principles speak to the particular affordances of a blended learning

approach and, ideally, these insights from game-based learning could be incorporated into the

design of blended learning environments. While one would hope to see many of these principles

at-work in the design of blended learning environments, many of these depend on the software

providers that teachers, principals, and administrators choose. For example, Gee’s Practice

Principle encourages the ability to practice skills over and over in an environment that is unique

and engaging. Much of the excitement of the digital world depends on the software designers,

artists, and musicians that create it. His Explicit Information On-Demand and Just-in-Time

Principle relies on the software designers to be able to give prompts, hints, and guided practice

as students proceed through lessons. And finally, Gee’s Regime of Competence Principle, where

learners operate at the outer edge of their ability so that they find learning tasks challenging but

not impossible depends greatly on the sophistication of the software to deliver the right kind of

problem at the right time (much like the work of Cen et al., 2007). These principles should guide

the development of educational software and should be used as criteria for the evaluation of

which software blended learning schools deploy.

Yet there are some principles that relate directly to the design of blended learning

classrooms. Four of Gee’s other principles, the “Psychosocial Moratorium” Principle, the

Achievement Principle, the Transfer Principle, and the Affinity Group Principle are often built-in

33

to video game environments, but these four principles are also directly relatable to the classroom

environment and the culture of a blended learning school. The “Psychosocial Moratorium”

Principle uses of the Ericksonian concept of a “psychosocial moratorium” where “the learner can

take risks where real-world consequences are lowered” (Gee, 2003, p. 59). In many traditional

school environments, failure has academic, social, emotional, and developmental costs. After

answering a question incorrectly in front of an entire class, a less self-confident student may be

hesitant to do so again. A blended learning environment consonant with this principle would

allow students to make mistakes, correct them, and proceed with relatively low personal

consequences. Gee’s Achievement Principle speaks about the importance of recognizing each

learner’s effort, level, achievement, and growing mastery as they progress. In most educational

environments that are focused on summative assessments, achievement may only look like a

letter grade on a test or a score in relation to peers in the class or nationwide. A well-designed

blended learning environment that incorporates this principle would recognize individual

achievements and celebrate mastery as it occurs. The Transfer Principle is the idea that past

skills and insights are adaptable and solid enough to be able to transfer them to novel concepts

and new challenges. When an entire class is working at the same pace and on the same concepts,

teachers can direct students to build on prior learning. But in blended learning environments, this

is often a significant challenge—how does the work students are doing on their own connect

with in-class instruction? Blended learning environments designed with this principle in-mind

would balance individual pacing with whole group instruction.

Finally, Gee’s Affinity Group Principle speaks as much about out-of-game learning as it

does in-game learning. Affinity groups are collections of players (or learners) who all share a

common interest. In the video game world, affinity groups grow up around those who enjoy

34

playing a certain game and who want to connect with others who share their enthusiasm in order

to glean best practices, mentor and be mentored, share knowledge, and further conversations

about in-game experiences. They gather online in so-called “affinity spaces” (Gee, 2004) on a

voluntary basis and exchange ideas, often with great creativity, interest, and complexity. Jenkins

(2010) writes about four different kinds of “participatory cultures” and claims that these online

spaces are not only powerful incubators for learning. He writes,

Many have argued that these new participatory cultures represent ideal learning

environments. Gee (2004) calls such informal learning cultures “affinity spaces,” asking

why people learn more, participate more actively, engage more deeply with popular

culture than they do with the contents of their textbooks. Affinity spaces offer powerful

opportunities for learning, Gee argues, because they are sustained by common endeavors

that bridge differences in age, class, race, gender, and educational level, and because

people can participate in various ways according to their skills and interests, because they

depend on peer-to-peer teaching with each participant constantly motivated to acquire

new knowledge or refine their existing skills, and because they allow each participant to

feel like an expert while tapping the expertise of others. (p. 9)

These ideas about participatory culture underscore the importance of the social component of

learning (Barton & Hamilton, 1998). Learning happens when we can become part of a

community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), even if participation happens in a peripheral way.

Being a part of a participatory culture is rewarding and motivating because of the

authentic contribution an individual can make to a community of similarly interested people.

Jenkins identifies four different kinds of participatory cultures that young people are already

35

engaged in: affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem-solving, and circulations. Jenkins

(2010) uses these definitions for participatory culture types:

Affiliations — memberships, formal and informal, in online communities centered

around various forms of media, such as Friendster, Facebook, message boards,

metagaming, game clans, or MySpace.

Expressions — producing new creative forms, such as digital sampling, skinning and

modding, fan videomaking, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups.

Collaborative Problem-solving — working together in teams, formal and informal, to

complete tasks and develop new knowledge, such as through Wikipedia, alternative

reality gaming, spoiling.

Circulations — Shaping the flow of media, such as podcasting, blogging.

But nearly all of these describe how learners are participating outside of school. One of the

potential dangers of blended learning environments is the creation of silos of learning where

personalization and independent learning lead to isolation and detachment from building

opportunities for social learning practices. Using participatory culture to encourage engagement

in the production and sharing of knowledge has enormous potential to counter this danger by

creating a culture of activated learners within the walls of a blended learning school.

Participatory cultures are places rich with potential for learning and meaningful

interaction. While these have existed primarily outside the walls of schools, blended learning

environments have the potential to leverage the power of these communities of interest-driven

production and sharing within a classroom and school setting.

36

Conclusion from Review of Literature

It is clear from the literature that more research must be conducted in the area of blended

learning. As shown above, while there is a dearth of research on blended learning in a K-12

environment (Halverson et al., 2012), the conceptual shoulders that it stands on are broad indeed.

From 1960s research on Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI) to personalized learning and

participatory culture, there is a good amount of literature on the conceptual building blocks of

blended learning.

Additionally, the measures of effectiveness that currently report about blended learning

do not fully capture its potential nor do they give insight into the practices that should be

embraced or avoided in this context. While this is understandable given the rapid rate of iteration

and the relatively recent emergence of these models in K-12 schools, educational psychologists

have a deep and well-chronicled understanding of how to design effective learning environments.

In this next section, I describe my rationale for using one of the most well-researched

frameworks for the design of learning environments—the How People Learn (HPL) framework

(Bransford et al., 2000)—as a conceptual framework for studying and evaluating blended

learning environments.

Theoretical Framework

Given the clear need for more research to be conducted in blended learning environments

and the limited way that most studies on blended learning have been defining effectiveness, I

chose to study blended learning environments utilizing the HPL framework. In this section, I will

first describe the HPL framework itself and then discuss why I chose this framework for

studying blended learning environments.

37

According to the How People Learn (HPL) framework (Bransford et al., 2000), the most

effective learning environments are (1) learner-centered, (2) knowledge-centered, (3)

assessment-centered, and (4) community-centered (see Figure 6). The HPL framework presents

these four interdependent aspects of effective learning environments as a well-researched

foundation on which to build effective learning situations for students. The focus on learners,

well-organized knowledge, ongoing assessment for understanding, and community support and

challenge create an ideal picture as to what a classroom should be. Regardless of the role of

technology in a classroom, these four foci are the hallmarks of effective learning environments

and they provide a helpful basis on which to evaluate and understand the design of Blended

Learning environments. This section details the four foci of the HPL framework and makes some

connections between them and the previously discussed literature related to the conceptual

heritage of blended learning.

Figure 3. How People Learn Framework (Bransford, et al., 2000)

The first characteristic of the HPL framework is that learning environments must be

“learner-centered.” To say that learning environments are “learner-centered means that they are

attentive to discovering where a child is before they try to determine where they ought to be on a

38

learning trajectory. Understanding the knowledge, skills, beliefs, and attitudes that students bring

with them is, Bransford and colleagues (2000) believe, the basis for building new knowledge.

The authors of the HPL framework also include “culturally responsive” teaching practices

(Ladson-Billings, 1995, cited in Bransford et al., 2000) and “diagnostic teaching” (Bell et al.,

1980, cited in Bransford et al., 2000) which attempt to gently reveal knowledge misconceptions

among students and give them scenarios and exercises to adjust their thinking to reframe their

ideas. Teaching practices that are culturally relevant and diagnostic in nature are not simple tasks

for most educators, yet they are critically important conditions for learning: teachers need to

uncover the “incomplete understandings, the false beliefs, and the naïve renditions of concepts

that learners bring with them to a given subject. If students’ initial ideas and these are ignored,

the understandings that they develop can be very different from what the teacher intends.” (p. 10).

Designing a “learner-centered” classroom requires careful attention to understanding these

conceptual starting-points for each learner and proceeding from that point.

The second characteristic of a classroom designed around the HPL framework is that they

are “knowledge-centered.” Learning environments that are simply learner-centered would not

necessarily provide students the opportunity to gain and organize the knowledge needed to

understand and solve problems. Knowledge-centered learning environments are attentive to the

order and content of curricula in order to strike a balance between teaching skills that are

necessary for fluency (reading, writing, calculating) and a deeper understanding of concepts. The

HPL framework emphasizes the necessity of giving students a clear sense of how individual

concepts fit into larger ideas. This avoids the common educational error of emphasizing (or at

least allowing) the production of discrete knowledge and skills without attention to an integrated

and flexible understanding of a discipline. Another common educational problem that

39

knowledge-centered classrooms try to address is the attempt to keep up with the rapid global

expansion of knowledge, resulting a curriculum that is “a mile wide and an inch deep” (Collins

& Halverson, 2009, p. 46). By countering this movement by focusing on a depth of

understanding, knowledge-centered classrooms try to focus on a depth of knowledge rather than

a breadth. The HPL authors are critical of pedagogical approaches that guide students lock-step

through a curriculum, comparing this approach to the image of the worn two-wheel tracks that

Roman chariots used. This “rutted path,” they claim, is not unlike dominant approaches to

curriculum in schools into which everyone must fit (National Research Council, 1990, p. 4, cited

in Bransford et al., 2000). Approaches to curricula of this type create a static path for learning

and do not help students build their own connections between concepts, skills, and ideas. The

goal of a “knowledge-centered” learning environment is to create an opportunity for students to

hone skills and build competency and “automaticity” (Bransford et al., 2000, p. 139) of basic

skills (which have a well-documented importance in the success of students in school) while

connecting them to ways of thinking in a discipline so students learn how to think

mathematically, scientifically, historically, etc.

A third characteristic of successful learning environments, according to the HPL

framework, is that they are “assessment-centered.” Assessment in an educational environment is

ultimately a way of gathering data regarding how a student is progressing along a learning

trajectory in order to provide helpful and timely feedback. Assessment-centered environments

are focused on providing students with timely feedback in both formal and informal ways

through formative and summative assessments. While the HPL framework authors critique the

scarcity of feedback opportunities in most classrooms, they also caution against assessments that

reward solely memorization over meaningful learning. Another potential issue with assessment

40

can be the gap of time between the assessment and the feedback that the student receives. Often,

students simply receive their grades and move on to another topic, which does not help them

refine their thinking or hone their skills. “Feedback is most valuable when students have the

opportunity to use it to revise their thinking as they are working on a unit or project. The addition

of opportunities for formative assessment increases students’ learning and transfer, and they

learn to value opportunities to revise (Barron et al., 1998; Black and William, 1998; Vye et al.,

1998b)” (Bransford, et al., 2000, p. 141). Additionally, assessment-centered environments

ideally allow students to build meta-cognitive skills of self-assessment, reflection, and refining

their thinking for better understanding.

The fourth and final characteristic of successful learning environments in the HPL

framework is “community-centered.” In addition to being learner-centered, knowledge-centered,

and assessment-centered, classrooms and schools that connect students to the community foster

opportunities for cooperative learning and continuous improvement. Equally important is the

“freedom to make mistakes in order to learn (e.g., Brown & Campione, 1994; Cobb et al., 1992)”

(Bransford et al., 2000, p. 145). This “freedom” is linked to a culture of support and

encouragement within a learning environment that allows students to refine their thinking

without harsh critique or humiliation. The overt and covert rules of a classroom, school, family,

and community have a strong bearing on the ability for a learner to value and comprehend

knowledge in a learning environment. Families can provide key resources for learning and

expose students to activities in which learning occurs. Family dispositions toward acquiring

skills and the value of schooling also influences the success of learners. Further, connections

outside of the classroom and school to community resources can have an enormous effect on

learning. The HPL framework authors state, “an analysis of learning environments from the

41

perspective of community also includes a concern for connections between the school

environment and the broader community, including homes, community centers, after-school

programs, and businesses” (Bransford et al., 2000, p. 147). These places can expose learners to

an intellectual camaraderie that can potentially spur-on their interest and involvement in learning.

These four characteristics—learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered,

and community-centered—are all essential parts of a successful learning environment in the HPL

framework. And while Bransford, et al. (2000) point to some of the potential advances in

technology that might enhance some of these characteristics (the authors have a lengthy section

describing late 1990s research on the effect and advantages/disadvantages of television and how

it could be used to enhance learning), advances in big data analysis, cognitive tutors, adaptive

technologies, and charter schooling—all of which brought about the blended learning model of

schooling—might seem to have made these characteristics obsolete. To the contrary, this

framework provides an indispensable way to understand the current research on blended learning

environments and a basis of comparison between traditional schools and blended learning

schools. Inasmuch as they are both designing their learning environments around these principles,

they are doing so in alignment with the best thinking on learning known to educational

researchers. I will now further discuss the rationale of using the HPL framework in the study and

evaluation of blended learning schools.

Shea (2007) first suggested the HPL framework might be used in evaluating blended

learning environments along with several other possible conceptual frameworks. But to date,

researchers have not conducted research on blended learning environments using this concept.

The robust and well-researched body of literature that supports the four characteristics of the

HPL framework lends itself naturally to the study of blended learning environments because of

42

its focus on the tools of technology. Further, there are natural connections between the HPL

characteristics and the discussions of effective digital learning environments stated above. For

example, the HPL framework talks about the importance of community-centered classrooms that

allow students to make mistakes without consequence or humiliation. Gee (2003) resonates with

that point in discussing the “psychosocial moratorium” of video games that lowers the

consequences for taking risks and allows gamers to make mistakes. Gee’s Transfer Principle

(2003), which underscores the importance of applying past knowledge to novel challenges,

aligns nearly perfectly with the HPL framework’s idea of knowledge-centered learning

environments where students are encouraged to build fluency in concepts and skills so that they

can create their own way of understanding a concept and apply it to new problems. While the

software used in CAI and cognitive tutors has changed dramatically over the past half-century,

the one constant has been the instantaneous formative feedback that users receive. In assessment-

centered contexts, the HPL authors emphasize the importance of formative assessment and

timely feedback loops. The rutted-path of education that knowledge-centered environments try to

avoid maps closely to the desire for the “right hard work” in McGonigal’s (2012) writing as well

as the part of Horn and Staker’s definition of blended learning that includes “some element of

student control over time, place, path, and/or pace” (p.3, 2011). Additionally, the HPL

framework’s community-centered characteristic stresses the importance of cooperative learning

and connections outside of the classroom and school, much the same as “affiliations” and

“collaborative problem solving” are at the heart of digital participatory cultures (Jenkins, 2010).

These points of convergence provide a natural rationale for using the HPL framework in

a study of blended learning schools. Note, however, I am not testing the insights of the HPL

theory, nor am I trying to prove that this is the only way of studying blended learning schools

43

(indeed, others can and should be tried). I am simply using the HPL framework to gain analytic

insights and help organize how I think about pedagogical practices and design in blended

learning environments. The HPL framework’s theoretical basis in the literature of cognition and

educational psychology give it a solid foundation for classroom evaluation, regardless of how

new the model of schooling might be. Further, its four concrete characteristics align well with

some of the specific affordances of technology outlined above. Consequently, I chose the HPL

framework to determine what, if any, evidence of these four characteristics could be found in

blended learning schools.

Although this framework provides guidance and an organizational structure to my

analysis of observations and interviews, I remain open to other insights regarding effective

pedagogical practices in blended learning schools. Also, since the HPL framework focuses more

on pedagogical practices than outcomes, I will remain open to observing the presence of other

potential outcomes of blended learning environments beyond the scope of the HPL framework.

44

Chapter 3: Methods

In this section, I will describe the study design to address my research questions and why

I chose this design. In addition, I will discuss site selection, participants, data collection

procedures, archival data processes, entry, instrumentation, analysis, trustworthiness, ethical

considerations, and limitations.

Design

To address my research questions, I rely on a qualitative research design. Qualitative

research is defined as a type of inquiry that “is designed to explore the human elements of a

given topic, where specific methods are used to examine how individuals see and experience the

world” (Given, 2008, p. xxix). This focus on an individual teacher’s, administrator’s, and

student’s experience of a blended learning school will contribute to a broader and collective

sense of blended learning pedagogy and outcomes at the school-level and allow me greater

insight into my research questions. Additionally, as was chronicled above, there is a dearth of

research in the field of K-12 blended learning (Halverson et al., 2012) and consequently, many

individual blended learning schools have self-reported successes to constituents and grant

agencies simply in terms of rising test scores. For example, USC Hybrid High School reported

its second year “successes” in terms of projected growth on the California state assessment,

growth on MAP testing, the number of applications for the school, and a parent satisfaction

percentage (see: http://www.uschybridhigh.org/about-us/Results.cfm). This kind of “black box”

reporting does not give a rich understanding of the pedagogical practices and educational

environment as a whole that contribute to those numerical “successes.” In my research, I employ

a qualitative research approach in order to open up that “black box” of achievement in blended

learning schools.

45

A qualitative approach allows the researcher to study “people, cases, phenomena, social

situations, and processes in their natural settings in order to reveal in descriptive terms the

meanings that people attach to their experiences in the world” (Yilmaz, 2013, p. 312). As stated

in my research question, I am broadly interested in understanding the characteristics of teaching

and learning in blended learning schools. This design is best suited for addressing my research

questions because I want to get a sense of how teachers, administrators, and students understand

and experience blended learning. This requires me to both observe these contexts first-hand and

interact with the people who are working and learning in these environments to get a true sense

of these schools Thus a qualitative approach seems most appropriate.

Within a qualitative framework, I will employ a collective case study method of

researching (Stake, 1995). Collective cases are one of three different types of case studies that

Stake describes. A case is called “intrinsic” if there is something particularly unique or

interesting about a case that merits study, whereas a case is called “instrumental” if it is used to

provide an insight into a certain issue or phenomena outside the actual case (Stake, 2000). A

third type of case study is a “collective” case study, which Stake defines as simply “instrumental

study extended to several cases” (Stake, 2000, p. 437). A researcher employs this kind of case

study in order to investigate a phenomenon, population, or general condition” (Stake, 2000, p.

437). In order to develop a deep understanding of effectiveness and pedagogical practices in

blended learning schools and draw insights on blended learning in general, a collective case

study is the most appropriate form of research design. This involves examining several cases of

blended learning schools in order to determine emerging themes based on the HPL framework.

While some have questioned the generalizability of case studies, I concur with Yin who

contends, “case studies, like experiments, are generalizable to theoretical propositions and not to

46

populations or universes” (2014, p. 21). The goal of this research will be to create a more rich

understanding of practices and beliefs in blended learning environments and “to expand and

generalize theories (analytic generalizations) and not to extrapolate probabilities (statistical

generalizations)” (Yin, 2014, p. 21). Simply put, the goal of looking into the “black box” of

blended learning in these schools is depth, not breadth, so generalizability is not a primary goal

of my study. In my research, I have chosen to compare three different cases of blended learning

schools, which is toward the upward limit of the number of recommended cases by Creswell

(2007) in a multi-case study. Nevertheless, I think this number of cases will afford me the chance

to give a more robust picture of how effectiveness is understood and sought-after across several

schools with similar approaches but with differing contexts.

Site Selection

While there is a growing number of schools employing a blended learning approach

nation-wide, the total number is still rather small. Part of the challenge in identifying such

schools is still emerging definitions of blended learning (as discussed above) and the self-

identification that currently occurs. Efforts to identify blended learning schools, such as the

Christiensen Institute’s “Blended Learning Universe”

(http://www.blendedlearning.org/directory/) are helpful in getting a broad picture of the scope of

the different models of blended learning use within schools, though they do not disambiguate by

partial school adoptions of blended learning versus entire school implementations. While partial-

adoption of some of the insights of blended learning within the context of a traditional school is

an emerging area in need of research and further study, it is beyond the scope of this project.

These are the selection criteria for my research sites: Midwestern, K-8, Catholic, whole-school

blended learning schools.

47

I chose Midwestern schools as a convenience for travel and follow-up. While many of the

first blended learning schools emerged on the west coast of the United States, this idea has since

spread to various sites throughout the nation. I do not find this geographic selection a

limitation—in fact, several of the schools I study have iterated on the design of other blended

learning schools from different geographic contexts and might reflect what educators have

learned from the initial trials. But for the sake of getting a more complete picture of different

contexts, the schools I will visit are each located in different Midwestern states. The three

schools I have chosen have a diversity of context in that one is urban, another rural, and the third

is suburban in order to create a more robust picture of blended learning across several different

types of schools.

I chose not to limit myself to any one model of blended learning since the definitions do

not always capture the nuances of blended learning practices. While two of the schools identify

themselves as using the “station-rotation” model, there is some diversity even within schools that

makes strict categorization less helpful. That said, many blended learning schools are drifting

toward something akin to station-rotation blended learning. Still, there is no monolithic

agreement on which approach is most effective or desirable and a diversity of blended learning

models enriches my research.

The selection criterion of the elementary/middle school context versus a secondary

school context speaks less about the ways in which blended learning might be differently

implemented in a secondary versus a primary school, and more to the paucity of whole-school

adoptions of blended learning approaches in secondary schools throughout the nation. Perhaps as

the blended learning model continues to grow, a study of both elementary and secondary blended

48

learning schools in similar geographic areas will be possible, but such a study is beyond the

scope of this one.

I chose to study Catholic schools not only because of my personal interest in Catholic

education but because they are uniquely qualified to be interesting incubators of innovation.

While Catholic schools are equally susceptible to Cuban’s (2001) critique that schools use

technology to reinforce rather than revolutionize instruction (Gibbs, Dosen, & Guerrero, 2008),

they are untethered from the standards and accountability constraints that often hamstring

innovation in public schools. Further, because of their dependence on tuition for financial

viability amidst a market of free public schooling, Catholic schools are constantly seeking ways

to differentiate themselves from other schools. In certain cases, this desire to innovate has led

Catholic schools to seek out models of schooling beyond traditional ones, just as charter schools

have recently attempted. Catholic elementary schools are particularly interesting sites for study

since they have neither public funding of public/charter schools nor the financial stability of

some elite (often Jesuit) Catholic high schools. This forces them to be shrewd in their technology

investments while being responsive to their parent stakeholders regarding the effectiveness of

these innovations. Finally, when Catholic schools innovate with technology, they often do so in

existing facilities while retaining their current faculty rather than building anew or hiring

handpicked teachers, as is the case in many innovative charter schools. Studying these schools

that are able to innovate, but must do so with financial prudence and accountability while

working with an existing building and faculty allows me to glean interesting insights and lessons

from these sites that extend beyond just Catholic schools.

Perhaps most significantly, I chose schools that are using blended learning approaches in

all (or nearly all) of their grade levels. In many schools, one or two innovative teachers are

49

utilizing a flipped classroom approach or experimenting with a station rotation model. While I do

not want to minimize this kind of forward-thinking pioneering on the digital frontier, a whole-

school implementation of blended learning allows me to research the ways that blended learning

has taken root in different ways under the same roof. Additionally, school-wide implementations

of blended learning often involve significant investments in technology, time spent managing

cultural-shifts in pedagogy, developing and deploying professional development, finding

funding, and thoughtful alignment of the mission of the school with the blended learning

approach. These aspects of a whole-school blended learning implementation add to the richness

of understanding these contexts as a whole school.

Participants

Within each of these schools, I interviewed the principal, the blended learning

coordinator (or equivalent, some are called “blended learning site managers” etc.), several

teachers who are utilizing a blended learning approach to varying degrees, and focus groups of

students who experience blended learning. Studying the leadership level allows me to study the

principal’s role in the transition of a school to blended learning and understand how budgeting,

scheduling, and professional development occur within blended learning schools. Beyond the

pragmatics, interviewing the principal will also allow me the chance to inquire about the

principal’s role (and importance) in managing the cultural shift toward blended learning among

teachers, students, current and prospective parents, and funding agencies. It will also be

interesting to see how the principal’s overall vision of the school and professed pedagogical

practices aligns with my classroom observations.

The blended learning coordinator is usually a person hired from outside the school

(though some have hired internally) to manage many of the technical aspects of transitioning to a

50

blended learning approach. In some contexts, this person might take on the responsibility of

leading or planning professional development sessions, coordinating data analysis, technical

support, and/or being the point of contact for vendors and digital content providers. Interviewing

the blended learning coordinator allows me to inquire about the challenges faced in

implementing a blended approach and their role in curriculum and technical choices. Do they

share the principal’s “big picture” view of the school? How do blended learning coordinators

assist teachers in creating an effective classroom environment? How have they overcome

challenges and why is a role like theirs needed for a blended learning school to function? Theses

insights are key to understanding my research questions.

I interviewed and observed all of the teachers who are involved in blended learning from

each school in order to get their critically important perspective on blended learning in their

school as well as engaging in direct observations of their classrooms. I used open-ended

interviews, which included “having questions emerge from immediate context,” and “selecting

topics in advance but deciding sequence and phrasing during the interview, thereby encouraging

comprehensiveness through probing” (Conrad & Serlin, 2005, p. 422).

Finally, I interviewed a focus group of 5-7 students at each school in order to get a first-

hand account of the experience of blended learning from a student perspective. Giving voice to

students is a rare occurrence in blended learning literature and helps give a more robust sense of

the characteristics of teaching and learning in blended learning schools. Since two of the schools

are in their first year of blended learning, the changes these students witnessed present an

interesting contrast between the affordances and impact blended and non-blended classrooms

have on students.

51

Amidst these interviews, I conducted weeklong classroom observations, which focused

on discovering pedagogical practices at work in these contexts and determining how or to what

extend they reflect the characteristics of the HPL framework and any other interesting practices.

While interview data is the primary source of content for this study, direct observations are an

essential way to confirm and verify what is stated in interviews. The classroom is the place

where theories of pedagogy are borne out and put into practice in a blended learning school.

Careful observations and detailed ethnographic field notes are essential parts of my data

collection process.

Of course, principals, blended learning coordinators, and teachers are not the only ones

who have a sense of teaching and learning in blended learning schools and witness the presence

of the HPL characteristics and technology use. Parents and superintendents all have differing

perspectives on blended learning and whether or not the aforementioned characteristics are

present. While surveying parents, superintendents, and other folks who are connected with

blended learning schools would no doubt be illuminative in its own right, it is beyond the scope

of this study.

Data Collection Procedures

To address my research questions, I interviewed principals, teachers, blended learning

coordinators, and students. I began this process of interviewing by first contacting the school

principals and scheduled meetings to be conducted at an agreed-upon places and at convenient

times for the interviewees. Each interview took approximately one hour. Mishler (1986) believes

the interview method can produce a broader picture of not only the desired information, but also

the context for the information through a narrative approach. I recorded interviews for coding

purposes and took detailed notes to supplement the interview data.

52

In addition to interview data, I conducted several day-long observations of the classrooms

of the teachers I interviewed. I chose to utilize observational research because “the rich

descriptions it generates can result in deeper, fuller understanding of phenomena. It is

particularly powerful when combined with other methods such as interviewing” (McKechnie,

2008, p. 575). As McKechnie (2008) suggests, I also collected data about activities,

relationships, observable sociodemographic information, and instructional practices to

corroborate the interview data I collected. These data were recorded in field notes.

Entry

After receiving Internal Review Board approval from the University of Wisconsin-

Madison, I wrote emails to the principals whose schools I wanted to include in my study with a

brief description of my purpose in conducting this survey, the reason their particular school was

chosen, and the time commitment involved in this interview process. I followed up this initial

communication with a telephone call thanking them for their consideration and answering any

questions they might have about the research, methods, or the use of this data. I initially

contacted six different schools and was able to gain access to three of them.

In order to respect the busy academic schedule of teachers, administrators, and students, I

(1) limited the time of the interview and (2) scheduled each meeting in advance. Since my

questions regarding pedagogical practices required classroom observations, these interviews

needed to occur during the school year.

Instrumentation

The interview protocol for administrators (Appendix A) contains four sections: (1)

opening, (2) pedagogical practices, and (3) general questions, and (4) conclusion. This is a more

open-ended interview than the Interview Protocol for Teachers (Appendix B) and through it, I

53

hope to address my first research question about general teaching and learning in blended

learning schools. Each interview with principals, teachers, and blended learning coordinators

begins similarly—with some general introductions to help establish some trust and a comfort-

level between the interviewer and interviewee.

Part two of the interview is an open-ended invitation for the interviewees to talk broadly

about their approach to blended learning. For example, I ask, “Tell me about how blended

learning works for your students during a typical day. What is your favorite/most

interesting/most compelling experience with blended learning?” Several of the questions try to

discern what is unique about the blended learning approach and even touch upon the affordances

of technology. For example, I ask, “What are the differences you observe in student learning or

engagement in the different contexts (blended versus non-blended)? Can you give me a story that

illustrates that from your classroom experience?” This gives me a better sense of how teachers,

principals, and blended learning coordinators contrast blended learning environments with

traditional schools. While much of the data for my second research question emerged as I coded

the more open-ended interview responses and compared them with my classroom observations, I

included several questions in this section that invite the interviewees to speak generally about

their pedagogical approaches and the way they utilize technology in their school. For example, I

ask, “What is the connection between what happens on the computer programs and what happens

instructionally from the teacher?” The questions in this section help me begin collecting data

regarding how technology is being used in the school and give me insight into how, ideally,

blended learning is envisioned at the school.

Penultimately, the third section asks interviewees some general questions about the

challenges that they have faced in making the transition to blended learning and the ways people

54

within the school have, and continue to, address these challenges. For example, I ask, “If a

school were making the transition to blended learning, what are the three most important lessons

you would tell them?” Questions like this are essential in getting a deeper sense of the school’s

history, the challenges that may or may not be unique to their context, and also gives teachers

and administrators at the school a chance to describe the ways they have overcome adversity.

Finally, the fifth section concludes the interview by inviting the interviewees to add any

additional information or provide clarifications to their responses. It also allows them to ask me

questions and seek further explanations of any of the questions on my interview protocol. In

closing, I assure them of future communication regarding the findings of this study, and inform

them of the possibility of follow-up clarification and supplemental interviews. Immediately

following these interviews, I took time to record detailed field notes that consisted of

“remembering, elaborating, filling in, and commenting upon” (Emerson, 1995, p. 39) the

individual interview.

The second interview protocol (see Appendix B) will be an interview for teachers only

and will prepare me to observe the pedagogical practices linked to my first and second research

questions. These questions are created to ask the teacher about their pedagogical practices and to

see if and how they align with the four HPL characteristics. This interview is meant as a lead-in

to classroom observations as it will help me to recognize intentionality in teaching practices that

might be subtle or difficult to recognize.

The majority of the questions are contained in part 2: Pedagogical Practices. For each

question where it is relevant, I also ask about the role of blended learning in aiding or hindering

these tasks. For example, in trying to explore the “Assessment-Centered” characteristic of the

HPL framework, I ask, “How do students know how they’re doing in your class? What’s the role

55

of feedback and formative assessment in your classroom? What kind of ownership do students

have over that data? What role has the blended learning approach played in this?” These

questions try to address the essential elements of the assessment-centered characteristic in an

approachable way. While much of the data I collect on these research questions is based on

observations, this interview is an important way of stepping inside teachers’ thought-processes.

Finally, the “Discussion Questions for Student Focus Group” (see Appendix C) guided

the conversations I had with student focus groups. Every effort was made to use language that is

simple and straight-forward in these questions, for example, “What do you like most about your

school?” Further, the questions were designed to be more open-ended so that students could give

honest impressions. For example, in order to get a sense of their work at blended stations in

particular I asked, “You guys spend a lot of time on computers. What’s that like?” These

interviews began with a review of the release form that each student’s parent had previously

signed and reassured them of their freedom to opt in or out of this focus group as well as their

freedom to speak candidly to me.

Analysis

Given the qualitative nature of my data collection, I analyzed the interview and

observation data I collected in two different ways. First, I assigned codes to my interview

transcripts and field notes using the HPL framework based on the detailed descriptions of these

concepts previously mentioned in my review of literature (and using the coding scheme found in

Table 1).

Table 1

Coding Notations

Notation Description and coding examples LC Learner-Centered: uncovering incomplete understanding of concepts or

56

surfacing false beliefs when students are beginning a course of study. Using culturally relevant examples.

KC Knowledge-Centered: helping students hone skills and build competency while creating a framework for understanding concepts. Helping students connect ideas to larger concepts and frameworks.

AC Assessment-Centered: providing students with feedback based on their understanding of concepts and helping them revise and improve their thinking. Empowering students to build skills for self-reflection on their learning.

CC Community-Centered: building a community of learners (inside or outside the classroom) so that students can challenge each other and learn from one another. Creating a supportive environments where students feel safe to make mistakes and learn from them.

B Background: information or descriptions that give a sense of the school’s history and culture as well as their current demographics, personnel, and challenges.

D Design: descriptions of the choices and rationale that led to the particular design of blended learning that the school implemented. Descriptions of why one type of blended learning was chosen above another or how their model of blended learning emerged.

O Other pedagogical practices or observations of note

In order to include insights not contained in this framework, I did a second analysis of my

interview data based on the constant comparative method of analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967),

which involved the recording of interview data, open coding of reoccurring themes, and axial

coding for comparative analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). These emerging codes allowed me to

flag insights that went beyond the HPL framework and thus informed my third research question.

I also discovered that, as I was thinking about presenting each case, it would be important to give

both background information about the schools and their setting as well as some insights into

why schools had decided to choose a blended learning approach in answering my first research

question. This led me to code parts of the interviews that described the background of the school

57

with a B and parts of the interviews that described the rationale and design of the blended

learning implementation with a D in order to include them in the case study narratives.

Following each interview, I took time (usually around 20-30 minutes) to record detailed

field notes about the interview in order to continually develop major themes that arose in these

conversations. In these notes, I recorded general impressions, observations about the setting,

intangible emotional responses that would be invisible to someone reading a transcript, or notes

for further clarifying my interview protocol. These notes were broken down into (1)

Methodological Notes (labeled in my notes as “MN”) that described any changes that needed to

be made to the logistical process of interviewing and (2) Analytical Notes (labeled as “AN”) that

began the coding process by identifying themes that were present in the interview responses

and/or ones that have reoccurred throughout interviews (Benaquisto, 2008).

At the conclusion of each day of interviewing and observing, I took a significant amount

of time (typically 2-3 hours) to reflect on my notes for the day and to fill in any significant

observation experiences with details that were fresh in my mind. I found this process invaluable

in recording the rich texture of each of these cases and was often grateful for these detailed notes

later in the coding and writing process.

Trustworthiness

The goal of my study is to gain insights into blended learning environments that can

ultimately be helpful for other researchers and schools to utilize in the future. This goal and this

study would be fruitless endeavors if there were not a high degree of trustworthiness in this

study. Trustworthiness refers to the credibility of a study and is the qualitative counterpart to the

quantitative measures of “validity, reliability, objectivity, and generalizability” (Miller, 2008, p.

909). Three common indicators of trustworthiness are “methodological coherence (the

58

appropriate and thorough collection, analysis, and interpretation of data), researcher

responsiveness (the early and ongoing verification of findings and analyses with study

participants), and audit trails (a transparent description of all procedures and issues relative to the

research project)” (Miller, 2008, p. 754). The rigor of my selection process for participants

(outlined above) combined with a careful data collection process will strengthen the

methodological coherence of my study. I will both be recording the interviews and taking notes

to ensure that there is a high degree of thoroughness in the data collection process. In addressing

both researcher responsiveness and audit trails, I will communicate regularly with school

principals before and after the interviews take place. In advance of the meeting, I will make sure

(through written correspondence and phone calls) that I am completely transparent about my

methods, the intent of this study, and the process that will occur. I will now more clearly define

what ethical considerations this study may bring to the fore.

Ethical Considerations

The most important ethical consideration that I faced when compiling the information of

these interviews is simply anonymity. To specifically address this, I employed techniques of

assuring anonymity. I did this by using pseudonyms to disguise the participants’ identities

(Ogden, 2008). Further, when writing on these data, I made efforts to avoid revealing any unique

characteristics of participants that could be traced back its originator (Ogden, 2008). While

needed to include some information on the student demographics and socio-economic make-up

of each school, I was sure to mask the geographic location of each school and use pseudonyms

for the schools, principals, blended learning coordinators, teachers, and students in referring to

my observations. From the most preliminary conversations I had with each interviewee, I

ensured them of this protection of their identity. This assurance of anonymity “can facilitate

59

candid disclosure of sensitive information while also protecting the privacy… of participants”

(Ogden, 2008, p. 16).

Given the descriptive, not evaluative nature of my observations, I was particularly careful

in trying to avoid making teachers feel like their teaching methods or pedagogical approaches are

“wrong” or somehow lacking. I made every effort to maintain a sense of openness during my

observations and a casual friendliness when present in a classroom.

Significance

The goal of this study is to develop a deep understanding of how teaching and learning

are occurring in the blended learning context and to observe how teaching practices in blended

learning schools align with the best of what we know about how people learn. The significance

of these findings are numerous. First, these results will ultimately be published and shared with

other schools who are considering blended learning approaches. This sharing of ideas will

hopefully inform pedagogy in these schools and encourage more schools to make bold

technological and pedagogical leaps, as many blended learning schools already have.

Second, the reporting of successes (or failures) from blended learning schools has been

rather limited. Most schools hold up standardized test scores as the measure of success in these

schools and do not give detailed explanations of the pedagogical approaches used within

individual classrooms. This study has the potential to uncover what kinds of teaching happens on

a day-to-day basis in these classrooms and (perhaps most importantly), how the tools of blended

learning are utilized in the classroom. The results of this study also have the potential to assist

current blended learning schools in making comparisons of pedagogical practices across several

different schools in order to make iterative improvements on the design of their schools.

60

Finally, this study will add to the growing but still quite small body of research done in

blended learning schools. As practitioners and researchers seek to use powerful tools of

technology in increasingly more intelligent ways to educate students, this area of research will

only grow in importance for the future of our country and world.

Limitations

There are a number of limitations in this study, and in this section I discuss these

potential limitations including the sampling of only Catholic schools, my role as a Catholic priest,

the familiarity of teachers and administrators with the software they use, and the kinds of

interviews I chose to conduct. First, all of the schools I have chosen for this study are Catholic

schools. Nationally, a small, but growing number of charter, public, private, and religious

schools are integrating blended learning throughout their entire schools. I chose, however, to

include just Catholic schools in this study. These schools often have different financial,

curricular, governance, and enrollment constraints than do charter or public schools.

Consequently, the challenges these teachers and schools face may not precisely align with those

at other blended learning schools, yet I hope that all schools might find some resonance and

value in these cases.

Additionally, I am a Roman Catholic priest and realize that this fact has the potential to

limit the authenticity of my interactions with teachers and students. Ironically, although for many,

a priest is someone with whom they can be completely honest, I realize that there is some

authority that comes along with this office, and I recognize the possibility that some people

might feel the need to be more positive or optimistic than they might normally be since clergy

often visit Catholic schools in evaluative roles. Throughout the communication process leading

up to my data collection, I tried to mitigate this by inviting principals to simply call me “Nate”

61

and signing all communications similarly. When I conducted school visits, I chose not to wear a

Roman collar so as not to draw attention to my presence or identity as a priest. Further, I

introduced myself without my title to all of the faculty members and students that I interviewed

and tried to maintain a relaxed rapport with them throughout my visits. I have no reason to

believe that students or faculty were anything less than completely candid with me, yet there

were both students and teachers who called me “Fr. Nate” during my visit, and I concede that the

possibility of some distortion of authenticity exists.

This study seeks to understand blended learning from the experience of teachers,

administrators, and students. All of these constituents speak about the affordances and limitations

of the software they are using in their schools, yet I recognize that their perspectives on these

products might be limited by their familiarity or comfortably. My experience of these programs

is limited to their reflections and—in some cases—my own limited exploration of the software.

This study is not meant as an evaluation of these products, nor is it my intention to in any way

promote or disparage them. I mention their names directly because I recognize that the way

students and teachers experience these products often reflects significantly on their view of

blended learning.

This study is limited by the number and kind of interviews that I conducted. I spoke to

the majority of teachers at each school. However, because of my interest in discussing blended

learning, a few teachers decided they did not wish to be formally interviewed because they had

limited involvement with blended learning (in one case a gym teacher and a part-time music

teacher and in another case an art teacher from the local district). While these voices are not

included in the study, they are part of these schools and experience blended learning—albeit

perhaps tangentially—through the students they teach and may have added a richer perspective

62

on blended learning in their schools. Additionally, for the sake of narrowing the focus of this

study, I did not interview school parents directly and am limited by this lack of parental

perspective on blended learning, although several of the teachers I spoke to have children in the

schools where they teach.

63

Findings

In this section, I detail the findings of my study beginning with an overview of the data I

collected and then presenting each of the three cases. I describe these cases in detail, including

the background and design of each case in order to address my first research question as to the

characteristics of teaching and learning in blended learning schools. Each case is broken into

seven sections: background, design, learner-centered, assessment-centered, knowledge-centered,

community-centered, and summary. The first two sections introduce the cases and give the

reader an overview of the setting. The background section orients the reader to the case and gives

historic and demographic information about the schools. The design section explains the way

blended learning is implemented at each of these schools. In the learner-centered, assessment-

centered, knowledge-centered, and community-centered sections, I describe any evidence of the

four characteristics of the HPL framework that I encountered at each school. Finally, I

summarize the case and my findings in the summary section.

Data overview

The primary source of data for this study comes from the 25 interviews I conducted with

teachers and administrators at the three schools as well as the focus groups of five students at

each of the three schools. At each site, I was able to interview nearly all of the teachers that are

involved with blended learning as well as several building level administrators. Their names and

roles are detailed in the Table 2.

Table 2

Interviewees

Name Role/Grade or subject taught School

Sydney Jadin K-5 math, religion, science St. Mary’s

64

Lindsey Sanders K-2 St. Mary’s

Jeff McClure 6-8 math and science, tech coordinator St. Mary’s

Judy Ewing Principal St. Mary’s

Nora Kinney 3-5, 6-8 writing St. Mary’s

Jimmy Burke Blended learning coordinator Holy Trinity

Maria Philips 4K-Kindergarten Holy Trinity

Terri Moran President Holy Trinity

Meggin Krantz 7-8 math, 8 science Holy Trinity

Cathy Rogers 5-8 Spanish Holy Trinity

Keith Lentz 8 ELA, alumni liaison Holy Trinity

Matt Anderson 5 social studies, math Holy Trinity

Shari May 5 ELA, curriculum and instruction Holy Trinity

Alan Lehr 6-8 social studies, dean of students Holy Trinity

Rachele Coyle 6-7 ELA Holy Trinity

Karen Mendota 5-7 science, 6 math Holy Trinity

Pam Rizzo Principal St. Stephen’s

Kristen Cox Learning specialist St. Stephen’s

Kelli Arenz 4 St. Stephen’s

Brenda Rae Kindergarten St. Stephen’s

Denise Kramer 2 St. Stephen’s

Lori Young 6-8 ELA St. Stephen’s

Kathleen Martinelli 5 St. Stephen’s

Rachel Miller 1-8 science St. Stephen’s

Sister Annemarie 3 St. Stephen’s

65

Each interview lasted approximately one hour and included the questions detailed in my

interview protocol as well as some follow-up or probing questions when topics of interest arose.

I observed the classroom of each teacher I interviewed at a time when they were employing

blended learning, mostly to see how the teachers were using blended learning in actual practice

and to confirm interview data. I coded my field notes to flag evidence of the characteristics of the

HPL framework or other observations of interest. The transcribed text from the interviews and

focus groups of students resulted in 468 pages of text, which I then coded and analyzed these

data through the HPL framework. Additionally, I noted the emerging themes from these data

beyond the HPL framework.

Beyond interview data, I collected basic demographic data about the schools, their

students, their blended learning design, and their history. This information came from a variety

of sources—although primarily from the principals—including conversations with teachers and

administrators, the school web pages, parish archives, and news reports on several of the schools.

An overview of the demographic information about each of the schools is presented in Table 3.

Table 3

School Demographic Information

St. Mary’s Holy Trinity St. Stephen’s

Grades levels K-8 K, 5-8 K-8

Number of students 57 109 107

Number of teachers 4 10 14

Year founded 1910 1992 1959

Years with blended learning 4 1 1 Student enrollment qualifying for free/reduced lunch 5% 95% 2%

Student ethnic makeup Mostly white 100% Latino 95% White

66

Location Rural Urban Suburban

Blended learning model Station rotation, modified flex Station rotation Station rotation

These three schools share a religious identity as they are all Catholic schools, but they are

located in different cities throughout the Midwestern United States, and they are situated in three

different settings: rural, urban, and suburban. St. Mary’s and St. Stephen’s are both

coeducational, while Holy Trinity has both boys and girls only in their Kindergarten and then is

all boys in grades 5-8. Enrollment in each of these schools is currently rising. More detailed

information about the background of the schools, the design of their blended learning

implementation, and evidence of the four characteristics of the HPL framework is presented in

the three cases that follow.

67

Case 1: St. Mary’s

From the outside, St. Mary’s looks like a traditional rural Catholic school, but inside its

hundred-year-old brick walls, teachers and students are using blended learning to try to

overcome the challenges they face. This case begins with an introduction to the setting, a

description of St. Mary’s history and background, the design of blended learning that they are

using, and then describes any evidence of the HPL framework at this school.

Introduction

Light classical music floats through the air of Lindsey Sanders’s classroom as a group of

18 St. Mary’s students work quietly at their stations. One-by-one, Ms. Sanders calls each student

to her desk and makes sure they have what they need for the morning rotation. Students return to

their place, pick up their pencil or log back into their laptop, and get back to work. The level of

focus and diligence calls to mind a Washington D.C. think tank or an air traffic control tower.

Yet one is reminded of the reality of the situation at 9:30am sharp when the children retrieve

their snacks from their backpack and eat at their seats while singing along to a video of the

“Roller Coaster Song” by the “Koo Koo Kangaroo Guys” on the wall-mounted TVs: this is a K-2

classroom. The kids know the words to this song, (one of them even knows the beginning

dialogue by heart and lip-syncs it), lifting their hands up and moving them side to side along with

the roller coaster guys. At the direction of the video, they make surprised faces, bored faces, and

even pose for the picture on their imaginary roller coaster ride. The kids giggle at this exercise in

silliness, count along to one more video, and then settle back in to their morning routine.

In Ms. Sanders’ room, students use technology to facilitate the delivery of more

personalized content. Like many elementary school classrooms, Ms. Sanders’ K-2 classroom is

set up around several learning centers. Students rotate around to different activities as they read,

68

practice skills, and are given small group instruction. But unlike some traditional classrooms, at

one of their centers, the students in this classroom login to software called i-Ready that delivers

reading and math lessons to them based on their individual learning profile and picks up where

they last left off. This “station rotation” model of blended learning allows Ms. Sanders to

differentiate her instruction for each individual student, even with a mix of kindergarten, first,

and second graders in one room.

At several points during the blended part of their day (usually for a couple hours in the

morning), Ms. Sanders is working at her desk with small groups while other students in the

classroom raise their hands. Engaged with the students in front of her, Ms. Sanders does not

acknowledges these raised hands, which leads students to either work out their problem on their

own or eventually come up to her and ask. Neither the teacher nor the students raise their voices.

A steady stream of students approach Ms. Sanders’ desk, hand a completed sheet to her or ask

for directions, and without hesitation she grabs another sheet out of the file folder with that

student’s name on it or redirects them to another task in a different center. Like pilots radioing

the tower for their flight path, students look to Ms. Sanders for their instructions, assignments, or

to report any problems they might be experiencing. She keeps each student on course, redirects

them, and makes sure everything is flowing correctly.

Ms. Sanders calls a group of kindergarteners back to sit on the tiny stools around her

half-moon desk where they work on the letter “L” worksheets. She goes through the sounds that

L makes and the kids color in pictures of L words (lion, lemon, and ladder, but not tree). The

other kids spread out evenly around the carpeted room and read on their own. She tells me that

kids are allowed to pick what books that they want to read and that they know what bin they

should pick them from based on the results of their i-Ready diagnostic test. This, she points out,

69

ensures they pick a book that is just above their reading level in order to be sufficiently

challenging. The school has an online subscription to “Reading A-Z” and Ms. Sanders has some

reading-leveled booklets printed out and ready to be read, but the more popular choice seems to

be the books in low bookshelves along the wall which each have different colored, bright stickers

on their spine to indicate their reading level. Students get books by themselves and then do some

out-loud reading with Ms. Sanders when she calls them up. When one student brings his book to

the teacher and can’t read several words in a row, she asks him, “Was that a good book to pick?

Why don’t you pick something a little easier.” While this student’s performance data may

recommend this higher reading level, an experienced and intuitive teacher like Ms. Sanders

knows better. She is able to incorporate computer-generated data into her overall evaluation of a

student’s ability level and guide the student toward a more appropriate selection. This is the

power of the “blended” aspect of blended learning. On their own, students might be beholden to

decisions that are driven by data where they simply follow the results of their performance on

computer-based diagnostic tests. Yet in Ms. Sanders’ classroom, students are not using

technology in isolation. The “blend” in “blended learning” is this mix of computer-based

instruction in a school setting so that, in the hands of a capable teacher, the performance data

produced by educational software becomes a powerful tool for making decisions that are

informed, not driven by data.

This classroom full of different kinds of technology—from cabinets full of neatly stacked

and charging laptops to wall-mounted flat screen TVs and Smartboards—might not conjure up

the image of a school in a bucolic setting. Yet, from Ms. Sanders’ windows, one can see miles

upon miles of fertile farmland where many of the students’ families grow corn, grain, and

particularly apples. St. Mary’s is a small, beautiful brick K-8 Catholic school in the heart of the

70

Midwest. The cornerstone of the school was laid in 1910, and it has all the hallmarks of what one

might imagine a school built around this time would have: solidly constructed walls, old wood

staircases that creak when students walk up and down them, high ceilings, and antique looking

crucifixes on the walls that make one wonder if they are original to the 1910 construction. Band

practice can be clearly heard through the floor above the school office. Yet within St. Mary’s

classrooms, instruction looks anything but traditional in our current view of schooling with high

levels of student independence, personalized instruction on computers, multi-age classrooms,

and a blended learning approach throughout the entire school.

Background

Four years after this school decided to go to an entirely blended learning model, there is a

palpable energy, excitement, and pride among teachers and students about how far they have

come. But this progress was not achieved without struggle. In fact, before it adopted a school-

wide blended learning approach (or as the principal says, “went blended”), St. Mary’s was on the

brink of closing. In 2010, the school felt every bit as traditional as it looked from the outside and

the aging principal, Sister Immaculata, was not pushing for innovation. Ms. Sanders has been

teaching at St. Mary’s for six years and described how the school looked and felt when she

arrived as a young teacher, just out of college.

Our desks were in rows. Students didn’t collaborate. We had probably zero technology. I

think [we had] overhead projectors and that was about as far as it went. We didn’t even

have teacher computers. Everything was done by hand. We were old-school, let me tell

you… I had all these ideas of what my first classroom would be, and it was not that

because it was not allowed. It was very structured, and I don’t think Sister Immaculata

had changed anything since she started because she thought, “It works. Why fix what’s

71

not broken?” She wasn’t super-current. Not that any of it was necessarily bad, but I was

itching to kind of do more.

Sister Immaculata was asked to step down as principal amidst financial woes, caused by a

declining student enrollment and a large teaching staff. The adjoining parish subsidized nearly

55% of the school’s annual budget, and it became clear that at this rate St. Mary’s was not a

sustainable school.

The diocese recognized this situation, and St. Mary’s was among three schools that were

set to be consolidated by the diocese in the fall of 2011. All three were small, losing students,

and not financially viable on their own, yet not one of the schools was enthusiastic about the

merger, and many families flat-out stated that they would not send their children to the other

campuses if the schools consolidated. So a new and creative diocesan superintendent proposed a

different idea: a virtual merger of the schools. In this model, students could remain in their

building, but they would be clustered into several multi-age classrooms under one teacher (thus

allowing for drastic staff cuts) while the administration of the three schools would be centralized.

In order to accomplish the difficult task of having students of varying ages learn at different

ability levels in one classroom, the superintendent proposed using a blended learning approach to

personalize instruction and deliver a differentiated education to each student at his or her

appropriate level. In generations past, this same one-room schoolhouse idea might have been

facilitated by a set of K-8 textbooks where students would have to work on their own while the

teacher attended to students who most needed their attention. The multi-age classroom approach

proposed by the new superintendent involved one teacher using blended learning so that students

could learn at their appropriate level while giving teachers data to make interventions and data

informed decisions about students. The schools jumped at this opportunity, and parents raised

72

money to purchase new laptops, televisions, and other devices they deemed necessary for the

schools to succeed. The school board and superintendent’s office mapped out the virtual merger

and began its implementation.

The first steps, however, toward virtual merger—according to the principal and several

veteran teachers who weathered this transition at St. Mary’s—were wrought with difficulty.

While the new technology had been purchased and installed, and teachers had been walked

through how the software functioned, they were not given the professional development on how

it should be used.

Sydney Jadin teaches K-5 at the satellite partner school to St. Mary’s, several miles away.

She recalls the chaotic approach that initially happened when they consolidated the schools:

When we first started, when we had our other principal, we wanted to do the individual

lessons and things. I started that and so it was a lot of, “Okay, this doesn’t work. Throw

that out. Do this.” It always seemed crazy.

Teachers like Ms. Jadin felt swamped and overwhelmed with the new multi-age classrooms. The

“blended learning” programs that they had been given were untested and unhelpful, according to

another teacher at St. Mary’s, Nora Kinney who teaches 3-5 grade and 6-8 writing. Ms. Kinney

began teaching at one of the smaller satellite schools and eventually was hired at St. Mary’s. She

describes her experience of the initial blended learning implementation:

I started out in getting hired into an impossible job: being a K-7 teacher for 26 kids with

one aide. But they told me, “Don’t worry because it’s blended learning and the

computer’s going to be doing all the teaching and you’re just going to be assisting when

they don’t understand and just monitoring. The computer is going to set up all the lessons

and you’re not going to have to lesson plan.” That’s what I was told in the beginning.

73

But it was so ill-planned. The computer program wasn’t really tested before I got it and

nobody had really seen it before we bought it, so it was a complete disaster. It didn’t

teach at all! It was actually only like reading passages and worksheets—so the kids would

just look at an uploaded PDF and have to read it and then they looked at an uploaded

worksheet and they couldn’t even fill it in cause it was a PDF. So they either had to copy

it down onto a piece of paper and turn it in, or you had to teach kids how to download it

to their computer, then open it up to use it. Super-complicated. So it was a horrible

program. It was so not interactive. It was not teaching and then I had 26 kids and only 8

computers. So I should have just run for the hills at that point.

This first iteration of using static, non-adaptive computer-based material for a multi-age

classroom was disastrous for Ms. Kinney. She felt underequipped with the number of computers

in her room and unequipped to teach across such a wide range of grades and learning abilities.

The technology that was supposed to support this differentiation was unhelpful and she echoed

Ms. Jadin’s feeling of being overwhelmed in the initial transition.

When I first started, I used to always give this analogy to [the former principal] and

anyone who would listen to me cry for help. I would always say, “I feel like I’m running

this big huge ship, and I’m down in the belly of the ship fixing the gears, patching the

leaks, making sure it’s running, and nobody’s steering.” I always said that’s what I felt

like when [the multi-age classroom approach] wasn’t working. I felt like I was so busy

with just the daily maintaining. Does someone have a lesson to work on? Do they have a

book to read? Do they have something to do that’s worthwhile when they get to school? I

guess that’s my thing. I never wanted to waste kids’ time, and as a parent of four kids, I

always think like these are my kids, (because they are my kids in some cases), and I don’t

74

want to waste their time. I don’t want them to go to school and sit there and waste their

time. Their time is too precious as kids. It goes by too fast and there’s too much they have

to know.

As is clear from Ms. Kinney’s experience, St. Mary’s had made the transition to multi-age

classrooms, but the principal had not helped the teachers learn how to use blended learning tools

to help students work at their level. It was quickly obvious to teachers, the board, and the

superintendent that the principal who was hired to do the virtual merger was not the right person

for the job. Ms. Kinney explains,

The principal didn’t know what he was doing. He really wasn’t cut out for this. He had

no vision for it. I don’t think he really believed it would work—I think he sort of wanted

it to subconsciously fail because I think he thought that blended learning wasn’t a good

idea. He was being forced to try it and was sort of going to prove that it didn’t work—

that kind of attitude.

He was removed halfway through the first year of the merger and replaced with a woman who

had been doing part-time consulting for the school. She had experience directing the setup of a

charter school in the region that was using blended learning and was familiar with challenges

that accompanied a school transitioning to this model. This new principal, Judy Ewing, faced

both cultural and technical challenges.

First, she needed to win back the confidence of the teachers for whom the technology

influx had become more of a hindrance than a help. Ms. Ewing took things slowly at first:

I said, let’s set some goals and see what can we do on a short list, some short-term goals,

what can we do to get things up and running. And then helping them see how the

technology could be an asset instead of a time-warp drain on their abilities. Because it

75

was just so frustrating, I think, for most of them that they were like, “it’s not even worth

engaging in because it just sucks so much time.”

Ms. Ewing helped teachers see how the software could help teachers differentiate their

instruction in the multi-age classrooms and helped teacher readjust their lesson preparation to

accommodate this new approach. She also needed to address some technical issues that she

inherited from her predecessor.

From her experience setting up a blended learning charter school, Ms. Ewing also knew

that technical issues can be an enormous hurdle for teachers in a blended learning environment.

If the Internet is often down or computers are not functioning, teachers can easily give up on

blended learning before it ever gets off the ground. Ms. Ewing tried to quickly sort through what

had already been put in place.

Unfortunately, when [parents] purchased the original technology, they had really good

intentions, but they spent way more money than they should have on things . . . and we’re

not even using half of what they invested in. It was unfortunate because they never talked

to the teachers about what they thought they might need or use in the model. They had

parents making the decisions for what they were going to need and use, and so they went

really, really fancy with a lot of stuff. It looks cool, but is it helping us get the job done?

It really wasn’t.

So kind of sorting through, “Okay, what are we going to use? What aren’t we

going to use? How do we make sure our infrastructure is in place?” Because they had had

some volunteer support, kind of setting that up, and then there were issues with the

download speeds. It was just a whole list of things that needed to be taken care of.

76

Ms. Ewing gave her teachers permission to experiment with different software, types of lessons,

and helped her reluctant teachers see how even the most well-planned lesson can sometimes only

catch one or two of the students at their “just right” level. Gradually, the blended learning model

took root with teachers, parents, and students. Ms. Kinney, who previously used the image of

being stuck in the belly of the ship while no one was steering, saw a dramatic change with Ms.

Ewing’s leadership:

Once she came onboard, then it was like, “I’m doing it!” I could do some of the big

picture stuff even more with the computers. It elevates the teacher to being in more of a

captain position where you’re actually kind of thinking more of strategies and long-term

projects. It just frees you up to think of more things like that because you’re not down

there just making sure people have timely feedback, making sure people have lessons,

making sure people have that kind of thing.

For Ms. Kinney, using blended learning effectively to deliver content to her students at different

levels and automate some grading processes allowed her to move from shoveling coal to steering

the ship. She was (and is) very happy about this transition. But not everyone embraced the

change as she did.

Ms. Ewing described the resistance that one of the three schools had to the blended

learning approach. The pastor and teachers at this school saw blended learning as a financial

stopgap that provided a cost savings until the school could “get back to normal” again. They

refused to buy in to the blended learning approach for the long term. Both Ms. Ewing and the

superintendent vehemently disagreed with this stance—this was to be the “new normal.” Yet the

school and its pastor dug in their heels, and the school’s inability to participate in this merger led

to its eventual closing, while St. Mary’s began to thrive. Over the first three years of operation as

77

a blended learning school, St. Mary’s lowered the parish subsidy to 35% of their budget as they

increased enrollment. They began NWEA MAP testing three times each year, and within three

years, proficiency in math and reading among St. Mary’s students went from 50% at-or-above

grade-level to 90% in math and 95% in reading.

Design

Over the four years since blended learning was implemented, St. Mary’s has introduced

several significant changes to the design of their school and curriculum along with the blended

learning model. Ms. Ewing instituted student growth portfolios where students collect the scores

for their NWEA MAP tests (which students take three times each year), significant summative

assessments, and other evidence of growth. They have also changed their daily schedule to

accommodate larger blocks of time for reading and math so that students can dig deep into these

subjects.

The school has embraced a tiered approach to blended learning throughout the school.

According to Ewing and the school’s promotional literature, the K-2 students are on the

computers for 20% of their day, grades 3-5 are using the computers for about 35% of their day,

and grades 6-8 are on the computers for nearly 50% of their day. However, Ms. Sanders

estimated that her K-2 students are on computers for around 35% of their day, and Mr. McClure

said his students in grades 6-8 are on computers for at least 50% of their day. My own

observations resonated with these higher estimates, as did my conversations with some of the

older students.

The lower grades use more of a station-rotation model, but as student time on computers

increases in upper grades, blended learning time looks like an “individual rotation” model, which

is more self-directed and less teacher-guided. K-5 teachers employ online content from Reading

78

A-Z and Raz-Kids.com as well as i-Ready for math and reading content. Grades 6-8 utilize i-

Ready, for practicing some language arts skills, Holt McDougal’s online content for math, and

Google Apps for collaboration and communication within their class.

When I observed the junior high math class, it was clearly more self-directed than the

lower grades at St. Mary’s, yet the teacher remained available to help guide and teach students as

they needed. Students in grades 6-8 have three years to get through the entirety of seventh and

eighth-grade math curriculum. Students in grades 6-8 have their own Chromebook and

headphones, a subscription to Holt McDougal’s online content, and a packet of worksheets that

support their current chapter. Students watch videos of instructors talking through new concepts

and working out problems. Students next practice problems of a similar type on paper, then they

take a quiz on the content. They are given more practice problems, and then another quiz at the

end of the lesson. At any point during this process where students are stuck or confused, they

bring their work up to Jeff McClure, the junior high math teacher, tech coordinator, and 6-8

science teacher. During a 90-minute math block, Mr. McClure sits at his half-moon desk in the

back of the room and essentially runs a help desk, working one-on-one with students as they

need help. This model allows students to go at their own pace, work at their own level, repeat

video content as needed, and get help from Mr. McClure as needed (see Figure 7).

79

Figure 7. Student Learning Trajectory: Grade 6-8 Mathematics

Before he worked at St. Mary’s, Mr. McClure tells me that he taught high school algebra

part-time at a local public school. In particular, he was hired to work with the alarming number

of students (50-60) who were failing algebra at his former school. Mr. McClure liked this

tutoring model of teaching at that school and found success with his students there. He said,

“They weren’t failing cause they were bad kids, they just struggled, and everything was just

taught above them and so they were just at the bottom.” Mr. McClure brought this individualized

mentality to St. Mary’s where the multi-age classroom demanded he abandon large-group direct

instruction. Instead, he opted to allow students to get their introduction to new concepts from the

online videos and then to help correct misconceptions on an individual basis. In this way,

McClure describes himself as more of a “facilitator” than a “teacher” in the classical sense. He

meets with students on a weekly basis to review progress over the past week and to set a new

80

goal for the coming week. The meetings are at the end of the week, usually short (sometimes 30

seconds), and just give him and his students a chance to be on the same page. Often, McClure

uses these opportunities to challenge students to push themselves further.

While the model of blended learning differs between Mr. McClure’s room and Ms.

Sanders’ room, teachers at St. Mary’s seem to have a similar motivation and end-goal of using

blended learning. As Ms. Sanders puts it,

My room, Jeff’s room, Sydney’s room, Nora’s room—it’s the same idea, but probably all

look really different. . . . We all have the same goals. We’re all shooting for individual

learning. We’re all shooting for integrating this technology. We’re all shooting for these

things. But how can I make it work for me in my classroom with my kids?

Ms. Ewing gives teachers the freedom to iterate and adapt their model of blended learning to

their pedagogical style and the needs of their students. Ms. Sanders has adapted her model over

time as well. She originally tried putting all of her kids on i-Ready for a 45-minute math block,

but she realized her younger students had a hard time budgeting their time and staying engaged

for this length of time—they needed more structure and accountability. As she puts it,

They’re more productive when they have more things going on and less time to do it. If

they know “I’m only going to do this for a little bit of time,” their mind doesn’t wander.

They’re much more focused, and so they accomplish more in that time instead of staring

into space because they know they have to do it for the next 45 minutes.

They know they’re only going to be doing it for 15-20 minutes and then they’re

going to be meeting with me, but then they’re going to be going out and reading a book

with the [parent] volunteers, and then they’re going to be working on their math packets

where they get to color.

81

In this way, Ms. Sanders was able to gauge student engagement and productivity and adapt her

model of blended learning accordingly. This more structured approach trades the learner

independence of the flex model in Mr. McClure’s room for greater task novelty and a sense of

urgency to increase engagement and productivity. Ms. Sanders did not feel beholden to a school-

wide prescriptive approach to blended learning or constrained by the model of blended learning

in use down the hall, but was able to take what was helpful from a classroom like Mr. McClure’s

and adapt it for her students.

The multi-age approach grew out of necessity and intentionality as Ms. Ewing and her

team wanted to design a learning environment that would help students build life skills along

with academic insights. The charter school that Ms. Ewing helped to set up was based on

building so-called 21st century skills, and she wanted to bring some of these to St. Mary’s as well.

Mr. McClure talked about how the multi-age school setting mimics a workplace setting where,

“you’re not going to have a lot of people that are your same age,” and adults are expected to

collaborate with coworkers across a spectrum of ages and experience levels. Ms. Ewing echoes

this way in which multi-age classrooms teach these life skills:

It’s preparing them for 21st century, where you’re not going to walk into a workplace

where everyone’s the same age, where you are doing exactly the same job at the same

time. But yet we teach that way, which makes no sense.

It is clear from St. Mary’s staff that while a school consolidation might have forced the creation

of a multi-age school, they have embraced this as a strength and an essential design feature of the

school in order to build skills of independence and collaboration.

Finally, one of the biggest transitions between the way St. Mary’s ran before the

transition to multi-age blended learning and now is the way that the faculty and staff define

82

“success.” Ms. Ewing wanted to move the emphasis of St. Mary’s from grades to growth. She

says,

I want to make sure that every child is getting the right to learn and to grow. We’re really

focusing on growth here—where are kids at and where do we want them to be? And we

say, all of our students deserve a special education, so that every child has goals, every

child is working at their just right level. And we celebrate movement, not necessarily

what level are you working at, but have you grown from where you were a month ago?

Have you grown from where you were six months ago? Have you grown from where you

were a year ago? We focus on growth.

This orientation toward growth further echoes St. Mary’s desire to build an individualized

educational experience.

Learner-centered

A learner-centered educational environment is one that helps teachers to reveal

incomplete understandings of concepts and surface false beliefs when students are first learning a

new concept. Learner-centered environments are also attentive to culturally relevant examples in

helping students learn. At St. Mary’s, creating a learner-centered environment involves using

both the tools of technology available in a blended learning school as well as leveraging the

advantages of their small, multi-age classrooms.

Teachers at St. Mary’s use a variety of tools to assess where students currently are in

terms of their learning and regularly share this data with their students. Teachers utilize the

adaptive and diagnostic pretest built into i-Ready, a school-wide program for math and language

arts to gauge the ability level of their students, even from the beginning of the year. Additionally,

students take NWEA MAP tests to give teachers a solid idea of student learning gaps. Teachers

83

school-wide also have regular one-on-one conferences with students to set goals and assess their

progress. Mr. McClure says he does this once each week—usually on Friday—to make sure kids

are on-track. As he puts it,

On Friday, we do just a quick little, “Where are you at? Where do you want to be in a

week?” And it can be a 30-second meeting. It’s just me checking in where they’re at, how

they’re pacing is. If they’re not meeting that goal week after week, then I see there’s

something happening there as well, so just another way to check in with the students.

Students in his class confirmed that they have these very brief meetings most weeks and that it

allows them to talk to Mr. McClure about their progress. The students I talked to in this class

know exactly how quickly they are progressing through their grade-level texts and when I ask

one boy in this class about his individual progress, he rather proudly walks me to the bookshelf

at the far end of the room. He pulls a binder with his last name on the spine of the shelf. This is

his “growth portfolio,” he tells me. He flips to his NWEA MAP scores from the previous two

years and explains in detail how he has improved on these tests and where he hopes to be by the

end of the school year. Later, I recount this to Mr. McClure who tells me that students are used to

doing this because they have student-led parent-teacher conferences several times each year. In

the younger grade, this is a bit more difficult. I ask Ms. Sanders about these student-led

conferences in her K-2 class and she smiles and says, “It’s like pulling teeth!” She says she tries

to give her students a sense of their progress as they color-in graphs, but their understanding of

their performance data seems more limited. When I ask her if her students understand their own

growth, she replies,

I think kindergarten, not so much. Some of them do. And some of them really understand

it in different ways. I mean, they can’t really always look at a chart and say, “Oh, I’m

84

here and I need to get here.” But they can tell you that they want to be in the “yellow

sticker” books. They can tell you they want to be in second grade math as a first grader.

They can tell you these goals that maybe they have for themselves, that they know

they’re getting close and so they know by this point they want to be there. Or they know

their reading levels. And I’ll share with them how close they are and how much we still

have, especially second semester once they’ve kind of really gotten into things and seen

that they have made these accomplishments. And then it’s not always that I can show you

on the graph and tell you all about it, but I can tell you these are the things that I want: I

want to be able to read these books, I want to be able to work on this math.

This regular goal setting and attention to student performance data helps students monitor their

own progress while giving teachers a chance regularly discuss student progress, challenge

students, and notice when students start to lag behind.

The one-on-one time that students are able to spend with teachers because of a blended

learning approach allows teachers to pinpoint and correct false understandings as they emerge.

Despite some of the differences in how blended learning is implemented at St. Mary’s across

grade levels, one similarity in all of the classes I observed was that teachers used their blended

learning time to set most of the kids working on their own while they pulled out small groups or

individuals work with the teacher. In Mr. McClure’s math class, students practice solving a

series of problems in a packet of worksheets based on the concepts they have just learned

through their online curriculum. He explains, “If they’re getting things wrong, they’ll come up to

me and say, ‘Hey, I got a lot of these wrong.’ And then that’s where I’m kind of jumping in and

helping correct those misunderstandings.” This statement and practice is clear evidence of a

learner-centered environment in Mr. McClure’s classroom.

85

Across different models of blended learning throughout St. Mary’s, the work that

students do on computers—from reading fluency drills to math concept videos—are learner-

centered in that they allow students to control the pace of their instruction. Students in grades 6-8

math can watch videos several times if they need to in order to grasp concepts at their own speed.

Students in lower grades can adjust the pace of their instruction based on their needs. Although

this approach might seem to reward the unmotivated learner, Nora Kinney, the teacher for grades

3-5 (and 6-8 writing), describes the way blended learning has helped her hold students

accountable for their progress in her class:

[With blended learning] there’s no way you can float along. I have seen so many kids

who are “floaters.” They just want to float along. Now, I feel like everybody is so much

more engaged.

I see kids who are at the same spot. And I ask them, “What are you doing?” and

they say, “I’m doing my math.”

I say, “No, you’re not.”

They can’t do that because the program doesn’t go. And that’s why some kids

don’t like our school. I honestly believe we’ve had a few kids leave because they were

floaters and their parents were happy with them being floaters because they were happy.

Some people say they want rigor, but they don’t really want rigor. Some people only

want rigor in theory, but then when you actually have to work hard and your kid actually

complains a little bit, they really don’t want rigor.

Ms. Kinney’s description of the way students might be able to “float along” in a class that is not

giving students individual attention—presumably even in her class in the past—presents a vivid

description of the way that she has been able to make sure every one of her students is working

86

on something with a blended learning approach. Her description of “floaters” is further

interesting because it might seem that this would be a problem in a school with much larger class

sizes where students could go unnoticed or “fall through the cracks.” Yet she saw the problem of

“floaters” even in the small class sizes of less than 20 students at St. Mary’s. This was perhaps

one of the most striking and noticeable attributes to observe when students at St. Mary’s—across

all grade levels—were working on blended learning: when the individual student stopped, so did

their progress. Students appeared to realize that they could not simply wait out the class period

and expect to progress. There was no “tide” of whole class instruction to carry the floaters with

the rest of the group. This is not to say that there weren’t the occasional yawns, stretches, or

stares at the wall, but particularly in math blocks, my observations confirmed Ms. Kinney’s

statement: it seemed that simply floating along did not seem as possible with this approach. This

attention to the individual learner’s progress is evidence of a learner-centered environment.

Beyond the tools of technology, St. Mary’s leverages their small, multi-age environment

by allowing teachers to get to know students over the several years that they have each child in

class. The small faculty size allows teachers to share information about student performance,

needs, and learning styles on a continual basis. Further, twice each semester the teachers and

staff have the opportunity to compare and consider the rich data feedbacks from the programs

students use during “data days” in order to help them see trends, patterns, and gaps in student

achievement.

This close contact with learner data over time has allowed teachers to make targeted

remediations for St. Mary’s students. Ms. Ewing recalls one of St. Mary’s great success stories

that grew out of a blended learning approach combined with skillful educator analysis of

performance data.

87

Jack was a sixth grader, “learning disabled” was his label and [there were] some definite

skill gaps there. . . . The blended model allowed for us to kind of go back and address

some of those skills that he had missed and target some of his struggles in math: like he

just totally missed basic understanding of place value. And because math builds on itself,

no wonder he was constantly struggling as math got more and more conceptual, because

he just didn’t have the basic understanding of what a base ten system was.

When it came up for his three-year reevaluation and we did all the standardized

testing on him, he had worked up to grade-level and no longer qualified [as learning

disabled]. And that was the first time in my career that I had ever sat in a middle school

IEP where a child was exited out of special education services. Typically at that point if

they’re in, they’re a “lifer.”

While this story seems to be an exceptional one, this case represents one of the most important

and compelling use of the data that blended learning programs can gather about student

performance. Diagnosing learning gaps and then successfully filling them in, as in Jack’s case, is

a realization of some of the most lofty and aspirational hopes that educators might have for

blended learning. Uncovering these knowledge gaps reflects a truly learner-centered

environment.

The relevance of the content that students at St. Mary’s receive is constrained by the

limitations of the software available. While programs like i-Ready personalize the level of

difficulty of math and reading exercises, the content does not adapt to the user’s interests or

preferences. The online text book that students in grades 6-8 use for math is even more static and

user agnostic as it simply presents videos, problems, and quizzes to the user.

88

Interestingly, when I asked a group of 5-8 grade students at St. Mary’s what they didn’t

like about blended learning, their first and far most vociferous complaint centered on the cultural

relevance of i-Ready’s animated characters:

Sydney: I think that if maybe [i-Ready] didn’t use the same little kid cartoon characters

for the little kids and the big kids, maybe if the big kids more real-life sort of things, like

a real situation, it would improve everyone’s opinion about it, but because it’s super

little-kiddish, it’s kind of hard to go. If they give you a challenging question, you’re like,

“Seriously?” And if you get it wrong, it kind of makes you feel bad.

Michael: They make you feel bad, they mock you, they’re like, “Oh, sorry, I was thinking

that one too, but now I’m not.”

Colbie: It’s kind of hard, they give a question but it’s still like a little kid thing.

Students clearly sensed the content and approach of the animated characters who guide the user

through questions and give corrections when needed were not age-appropriate for them.

Although this didn’t seem to be an obstacle to students using i-Ready, it seemed as though their

level of engagement with the software was not optimal.

Assessment-centered

An assessment-centered school provides students with regular feedback based on their

understanding of concepts and helps them improve while also teaching them skills for self-

reflection on their learning. At St. Mary’s, students get constant and timely feedback from the

work they do online. In other schools, the turn-around time on formative assessments might be

hours, days, or even weeks. When students are using i-Ready or Holt McDougal online, they

receive immediate performance data and are given just-in-time information, hints, and are helped

to practice skills before bad habits set in. St. Mary’s further creates an assessment-centered

89

culture as teachers meet weekly with each student to review their progress and set new and

realistic learning goals. The one-on-one or small-group contact that are an essential part of

blended learning at St. Mary’s allows teachers to surface metacognition and hear how students

are thinking through problems. Ms. Ewing encourages teachers to look for abrupt slow-downs or

drop-offs in i-Ready progress, to login with the student, and to have them speak aloud or show

the teacher why they are “stuck.” In this way, students give teachers insight into their thinking

process and can then be corrected or helped.

But there are limitations to what can be done online. Mr. McClure points to one of the

issues that he encounters when students are doing their work online. I asked him if he no longer

needed to spend his time correcting papers now that the software could do much of that. He

responded,

The problem that I’m finding with the math is, it has no place for them to show their

thinking—no place for them to write out problems to show what they’re learning. And so

that’s why I like those worksheet packets that I have because that way, they can fully

show their thought process throughout their work.

Mr. McClure addresses this challenge by giving students a variety of formative assessments and

allowing them to show their thought processes as they progress through math problems,

underscoring the importance of the offline portion of a blended learning classroom. Without the

proper mix of traditional pencil-and-paper assessments along with online adaptive and diagnostic

assessments, students can lose the opportunity to reflect on their own learning and make

corrections. Yet in some other ways, students are engaging in metacognitive reflection as they

see their growth toward their goals.

90

Ms. Sanders sees students reflecting on their own learning as they try to achieve new

levels of learning. When I ask her about the times when students have shown outward signs of a

sense of fiero in her class, Ms. Sanders responds that this happens “more.” When I ask her what

she means by “more,” she responds,

Meaning more than traditionally or more than I previously did. Like when a kid moves up

a reading level, they’re like, “Yes!” They’re worried about themselves. Not “the whole

class did this,” but “I did this” and, “this was my goal and I met it.” And even in math,

they get really motivated and they want to pass their tests and they feel really good. They

will say things like, “Can I do another math center? Can I do this? Can I do this?”

And so I think they have more drive for themselves and then because they have

more expectation and drive and they’re putting a little bit more into it, you get that just a

little bit more because it’s not so much the teacher telling them, “You all need to do this”

and “some of you will be successful and some of you won’t.” But they all kind of have

their individual things, and so they all have that opportunity to be successful because

even if they’re not where your “average Joe” or really high learner is, they’re still having

successes and they’re not having to compare that to somebody else and feel maybe not so

great about it because they will never be as good. But they’re passing this, they’re

moving up this level and they’re feeling really good about that.

The constant reflection that Ms. Sanders describes above is evidence of an assessment-centered

culture within St. Mary’s that invites students to regularly reflect on their progress. This

individual reflection on goal setting and attaining has the effect of giving students that fiero

feeling when they have accomplished their personal goals. When I ask students about this,

several replied that they get a sense of accomplishment when they just finish some long and

91

arduous task in school, but one student speaks about a specific example when he felt this sense of

epic accomplishment in school. This student in the 6-8 grade cohort said,

I got that with my MAPS, definitely. Because you want to improve your MAPS score

every year—every time you take the test—and my goal was I really, really wanted to get

into the 250s and I was at 248 last year. And then this year I improved by ten points and

got over 250 and I was really proud of myself for that.

Although this sounded a bit more muted than Ms. Sanders’ description, it seems apparent that

students are engaged in this practice of regular reflection upon their achievement scores and

show signs of motivation to get to the next level. Mr. McClure speaks about his students being

motivated as a result of goal setting as well. I observed his 6-8 grade math students during a 90-

minute math block and, to my great surprise, witnessed just one redirection of his students when

a seventh grade boy was off-task. More often, when a student asked another student a question,

they would quietly answer and then get back to their work. Later, I asked Mr. McClure to explain

the origin of this level of motivation and diligence in his class. He responded,

They motivate themselves I think because they’re setting up those goals, and then they

see each other’s and they’re like, “Hey, they’re working out of this book.” Or they know

the progression of what books that they’re working in, and they’re like, “I want to get to

that book.” So they’re motivating themselves.

Skeptical of this answer, I asked if he thought part of this intrinsic motivation was the fact that

these were “hard-working farm kids.” He shrugged and responded,

I think, it’s just because they have ownership of their learning. Because they know

they’re taking hold of their goals and everything like that. And I think that really helps

out a lot because that way they have something to work for.

92

Although this internal sense of motivation in students may indeed be the result of a number of

factors beyond the desire to accomplish personal goals, this strong assessment-centered culture

seems to be at least a partial explanation.

Knowledge-centered

Learning environments that are knowledge-centered allow students to build skill

competency while situating the knowledge they learn into larger frameworks of understanding.

While the affordances of blended learning help St. Mary’s to build strong learner-centered and

assessment-centered cultures, most of the knowledge-centered learning happens away from

computers or “offline.” The software that St. Mary’s is using is meant to give students a chance

to practice reading and math skills with tight data feedback loops and adaptive levels of

challenge. This is by design, says the principal, Ms. Ewing,

We say the computer will never replace the teacher, but it just leverages the teacher’s

time and talents in a much more effective way. So we let the computer do the things that

the computer can do—basic skills, just kind of the basic teaching—and then the teacher

takes on the role of a learning coach where they’re mentoring and supporting individual

students with what their needs are specifically.

By Ms. Ewing’s estimation, the deeper thinking of problem solving, text interpretation, and the

application of complex literary ideas happen in the teacher-led conversations away from the

computers. Ms. Ewing uses the image of a coach and one might even think of St. Mary’s

approach to using technology like a baseball coach: instead of using their time and energy

pitching to each player on the team, a baseball coach lets a pitching machine help players

practice hitting while he or she might stand beside the player and adjust their grip or stance to

help them in their batting. Similarly, at St. Mary’s, online tools are used to help build skill

93

fluency and provide individualized practice, while the intellectually weighty and higher-level

thinking skills are separately engaged. This was certainly evident in Mr. McClure’s 6-8 math

class where he was simply off to the side, helping individual students as they needed assistance

rather than teaching up in front of the whole class. Like Ms. Ewing’s image of a “coach,” Mr.

McClure speaks about his role as being more off to the side: “Sometimes when explaining it, I

don’t always use the word, ‘teacher.’ It’s more like I’m a ‘facilitator,’ especially when I’m

talking about the math aspect. I’m facilitating their learning.” This description of his role as a

“facilitator” echoes Ms. Ewing’s description of a “coach” that stands off to the side to help

students when they need help, yet they are encouraged to make their own connections between

ideas. This is the heart of what it means to be a knowledge-centered learning environment while

also letting students learn at their own pace. Mr. McClure’s use of his instructional time to guide

students to deeper understandings rather than engaging in large group instruction is a departure

from some common pedagogical practices, and although Mr. McClure seems comfortable with

this given his history in tutoring students who were failing algebra, allowing students to work at

their own pace and on their own material was a challenge for St. Mary’s 3-5 teacher, Ms. Kinney.

The movement to allowing students to learn on their own pace with the blended learning

model was a difficult transition but ultimately rewarding for Ms. Kinney. When I ask Ms.

Kinney what was the greatest challenge she faced in making the transition to blended learning,

she pointed out the adjustment she had to make in allowing students to have more independence

in their learning. She said the biggest challenge for her was

Letting go of control. Letting go of my own ego. I mean in some ways I think teachers

become teachers because we think we know what’s best and we want to talk. I love to

talk. I love to explain why I think something is the way it is. I know that about myself.

94

I’m not going to lie, I loved getting up there in front of a junior high class ten years ago

and giving a lecture on a literary device or something and having all my illustrations to

show it. But I sort of came to the point where I had to think like, I love being the star of

the classroom and feeling like I had all the answers and it’s hard to give up control. But

I’ve learned over the years that I just need to be more the coach for them, letting them do

more and struggle more and fail more and have it look messy more and not have it come

out always the way you want it. But then they’re learning more! So it’s more of a

“student-centered question” than a “blended-learning question,” but with blended

learning, I’ve learned to be a lot more student-centered instead of teacher-centered. I

think maybe in some ways, everybody who gets into teaching somewhat gets into

teaching because they want it teacher-centered. I mean you like giving reports and you

like standing up in front of class and telling what you know and explaining and you think

you’re good at explaining. And you are and that’s why you became a teacher. But now

with student-centered learning and blended learning, if the reason why you became a

teacher is because you love showing off your knowledge, you don’t get to do that very

much. The real reason I became a teacher was because I love kids and I love seeing kids

learn, and I just really see every kid as a little package that you get to just kind of keep

opening and seeing who they are. I love that in my own children, just like watching who

they become and how they grow. I love that.

Transitioning to a multi-age classroom and a blended learning approach challenged Ms. Kinney

to shift the focus of her classroom instruction to the individual needs of her students and allow

them to have more agency in their education by letting them “do more and struggle more and fail

more.” Although this approach is certainly more “messy” than a lecture and test model of

95

instruction, it brings the focus of learning back on students as seekers of knowledge rather than

teachers as keepers of knowledge.

This perception that blended learning software enables students to learn “basic skills,” as

Ms. Ewing explained above, places the burden of teaching deeper knowledge-centered skills on

the individual teacher. St. Mary’s teachers seem to embrace this idea as they consistently have

small-group or one-on-one conversations with students during blended learning blocks. These

are rich opportunities for knowledge-centered conversations that might otherwise occur in a

large-group discussion setting in a traditional classroom. Opportunities to “think mathematically,”

for example, may actually be presented to students in their online work, but there is a perception

among teachers and administrators that this kind of work happens “offline.” When I ask Ms.

Kinney about this, she says that she sees an emphasis on "mathematical thinking in the common

core curriculum, and since i-Ready is common core aligned she thought this might be “built in.”

In all likelihood, these connections might be part of the spiral scaffolding built into the textbooks

and software that St. Mary’s is using. Yet in a completely individualized, multi-age math

classroom, it is difficult to observe exactly how this happens without the class-wide discussions

about the “why” of mathematical thinking.

Community-centered

A community-centered educational environment is one that connects people inside or

outside of the classroom to form a supportive learning environment where students can learn

from each other and their mistakes without fearing negative repercussions. St. Mary’s teachers

speak openly about trying to help students fail well. In fact, with the introduction of blended

learning, a whole new group of students at St. Mary’s began failing: the students at the top of the

96

class. Ms. Ewing describes what happened when several students tested out of their grade-level

on their MAP scores:

We told parents, this will be a transition because probably for the first time in their life,

this child is going to feel what it means to be challenged. And they might say it’s hard

and they don’t like it, but let’s just give it some time because we want to find that just-

right level of challenge that’s motivating and not defeating.

This idea of an appropriate level of challenge leading to engagement echoes McGonigal’s idea of

the “right hard work” that is pleasantly frustrating and challenging. Yet Ms. Ewing and several

of her teachers describe the frustration that “traditionally successful” students can experience in a

blended learning environment. Ms. Kinney described the challenge for students associated with

finding their appropriate level, which often involved students facing failure for the first time.

I’ve seen kids work through it, but they have to work through a rough patch where they

feel like “this is hard” and I’m not passing all the time. Even for the smart kids, this is

hard.

We had a student who transferred into the school and was a very “type A” kind of

conscientious kid. She had a hard time adjusting to the school because she was failing

some math lessons the first time through. Her teacher explained that this was okay,

because it showed her that she was at the right level. We don’t want it to be way too easy

for you. That’s what it means to work hard: to struggle and not get it right all the time.

Teaching students that “failure” is a part of learning is an essential part of creating a community-

centered environment for all learners, regardless of ability level. Beyond math lessons, this

echoes Ms. Kinney’s statement above when she talked about a more “messy” approach to

classroom instruction that allowed her students to “fail more,” which she directly connected to

97

students “learning more.” The fact that all students are allowed to “fail” and are then quickly

given the supports and encouragement necessary to then succeed contributes to an overall feeling

of safety at St. Mary’s that redefines what traditional understandings of “failure” in school. Just

in the way that Gee (2007) lauds the way video games lower the psychological cost of failure on

their player as they are allowed to (sometimes even expected to) “die” and then restart their game,

students using blended learning software at St. Mary’s are able to retry lessons, learning games,

and assessments until they master them. Ms. Kinney has seen this as a particular benefit for

students who are not traditionally successful in school and internalize the idea of failing.

Before this [blended learning] approach, I felt like some kids got in the habit of failing.

Failing became a habit and a learned behavior.

[Imitating a student] “Yep, that’s me, I’m a failure. I fail at math, I fail everything.

I fail every quiz, I’m just a failure. I stink at math. I’m just no good at it.” [Blended

Learning works well], especially at the low end where, even if they’re behind, you’re still

showing them, “‘Well, you were at third grade and now you’re at fourth grade. You’re

still a year behind, maybe, but you grew a whole year.” So they’re still getting a feeling

of success.

In this case, Ms. Kinney saw a direct link between using blended learning as a part of creating a

culture of growth and the replacement and elimination of a “habit of failing” and the self-

identification of students as failures. With the on-screen learning content in programs like i-

Ready that may even look like videogames that students are used to playing and replaying, the

idea of failure seems to be lessening and perhaps the word “fail” in blended learning schools like

St. Mary’s might be replaced with the word “retry.”

98

Ms. Ewing sees the focus on the individual student and the individualization that comes

along with blended learning as contributing to a care for the “whole person” at St. Mary’s. Ms.

Ewing describes the link she sees between a strong sense of community and academic success,

particularly in the midst of failure.

When kids see that you value them as a whole person, it makes it easier to have some of

the tougher academic conversations because they trust you. They know that you see the

value in them and you’re only trying to help. So when the going gets tough, they’re a

little more willing to pull up alongside of you instead of feeling like you’re being cruel

and unjust.

It is difficult to assess whether or not Ms. Ewing is correct in this assumption. There was

evidence to suggest that St. Mary’s curriculum (which includes music, art, and religion) seeks to

educate the “whole person,” but it is unclear as to the effect that has on students’ attitude. The

students I spoke to had a universally positive view of the school and the sense of community at

St. Mary’s. This strong sense of community is both built up by regular individual conferencing

between teachers and students and, at the same time, allows teachers to use these moments to

challenge students beyond their level of comfort.

The sense of community is partially aided by the unique multi-age classrooms at St.

Mary’s. Ms. Sanders, the K-2 teacher, describes the way first and second graders, “grow such

strong leadership skills helping others” as they sit and work side-by-side. Often when she is

working individually with students, I observed students quietly conferring among themselves.

Her policy is to “ask three, then me,” which requires students to ask three of their classmates

before going to the teacher for help. I observed eight times when students put their hands up

during one class period while they were at computers and Ms. Sanders was working with small

99

groups. It was difficult to see how many of them actually asked three of their classmates before

raising their hands, but seven out of the eight students were eventually able to resolve the issue

with the help of a classmate, not the teacher. This is an intentional and essential part of the multi-

age classroom that allows older students to help younger ones and, in the process, “learn by

helping others and teaching them.”

Ms. Ewing sees benefits of this multi-age environment beyond simply the academic gains.

She describes the multi-age classroom as an essential part of serving the individual child: “We

love it. We will never go back. Even if let’s say all of a sudden we had an influx of 200 kids, we

would still maintain the multi-age classrooms.” Part of the reason that she (and her staff) love the

multi-age setting is because of the social benefits for children: “Socially, especially at the middle

school level, we know that one of the biggest needs and biggest drivers for middle school kids is

relationships. This gave them more options to develop friendships.” She recognizes the rather

significant developmental differences that can arise as children are growing and maturing

through school. The multi-age classrooms allow students to interact and socialize with students

who may be their developmental peers, not simply their same age or grade in school. And while

the blended learning approach allows students at St. Mary’s to progress beyond their grade level,

it also allows students to stay in a social environment that is more developmentally appropriate

for them.

Take for example two different first graders who were both in Ms. Sanders’ K-2 class last

year. At the end of the year, Ms. Sanders and Ms. Ewing worked with the parents to discern the

right place for each child. One boy, Kenny, is an avid reader and was testing at a third grade

level in math and was successfully reading books that were normally read by fourth graders. Ms.

Sanders projected that Kenny would probably begin a fourth grade math book in the middle of

100

his second grade year. Yet before they simply moved Kenny up to the 3-5 class, they took into

account his social and interest groups. Ms. Sanders said, “He can do all those things, but when

we talk about … peer-wise? Maturity-wise? [K-2] is kind of where he has friends and has the

same interests.” The decision was made to keep Kenny in the K-2 group for his second grade

year, while allowing him to progress into higher levels of reading and math, using the blended

content.

Ms. Sanders described another child, Vince, who was in nearly the same situation as

Kenny, working on third grade math as a first grader and was well above his reading level.

But all of his friends were the group that moved on to third grade. That’s the group that

he talked to, spent time with, really mixed with. And so we kind of looked at that and

gave his parents the decision, not only academically, but socially. He’s really fitting in

with this group. And so the school and parents made a choice that he would move on to

third grade.

Ms. Sanders finished this story, smiled and sat back a little in her chair, clearly proud of this

ability to differentiate peer settings for each of these students, “It was really cool to see.”

The contrast between these two boys, Kenny and Vince, reflects an approach to

individualization that goes beyond what Ewing calls their “just-right” reading or math level. The

decision to put each boy into a learning environment that would be most conducive to his social

comfort and growth while still educating them at a challenging level lends further evidence to the

way in which St. Mary’s uses a multi-age setting and the affordances of blended learning to

create a more community-centered school.

Yet as strong as this internal community is, technology is rarely used to reach beyond the

solid brick of St. Mary’s walls. Students use the blogging format to express thoughts or share

101

book reports, but the blog isn’t published publicly. Additionally, students use GoogleDocs to

write collaboratively and share written work with fellow students and their teachers, but this is

again an internal form of communication. The only external communication seems to be initiated

by teachers. Mr. McClure and Ms. Sanders created classroom Twitter accounts to communicate

student activity via pictures and text. I asked Mr. McClure to explain his purpose in using a

classroom Twitter account:

[The purpose is to] Communicate with our parents and others to see what we’re doing.

Mostly for our parents because we found that communicating with them is hard. When

every student’s in a different place on math, you can’t say, “Hey, we’re working on

adding fractions this week.” It would be impossible to list what everyone is working on

and make it personal for them. And so it’s hard to make a newsletter to grasp what’s

going on in the classroom. So we found if we do a Twitter account, we’re posting little

things that we’re doing in class, pictures of things that are happening in class—so seeing

the kids working—and that’s been received pretty well.

In this way, Mr. McClure is visually communicating with parents and building stronger ties

between the school and its parents and supporters. This use of technology for communicating

students’ progress, projects, and accomplishments builds a sense of community and investment

among the school parents and beyond, albeit without direct student involvement in content

generation.

Summary

In summary, to avoid a consolidation and potential closure like many other rural Catholic

schools, St. Mary’s underwent a downsizing in staff and moved to a multi-age classroom setting

that was supposed to be supported by blended learning software. Initially, teachers were not able

102

to effectively leverage the blended learning technology and were overwhelmed by the multi-age

approach. With strong leadership, iteration, and new adaptive software, teachers began to

differentiate with blended learning in order to meet the needs of diverse levels of learners in each

classroom. The school now has a tiered approach to blended learning that seeks to allows

students to become more independent learners and teachers describe themselves as more

facilitators and coaches than traditional teachers.

The teachers at St. Mary’s speak almost univocally positively about the learner-centered

affordances of blended learning. Students are allowed to progress through lessons (particularly in

the 6-8 grade math curriculum) at their own pace while seeking help when they need it. In some

cases, the individualized nature of the software has created more accountability among students

who might otherwise be able to “float along” in a classroom. In another case, the data from

blended programs helped uncover a learning gap which, when remediated, allowed a student to

be de-identified as “learning disabled.” The limits of the software also came to the fore as older

students noticed when content was too childish for them.

Regular reflection on assessments by both teachers and students has led to some effective

practices of individual goal-setting which has resulted in students reporting increased motivation

and perhaps an experience of fiero. While the programs that St. Mary’s students use provide

them with nearly instant feedback in building a strong assessment-centered environment, in some

cases it takes a pencil-and-paper assessment to allow teachers to see students’ metacognitive

processes. This reaffirmed the importance of the other (and essential) side of blended learning:

teachers who know how to harness the power of computer-generated student performance data

and when to step in to provide support or challenge.

103

This need is further emphasized when looking at how St. Mary’s tries to build

knowledge-centered learning environments. St. Mary’s principal sees the role of technology as a

tool that builds fluency and automaticity of skills (essential parts of a knowledge-based

classroom), but relies on teachers to help students situate their learning into frameworks of

understanding offline. In this way, the technology allows teachers to coach students in small

groups or individually.

Finally, there is evidence to suggest St. Mary’s has built a strongly community-centered

school where teachers attempt to challenge students to work at their “just-right” level and thus all

experience some amount of failure with new content. This occurs within what I observed to be a

supportive context where the individual is supported and encouraged toward growth with the

help of other students in a multi-age environment. The emphasis on growth at St. Mary’s—even

for those who are behind others their age—has helped deter what one teacher called a “habit of

failing” and the resulting self-identification as a “failure” among students. The personalization of

education at St. Mary’s has allowed educators, in partnership with parents, to put students in

learning environments with their developmental peers, regardless of their grade-level

performance thanks to the adaptive nature of their curriculum. Technology is further used to

communicate school activity to parents and the outside world with teacher Twitter feeds, yet

students themselves rarely (if ever) use their tools of technology to build communities beyond

the school walls.

Over its four years of blended learning iterations, St. Mary’s has developed their own

balance of using technology to assist teachers in their work, and allow students to grow at their

own level while challenging them to achieve their own goals. St. Mary’s has used blended

learning to create a multi-age school without the help of outside funding, consultants, or support.

104

The faculty and staff seem to embrace the affordances of blended learning as they regularly

reflect on student achievement data and encourage their students to do so as well. Their

innovative approach to incorporating technology into their school has allowed them to survive

and thrive despite a small enrollment and staff.

105

Case 2: Holy Trinity

Holy Trinity, an all-boys Latino Catholic middle school in the heart of an urban setting,

has introduced blended learning in order to help meet the needs of all students while seeking to

prepare them for high school, college, and beyond. This case begins with an introduction to the

school, a description of the history and background of Holy Trinity, an overview of the blended

learning design, a description of any evidence I found of the four characteristics of the HPL

framework, and a summary.

Introduction

About a quarter mile from the interstate highway that cuts through a major metropolitan

area, a neighborhood now called “Santa Cruz” sits mostly quiet on a cold December morning,

still a half hour before sunrise. There are no signs announcing the neighborhood’s name or some

clever motto, yet approaching Santa Cruz, “Laundromat” signs subtly change to “Lavadaria,”

and storefronts windows, reinforced with rebar, advertise their weekly specials in Spanish.

Farther into the heart of the neighborhood, the solid brick exterior of Holy Trinity school is

surrounded by cozy-looking, modestly-sized homes with postage-stamp lawns, each delineated

with chain-link fences and many packed with Christmas lights, decorations, and plastic figures.

Students arrive mostly by car and scurry into the school past a bundled-up faculty

member, but not before engaging in a brief conversation.

“Good morning, Diego”

“Good morning, Mr. Anderson.” Diego looks Mr. Anderson in the eye as he responds

politely to his greeting, and although his enthusiasm doesn’t match Mr. Anderson’s enthusiasm,

he smiles as he responds and walks quickly into the warm building. This routine happens every

106

day at Holy Trinity as the faculty members take turns greeting incoming students by name. It is

quickly apparent that nearly every teacher knows nearly every student’s name at Holy Trinity.

Boys in uniformed red shirts and blue pants dig books and lunches out of their backpacks

and find homes for them in their classrooms. Many wear navy blue school sweaters with the

Holy Trinity logo embroidered in crisp white thread. They are careful to tuck in their shirts, and

some meticulously reshape their hair after taking off their winter stocking caps. One seventh

grader sees another fixing his hair by his reflection in a classroom window and jokingly messes it

up again. “There aren’t even girls here, man! Why you care what your hair looks like?” They

continue to joke around and jostle each other before their entire class heads down to the large

school chapel. They make their way to their row of red fabric-covered wooden chairs quietly and

reverently. When they reach their row, each boy quickly genuflects toward the tabernacle as he

makes the sign of the cross with his fingertips, concluding with a kiss on the thumb of a lightly

closed fist—a Latino Catholic tradition.

Students stand for prayer, led by the school’s dean of students, Alan Lehr (who is almost

only ever referred to by students and teachers alike as simply “Coach”). When prayer concludes,

students sit down quietly and Coach begins their morning assembly. The first words he speaks

are, “I made a mistake.” Last week, he apparently misinformed the students as to what the “core

value” of the next week would be. The correct “core value” this week was “open to growth.” He

acknowledges this mistake, apologizes, and moves on by posing a question about this week’s

“core value” to a chapel full of 109 eager 5-8 graders:

“What makes our school different and ‘open to growth?’ ” Students raise their hands and

one-by-one, Coach calls out their name.

“Camp!” one student responds.

107

Coach presses the student on this reply. “Why camp?”

“Because we learned how to fish!”

Every student at Holy Trinity participates in a five-week summer camp designed to help

city-dwelling kids learn about the outdoors, maintain some of their academic skills, and bond as

a school community. Coach continues, “Are there ways we’re open to growth in school?”

Hands shoot up and Coach calls on each one of them.

“Trying a sport we’ve never tried before!”

“Using tutors!”

“Showing our talent in the talent show! “

“Staying till 6:00 p.m.!”

With each response, the student stands, turns around to face the entire student body, and

responds in a clear, loud voice—most with just a touch of a Spanish accent. Holy Trinity’s

president, Terri Moran, will tell me later in the week that the school’s enrollment is 100% Latino.

From the back of the chapel, this is anecdotally verifiable as the only blond or lighter hair I can

see is that of a couple of Trinity’s teachers.

Coach seems satisfied with these answers and then invites the eighth graders to tell the

other students about their “high school meeting.” Several eighth graders stand and name the

various high schools that gave presentations to them and their parents. One student describes the

“upward bound” program and shares where some of the students had decided they were going

next year. Keith Lentz, an eighth grade English/language arts (ELA) teacher stands up and fills

in some of the gaps in talking about the event. Mr. Lentz is the school’s alumni liaison who

coordinated this program for eighth graders and their parents and who supports and tracks kids

through high school and beyond.

108

Mr. Lentz tells the student body that when he was trying to tell parents about a college

preparation program, he used the wrong word in Spanish so they thought this program lasted

two months instead of two weeks. This elicited some chuckles from the kids, and Mr. Lentz

smiles brightly as he admits this mistake.

Coach then presents one student with a “gotcha slip,” a certificate celebrating the

generosity of a student. The student body recognizes this with one loud, simultaneous clap. And

finally, Ms. Moran, the school president, announces a raffle for a statue of Our Lady of

Guadalupe at the end of the week, which causes a stir of excitement. Every student’s name will

be entered into the lottery, so they all have the same chance to win. Students are excused to their

classrooms, and on their way out of the chapel, they genuflect and kiss their hand as they make

the sign of the cross.

In these opening moments of the day, I observed students showed poise and reverence,

respect and initiative. They were encouraged by their peers to think ahead to attend a good high

school and fellow students mentioned the supports that could help them succeed there. They

spoke about things that made their school different: summer camp, their extended day, the after-

school tutoring program, and their extracurricular activities. The students’ culture and language

were recognized and celebrated, an openness to growth was affirmed, and in the span of five

minutes, I (and the entire school of middle school boys) had heard two adults admit mistakes and

correct themselves with a composure that modeled maturity. Without seeing a moment of

classroom instruction, it was not difficult to imagine why Holy Trinity is thriving, over two

decades after the school’s founding.

109

Background

Holy Trinity was founded in 1993 by two friends—a priest and his former football

coach—who both wanted to establish a school for young Latino men in order to educate and

develop them as strong Christian leaders. It began as a parish school with only 14 students but

grew steadily as parents and students alike saw the benefits of a strong Catholic education, high

expectations, and Holy Trinity’s unique features: an extended school day, a strong sense of

community within the school, and a five-week outdoor adventure summer camp.

The school was a great success and soon outgrew its facility. In 2003, Holy Trinity

purchased a much larger building—the former novitiate of a large order of religious sisters. The

building dated back to 1954, but had long been derelict due to a dwindling numbers of sisters

since the 1970s. It had everything Trinity wanted—a large gym, a chapel, a cafeteria, and three

levels of rooms that left space for Holy Trinity to expand if needed. They renovated the building,

and it was ready for students in 2004.

From its inception, the school has been an all-boys middle school, serving students grade

6-8. But recently, school choice scholarships, which 95% of Holy Trinity’s students use to cover

their tuition, allowed Holy Trinity to expand to offer a 4-K classroom as well as a fifth grade.

They are currently planning on expanding the school to include both boys and girls, K-8,

although they will create separate all-boys and all-girls academies within the school once

students reach sixth grade.

Holy Trinity is proud to have a 100% Latino enrollment and Ms. Rogers, the grades 5-8

Spanish teacher, estimates that “about three-fourths of them speak Spanish at home with their

parents, and Spanish is probably their first language.” For the other quarter of students, there is a

wide diversity of language competency and familiarity with the Spanish language because many

110

speak primarily English at home. This leads to three types of students, according to Ms. Rogers:

“the ones who have gone to bilingual schools and are really pretty good at their writing, the ones

who speak [Spanish] but have no idea how to write it, and then the third group that are really

learning from the beginning.” This poses an interesting challenge for Holy Trinity. They require

all of their students to take both English and Spanish courses and show a particular attention to

building reading skills among students. Although the school has always focused on helping

students to build strong reading and writing skills, the relatively new school president, Ms.

Moran, has worked to increase the academic rigor and curriculum alignment across all the school

subjects. Teachers have noticed this difference over the past several years.

Mr. Lentz, the seventh and eighth grade ELA teacher talked about how curriculum was

designed in the past:

When I first started at Holy Trinity, there were no curriculum guides or anything. When I

taught seventh grade reading, for instance, I would just kind of choose the novels for that

year and then come up with a unit plan around the novels. Or we had a spelling book I

guess, that was one thing we did. We had a grammar book, but it was very much just

teacher directed, somewhat probably differing levels of using standards to guide

assessments and things like that.

This approach worked for a while, but relied heavily on the teacher’s preference as to what

content would be covered. Additionally, Mr. Lentz and some other teachers in his department

wanted to differentiate content for the wide range of language abilities with which students were

entering Holy Trinity, yet they felt under resourced and pressed for instructional time. Other

faculty resisted this movement toward differentiation. Those who resisted this change enjoyed

the freedom this approach gave faculty and felt as though most students were succeeding. After

111

all, Holy Trinity had built an incredibly strong reputation in the community for successfully

preparing students for high school and beyond.

Ms. Moran acknowledged the progress that teachers and students were making

throughout the school, but sensed that it was time to make a change. She recalled, “I could sense

that teachers knew that they were doing good, and our program is good, and that we’ve got a

good program in this city—we’re well-respected. But I think we all knew that we could take it

to great. So how do you do that?” Her first year at Holy Trinity, Ms. Moran spent a lot of time

having open-ended conversations with faculty and staff regarding what potentially needed to

change and how those changes might take shape. She and a small team of teachers visited some

high-performing schools throughout their city and saw different models of teaching and learning

in action, including two blended learning schools. Ms. Moran was particularly excited about the

blended learning approach and began to research it. She attended a conference where the

president of the International Association for K–12 Online Learning (iNACOL), Susan Patrick,

and blended learning luminary Michael Horn spoke about the future and possibilities of blended

learning. Ms. Moran and her staff also attended a workshop there and heard from a panel of

teachers and school leaders that had implemented a blended learning approach in their schools.

Ms. Moran recalls the effect these workshops and talks had on her staff:

So I think that just got the teachers interested. They had conversations and said, “Aha! I

see how this is working. Okay, I see how this could impact my classroom.” Then I told

them, “here are some potential programs: check out e-Science, check out Achieve 3000,

check out i-Ready math,” so they could do some of those exploratory things on their own

and learn about how the programs work.

112

Mr. Lehr, the dean of students at Holy Trinity, confirms Ms. Moran’s sense that teachers were

excited about the possibility of blended learning.

We had a full staff meeting saying this is kind of the direction we’re looking to go, this is

why. Look at all this data—look at all this stuff. We had a lot of discussions with Terri . . .

and the faculty saying, “This is what we can do, this is why we’re doing it, this is why it’s

going to help our students.” And again, that big focus on “it’s got to be about the kids.”

We can differentiate for those kids whom we all love, and to know that I can affect my

top student and my bottom student by making a simple change to my curriculum—that is

huge for us.

Ms. Moran and her staff decided that Holy Trinity would continue to pursue a blended approach

over the next several years, but they concurrently applied in December to join a national network

of Catholic schools that were implementing blended learning.

The Catholic Blended Learning Network (CBLN) accepted Holy Trinity’s application in

May, toward the end of the school year. Accepting this network affiliation meant committing

their entire school to a blended learning approach and accepting CBLN’s aggressive enrollment

expansion goals. In return, CBLN would help with professional development necessary for Holy

Trinity to ramp up to a whole-school, blended learning approach, provide Google Chromebooks

for every classroom, and pay for an on-site blended learning supervisor for several years. Ms.

Moran recalls her reaction to being selected as a CBLN school:

I was super excited just because we were then part of a network, and that’s a huge

resource for us. It’s an emerging network, but I think as the program continues and this

model grows, to have like-minded schools and like-minded leaders that have an

understanding of how this works and be able to share best practices, et cetera, is just a

113

great opportunity for us to be leaders in that, but then also to learn from others. So we’re

not alone.

She communicated the news to both faculty and parents that joining this network meant a more

rapid deployment of blended learning across the entire school than they previously envisioned.

Although most of the teachers and staff had gradually become accustomed to this vision of

teaching and learning throughout the past year, there were some faculty members who did not

want to make this transition, as Ms. Moran recounts.

We had three staff members that just kind of self-selected themselves out of working here,

which was I think, in a way, a blessing. I didn’t have to have that conversation of like,

“Well, why aren’t you using the program?” or “Why don’t you see the benefit of this?” or

“How come you can’t do X, Y, or Z?” So I think because of that, everybody that’s here

has a different sense of buy-in. They want to be here. They’re open to doing some of this

new stuff, even though they know it’s going to be challenging—I think it creates an even

stronger sense of community and team because of that.

With a strong sense of buy-in among teachers, the help of a national network that has helped

many other Catholic schools transition to blended learning, a strong school leader with a clear

vision, and an already successful school, Holy Trinity surged ahead in trying to implement a

more complete curriculum that allowed teachers to differentiate instruction for a wide range of

learners.

A final pillar of strength at Holy Trinity is the strong and well-defined sense of a shared

school culture that permeates the school. The “core value” of the week that Mr. Lehr mentioned

at morning assembly is repeated on posters and displays throughout the building. When I ask her

about these, Ms. Moran recites each of them and explains each core value with ease:

114

We have five core values at the school, and we really want our students to be open to

growth, intellectually competent, religious, loving, and committed to justice. And so I

would say that there are some soft skills within each of those values that we really kind of

want our students to develop by the time that they graduate—to be religious, we want

them to understand how to reflect on their actions, to understand how to make good

choices, to be of service to others is a big thing. How are you giving back and being

generous with your time? . . . Those values are where we concentrate a lot of our time

with our students. We help them develop public speaking skills, confidence, grit, and

persistence, but they all fall under one of those umbrellas of those core values.

The core values Ms. Moran mentions are deeply embedded in the culture of Holy Trinity.

Students reflect on these values in their religion classes, they write about them in their

English/language arts classes, and they have conversations about them when disciplinary issues

come up at the school. In the main hallway of the school, there are five Polaroid pictures of

groups of four students (one from each grade) recognizing them as “Value Award Winners” and

labeled “Open to Growth (Entregarse),” “Loving (Amar),” “Intellectually Competent

(Descubrir),” “Religious (Espiritual),” and “Committed to Justice (Servir).” Next to the pictures,

there are questions for reflection for this week’s core value asking students to reflect on the

practical ways that they might or might not be “open to growth.” Most significantly, when I

asked several students if they could name these five core values, each time the student rattled

them off and was able to answer my follow-up clarifications as to what each value meant.

Given the supports and strong school culture described above, Holy Trinity provided a

fertile ground into which the seeds of blended learning could grow and thrive. Yet, as with any

115

substantial change in teaching and learning at a school, a good amount of planning and design

was yet to be done in order to help teachers and students succeed.

Design

As I walk behind Shari May’s fifth grade ELA class and Cathy Roger’s sixth grade

Spanish class, the combined group of boys can no longer contain themselves. They had walked

quietly through the halls of the second floor of Holy Trinity where all of the instruction takes

place, but as they climb the stairs two-at-a-time and reach the third floor ahead of their teachers,

power walks turn into dead sprints toward the library. “Please walk,” Ms. Rogers calls after them,

but in a smiling, half-hearted tone that lets the students know they don’t really have to stop. They

look back and smile as they dash forward. She looks at me, palms turned up. “I mean, they’re

racing toward the library. Why would I slow that down?”

When we catch up to the fifth and sixth graders, they are busily browsing through shelves

of neatly organized, newer looking books. Ms. May tells them to be sure to check out enough

books for the whole Christmas break. While some are looking for the next book in their favorite

series, a select team of students searches for specific books for their “Battle of the Books” (BOB)

competition. They compete with area schools where students read the same list of books and then

answer comprehension questions about them. The entire school is involved in a school-wide

competition that they call TARP (Trinity Accelerated Reader Program). By reading books and

answering comprehension questions about them, students earn tickets, which can then be entered

into a school-wide lottery. This semester, the lottery prizes include an iTunes gift card, a hooded

sweatshirt with a local college logo on it, and (the most popular by far given the number of

tickets in the box) a pair of movie tickets. Teachers remind students about their TARP books

several times each day, and on at three occasions, TARP reminders made it into the

116

announcements at the end of the school day. Throughout the school day, when students finish

with their work in a classroom, they immediately grab their book and begin reading. There is

ample evidence to suggest that Holy Trinity has built a culture of reading and finds new and

exciting ways to cultivate that culture.

From the library, students head down to Shari May’s room. In addition to being the fifth

and sixth grade ELA teacher, she is the director of curriculum and instruction at Holy Trinity. Ms.

May has her students focused and working from the moment they returned from the library. She

leads half of the group of 14 sixth graders in a discussion on the main ideas of a scientific article

they were all assigned to read. The other half of the class is working on the Google

Chromebooks around the perimeter of the room, strategically placed so that the teacher can see

all the screens, even from across the room. When a student at a computer puts his hand up with

two fingers, indicating that something is wrong with his computer (one means “I don’t

understand,” and three means “I have to use the restroom”), Ms. May continues her line of

inquiry with her half of the class while walking over and fixing the problem. She asks another

question and notices a student who is not completely engaged in the back of class. She walks

over to him, puts her hand on his shoulder, and gently asks, “Are you okay?” He shakes his head

no.

“Sick or sad?” she asks.

“Sad,” he replies.

“Sad?” she repeats. “Okay,” she smiles, “we’ll fix that.” Her energy is contagious, and

when she chooses a volunteer, she calls them, “scientist Julio” or “scientist Pablo.” The other

half of the class is logged into their i-Ready profiles and working on everything from basic

phonics, where a student has to match words with pictures and work on identifying “u" vowel

117

sounds, to providing contextual evidence to support a claim in an article about pulleys. There is

clearly a huge divide between students in this class, and it was evident in my conversation with

Ms. May later in the day that, without this technology, she would never have time to remediate at

the levels some of her students needed. As a teacher who is attentive enough to notice an

individual student who is sad, it is not surprising that she likes this ability to differentiate content

for each learner in her classroom.

When it is time for students to switch, Ms. May flicks the overhead lights on and off a

couple times. Students finish up what they are working on and silently stand up. Ms. May

crosses her arms above her head and waits for her students to line up, then she changes to a

chopping motion, like a grounds-crewman signaling an airplane to taxi straight in. Later, she tells

me that she made those motions up because the students were more likely to be quiet if she

wasn’t speaking either.

At the end of the class, the entire group reviews their progress. They had set a goal of 22

lessons completed on i-Ready between all 14 students. When Ms. May pulls up the i-Ready

dashboard on the screen in front of the classroom, it turns out that they actually finished 26! Ms.

May invites the whole class to do a “silent dance party,” but their joy is short-lived as Ms. May

points out their rather dismal 74% pass rate. This model of daily goal-setting is Ms. May’s way

of getting the whole class motivated to keep driving forward through i-Ready lessons, no matter

the level of students’ progress. She assures the boys that they will do better on their pass rate

tomorrow because, as she asks, “You know what tomorrow is?” A chorus of sixth grade voices

responds in unison, “One day closer to college.” From statements like this to college banners

hanging in the hallways, there is a clear emphasis on college-readiness and success, even as a

118

sixth grader. Holy Trinity is hoping that a school-wide blended learning approach will help all of

their students reach that goal.

The shift to a whole-school blended learning approach has coincided with several other

curricular changes at Holy Trinity. Significantly, after years of struggling to find the right

approach for Holy Trinity students, the Leadership Team decided to use the free, online

curriculum from the state of New York called “EngageNY.” This curriculum provided a

Common Core aligned, structured approach to both math and ELA. Practically speaking, the

EngageNY curriculum for ELA involves reading more non-fiction texts, a greater focus on

gathering evidence from challenging texts, using evidence to build written arguments, and

increasing students’ academic vocabulary. For math, EngageNY attempts to dive deeper into

fewer topics, builds on previous math knowledge, emphasizes practicing and memorizing math

facts, and asks students to create a deep understanding of math concepts through having to

provide explanations and using real-world situations. It has been a challenge for many of the

teachers to adjust to this new curriculum, but most seem to find its rigor compelling enough to

justify the shift. Teachers printed the curriculum and some accompanying lessons and materials

from EngageNY’s free website, yet it was far from a complete solution. They would have to fill

in the gaps. Still, Mr. Lentz, the seventh and eighth grade ELA teacher, was complimentary

toward this new curriculum:

It is much more linked with standards and then secondly just much more comprehensive

in terms of lessons, building to assessments, and having that connection. So we all kind

of dabbled in it last year in the language arts team and tried a unit out. And we’re like,

“Yeah, this is good. This is going to work.” And so then we made the shift this year that

we’re doing an EngageNY year and seeing how it works.

119

This change alone sounds significant enough to push most of the teachers to the limit as they try

to grapple with an entirely new curriculum. Yet additionally, Holy Trinity adopted a school-wide

blended learning model as a part of the CBLN. This change not only involved new ways of

teaching, but also some changes to the physical space of Holy Trinity.

CBLN’s typical model for blended learning is a station rotation model where, like in the

story of Ms. May’s class above, half of the students in a class are on computers for the majority

of a class period, and then students switch to spend the other half of the class in smaller group

with their teacher—a mode teachers at Holy Trinity call “direct instruction.” The impetus behind

this model is a desire to make large classes (of maybe 30 students) feel small as they are broken

up between the two modes of learning. Since the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades at Holy

Trinity were smaller groups (around 20 students or less per class), this required CBLN to

purchase only around 10 laptops for each of these classes and 15 for the fifth grade classrooms.

Each of these laptops sits on the near edge of a long, shallow table with a chair for each station

tucked neatly underneath. All of the computers have a pair of over-ear headphones plugged into

their audio jack, all are spaced a bit apart (though there is no divider between them, leading to

copious amounts of other-screen gazing), and all are arranged so that, at a glance, the teacher can

see every students’ screen across the room.

This installation coincided with an interesting new classroom arrangement for Holy

Trinity. Instead of having homeroom teachers and students switching classrooms throughout the

day, students stay put in their homerooms and their teachers move from class to class. Ms.

Moran and her Leadership Team came up with the idea of moving all of the teachers’ desks out

of the homerooms and into two staff rooms (one of which houses the coveted copy machine). On

a tour of the school, Ms. Moran tells me that there were several reasons why she and her team

120

decided to move the teachers’ desks. First, it allowed students to “own” their classroom and feel

a sense of “home” in it. Second, it was a practical decision that allowed Chromebooks to remain

stable and plugged in throughout the day instead of being shifted from room to room, thereby

reducing the likelihood of dropping or damaging them. Finally, this was a very intentional school

culture and community-building decision that sought to take teachers out of the silos of their

classrooms and into a more collaborative space where they could share ideas and challenges.

In one of the staff rooms is a desk belonging to a non-faculty member, the desk of CBLN

employee Jimmy Burke. Several weeks before school started, Mr. Burke led a two-week

orientation and professional development for all of the faculty and staff to guide them through

the transition to blended learning. During these sessions, Mr. Burke walked faculty through

school-wide procedures for handling the computers, rotating between stations quickly and

efficiently, and the steps to take if computers hit technical glitches. Additionally, they talked

about the data that the blended learning programs would deliver, what was expected of each of

the teachers as they participated in this program, and some of the technical aspects of the

programs they would be using. They settled on using i-Ready for fifth grade math and ELA,

Think Through Math for grades 6-8, Achieve 3000 for reading and ELA school-wide, as well as

eScience3000 for all science classes.

Think Through Math (TTM) is an adaptive mathematics program that uses an initial

placement test in conjunction with ongoing lesson assessment to determine an individualized

pathway for each student. When a student struggles with a lesson or the test at the end of the

lesson, TTM may insert a lesson to remediate some of the skills that the current lesson is built

upon. TTM is designed to be used in a classroom without much teacher interaction. In fact, one

of TTM’s most distinct features is a “TTM Teacher” button that students can click if they are

121

stuck—and after they have attempted the problem and gone through several “help” tips first—to

connect them with a live, state-certified math teacher. Students can hear an off-site, licensed

teacher employed by TTM through their headphones and respond back by typing in a chat

window. Notably for Holy Trinity, students can choose to chat with TTM teachers in English or

Spanish. Each lesson has a pre- and post-lesson quiz, videos, interactive animations, and word

problems. The information is presented in a very clean and crisp layout without the character

animations, games, or cutesy voices of i-Ready. TTM has an extrinsic motivation feature built in

that allows students to earn points by completing lessons and then convert points to real dollars

that they can then donate to the charity of their choosing.

Achieve3000 is an online repository of over 4 million news and current event articles that

have been rewritten in varying levels of complexity from grades 2 through 12. Students take a

diagnostic placement test to determine their reading level and Achieve3000 curates which

version of the article is given to them based on their performance. Teachers can assign one

article to the class, and it is delivered to each student at their reading level (or just above to

challenge them), or students can choose articles at their reading level on topics that interest them.

They then complete a comprehension quiz or an accompanying writing activity. Achieve3000

can be used for reading and writing practice rather autonomously, but teachers are also able to

see assessment data, use the tool to assign specific types of articles, and comment back to

students on their performance. Science3000 is exactly the same tool, but contains scientific

articles instead of news-based ones.

In order to be a part of the CBLN, Holy Trinity signed a three-year partnership contract.

As a part of this partnership, CBLN and Holy Trinity agree to mutually fundraise the first three

years of blended learning operating costs, which amounted to about $685,000. This provided

122

hardware—Chromebooks, carts, all wiring for additional access points, and server upgrades—

and software licenses for the various programs. It also paid Mr. Burke’s salary and some CBLN

fees, such as professional development and travel costs. Additionally, Holy Trinity agreed to

increase their enrollment over three years, give CBLN access to student test scores and

performance data, and share in the fundraising costs they incurred. Finally, CBLN set a

minimum target goal of 65% of their entire student enrollment achieving 1.4 years of growth on

the NWEA MAP test. But beyond these pre-defined metrics for success and financial viability,

Holy Trinity embraced a blended learning approach for its potential to help their students

succeed in high school and beyond. Mr. Lehr, dean of students and middle school social studies

teacher, talked about how Holy Trinity defines success:

In general, we tend to base our success on how well our students do at the next level, not

as much as what they’re doing here. So how well are we preparing our kids for high

school? How are those kids testing when they’re going to high school? What skills are

they doing well when they go to high school? So in general, that’s that bigger picture.

Then, we break it down into, we need to see reading growth, we need to see math growth,

we need to try to close that achievement gap between our marginalized students and the

students that they’re going to compete against—that’s not the right word—but compete

against from all the private schools. I think in general a lot of our really, really bright

kids have gone to the most competitive high schools and have been somewhat successful,

but not as successful as other schools’ brightest kids. So how can we kind of shrink that

gap so that we are on the same footing? We already know our students are coming in a

little behind because most of them are ELL [English Language Learner] students, so how

do we bridge that gap between us and the other schools?

123

This sheds some light on the varied ways that Holy Trinity is defining success for their students

in not only traditional measures like reading and math growth, but in helping students reach their

potential and preparing them to succeed beyond middle school. This echoes back to the “soft

skills” of “confidence, grit, and persistence” that Ms. Moran spoke about helping students

acquire and practice. Although these skills were not explicitly designed into the blended learning

approach that Holy Trinity has implemented with CBLN’s help, as I used the HPL framework to

gather data about teaching and learning at Holy Trinity, there was ample evidence to suggest a

blended learning approach supports these goals.

Learner-centered

A learner-centered educational setting is one where incomplete understandings of

concepts and false beliefs are surfaced while a student is still forming their ideas about a new

concept. In this way, a learner-centered classroom responds to the needs of individual learners.

At Holy Trinity, much of the evidence of learner-centered surrounds responsiveness to learners

on the top and bottom quartiles of the learning spectrum, who teachers say they often have a

difficult time reaching.

Mr. Lehr (“Coach”), the middle school social studies teacher, dean of discipline, and a

member of the school leadership team, visits most of Holy Trinity’s classrooms on a regular

basis as he functions as an instructional coach and (less regularly) as a faculty evaluator. He

admits that he doesn’t use the blended learning software as much as many of the other teachers

in his own teaching, because he has had difficulty finding historical texts on Achieve3000. He

prefers assigning students to read primary historical sources, many of which he takes from

Stanford University’s “Reading Like a Historian” website. Still, he sees how blended learning

software has given him and others tools to make a more learner-centered classroom. He reflects,

124

The differentiation that you can use in a blended classroom is amazing compared to a

traditional classroom—even if it’s just something as simple as, I can break the kids into

two different groups so the discussion can be at a higher or lower levels while the other

group is working at the blended stations. Or the fact that all the articles they’re reading

are based on their Lexile level, so you know the kid’s getting the right level. Or the fact

that I can bump it up and make them struggle and work through it by maybe printing off

one with a higher Lexile and working on it in groups or individually. It’s a huge asset to

have to be able to differentiate where you might not have been able to in the past. To

find 18 different articles for kids to read is impossible, but with the technology you have

the ability to do that. Real time assessment, real time data is huge, so we can use that to

kind of guide our instruction. So the fact that I can have a kid in the back at the computer

working on a main idea activity and I’ll know within seconds where he is on that scale

and then be able to say, “Okay, we need to go over this again. I need to reteach it. We

need refreshers before we can move onto something else.” That’s huge.

Even as Mr. Lehr is using blended learning software (specifically Achieve3000 in this case) in a

rather limited way, it is still significantly complementing his pedagogy. As Achieve3000

collection of texts grows more robust, one might expect a teacher like Mr. Lehr to further utilize

the blended learning software.

Holy Trinity president Ms. Moran similarly speaks about the blended learning approach

helping struggling students, not just in terms of differentiated content, but giving them the time

they need to work on skill improvement. She points to one young man in particular who has

struggled with English language acquisition. This is a challenge for Holy Trinity because by the

125

time they enter the school, students can already be quite far behind if they haven’t received the

remediation they need. Ms. Moran says,

I would say that it definitely helps the students on the lower-end. We have a student in

the fifth grade, but who is reading at the first grade level for us, and he is a student who

needs additional intervention time to help him progress and get more on grade level. So

he’s definitely spending more time on a program like Achieve3000, and his [content] is

much more around phonics and around basic reading kind of skills, whereas maybe a

peer in his class is at grade level. And it doesn’t slow down the teacher in the way that. If

it were a full class, they’d be spending so much time with this young student. This way

allows that student to continue to grow at his own pace.

Ms. Moran points out the importance of content differentiation for this student as well as the

pacing of the adaptive software that allows students to work at their own level without the threat

of holding other classmates back.

Antonio, an eighth grader at Holy Trinity, describes how he sees a blended learning

approach benefitting his classmates. After describing one of his classmates who has flown

through all of the eighth grade lessons on TTM, Antonio pauses and says,

It’s about what kind of person you are. If you’re not a really slow person but you take

more time on things, then blended learning goes to your level and goes with you, it

doesn’t go against you. And if you are a fast learner, it goes fast. It’s on your level pretty

much, that’s what I’m trying to say. And it’s challenging, but it’s not challenging enough

that you can’t complete it, it’s just pushing you as far as you can and knows that you can

complete it.

126

This description represents the ideal of what should be happening for students as they use

blended learning software—it meets them where they are and challenges students at every level

to the point of pleasant frustration, not overwhelming resignation. Significantly, Antonio states

that the computer program somehow “knows that you can complete it”—a statement that reveals

his trust in the legitimacy of the blended learning software and its ability to adapt to the user.

This is no small amount of praise for the way TTM has contributed to a learner-centered

environment, at least from Antonio’s perspective. But this benefit has not simply benefitted

students on the lower end, as Antonio points out. It has helped his classmates who traditionally

have done very well in school too.

One of the main reasons Holy Trinity pursued a blended learning approach was in the

hopes of helping struggling students. But as several teachers at Holy Trinity expressed, it is

(rather unexpectedly) also really helping kids at the top of the class. Ms. Moran articulates how

this is happening:

I would definitely say that the teachers are able to better meet the needs of the students

that are kind of those higher-end students. They’re able to progress much faster through

different programs and be challenged in a way that, when you have a class of 25 students

or so, and you’re teaching to the whole class . . . differentiation for the higher end can

sometimes look like, “well here’s an extra set of problems to work on” or “oh, here take

this one problem a few steps farther,” but it really doesn’t keep pushing the kids at their

pace that they could be able to do. In a class like math that definitely [benefits] the higher

students or even language arts—or any other subject really. Those students are getting

more challenging vocabulary words, more challenging comprehension questions, and

more challenging texts to have to grapple with. So those students—honestly, they get

127

frustrated sometimes because things are so challenging, but they also are like, “Oh, wow,

okay, I see that I’m much farther advanced than maybe some of my peers, and I’m not

being held back now.”

Differentiation, in this case, allows students to progress beyond what they would normally be

able to reach when they have to throttle back their learning to keep pace with their classmates.

As Ms. Moran points out, challenging these students is sometimes rather perfunctory and

minimal. Ms. Krantz, the seventh and eighth grade math teacher, agrees with this difficulty. The

previous year, she tried giving her high-performing seventh grade students an eighth grade math

book so that they could keep progressing. It was challenging for her to maintain two sets of

lessons for one class. She says, “I just knew these guys needed more. They were able to do more

and I couldn’t. I said, ‘I’ve already got you working in two different books and trying to do

harder things!’ ” With TTM, she has enjoyed seeing her students continue to be challenged

individually while the whole class is progressing through the challenging lessons of the

EngageNY curriculum.

Beyond academic achievement, several teachers at Holy Trinity mentioned the ancillary

learner-centered effects of the blended learning approach. Matt Anderson, a fifth grade teacher,

points out a particular type of student who is benefitting from this different way of learning:

students who are often a bit quieter. Sometimes students hesitate to speak in class because they

are embarrassed that their English is not as sophisticated as their classmates, but other students,

such as Tommy, are just a bit shyer than his classmates. As Mr. Anderson describes, “Tommy

does fairly well and gets his work done, but doesn’t engage a lot in full group discussion. But

there’s really not that option when you’re one-on-one with a program. So he’s definitely engaged

more fully I would say.” Another teacher described some of the ancillary benefits a student who

128

is struggling to learn English is experiencing. Ms. May, an ELA teacher and the director of

curriculum and instruction, describes this student:

We have a fifth grader, Juan, [who is] functioning at about a kindergarten/first grade level,

and when he’s on his i-Ready, it’s all letter sounds, phonemic awareness, things of that

sort. And I decided to pull him from his Spanish and religion block and put him on the

Chromebook for an extended chunk of the day so that he could get that catch-up

instruction. Now is it working? Good question. He’s building more self-esteem around it,

but it’s self-esteem towards his own abilities. He’s like, “I’m getting smarter!” He’ll say

those things. He’s also getting the one-on-one tutoring twice a week with a

paraprofessional. There’s an intention behind what we’re doing, so there’s a lot of

variables that even play into him. But he too is a student who is on it longer than anyone

else in fifth grade, and I don’t see the growth that we should be seeing within the program

yet. And so again, I would want to become a little more familiar with the data [from i-

Ready].

While Ms. May has not seen leaps in Juan’s progress that she hoped she might by putting him on

i-Ready for a significant part of his day, she attributes Juan’s increase in confidence as a

learner—at least in-part—to his work and progress at his ability level on i-Ready.

Assessment-centered

Students in assessment-centered learning environments receive regular formative

feedback as they form their understanding of concepts while growing in self-reflective,

metacognitive processes. Outside pre- and post-testing, students at Holy Trinity experience very

tight data feedback loops with the blended learning software they utilize. For example, in Ms.

Rogers’ Spanish class, students use WordPlay.com as an adaptive flash-card system. Ms. Rogers

129

entered her textbook name and level into the site, and the site automatically loads all of the

vocabulary from her current chapter into her students’ profiles. Ms. Rogers likes the adaptive

nature of the site, the different modes it gives her students (some are multiple choice, others

require typing the word in question), and the fact that it includes audio pronunciations of the

words so students can hear the words in their headphones. Ms. Rogers describes the system:

[Students] identify the words and match them correctly, and then it keeps track of how

they’re doing, and it keeps giving them the ones that they get wrong and adapts to how

they’re doing. Each time that they’re clicking, it’s adapting it and giving them ones that

they’ve gotten wrong again. And then it starts to get harder and harder and harder, until

finally it says, “you’ve mastered this lesson.” And then they can go on to the next one.

Each word that appears also has a timer arrow that starts at the top of the screen and rapidly

moves down to the bottom. I watch as 13 of Ms. Rogers’ students work on these vocabulary

words with what seems to be a high amount of engagement at a surprisingly quick speed, despite

the fact that all of them are using the “hunt-and-peck” method of typing. A small battery icon on

their screen starts empty and red and begins to fill up as students progress, giving them a visual

cue of their progress toward mastery. Later, it will fill in blue as students return to those words

and continue to successfully reinforce them in their memories. Ms. Rogers describes the

immediate feedback students receive from WordPlay.com:

After they’ve reached the program’s mastery for that lesson, then it will say, “You

mastered this lesson, go on to the next one.” So they get a lot of feedback that way. And

also it’s set up so if they’re misspelling a word it goes like, “doink,” and then they know

that they got that one wrong. So it’s constant feedback in that sense. The sounds either go

like, “doink” if they get it wrong, or “cha-ching” when they get it right.

130

The seemingly highly-engaged 13 students on Chromebooks in the back of the room allows Ms.

Rogers to have an extended conversation with four students in the front of the class. As she does

so, she corrects their pronunciation, grammar, and asks them follow-up questions, all in Spanish.

For an entire class period, I saw nothing but immediate feedback for the students in Ms. Rogers’

class. It would be difficult to imagine how a classroom could possibly be more assessment-

centered (in the sense of real-time formative feedback) than this one.

But not all of the classes at Holy Trinity are this closely aligned in terms of computer

work and direct instruction. The fifth grade math and social studies teacher, Mr. Anderson,

expresses frustration that the work his students are doing on i-Ready does not coincide with his

direct instruction and therefore reinforce the content he teaches.

I would love it if I could get them more practice directly related to what we’re doing as a

class. So if we’re working on dividing decimals, I would love them to get some practice

in that. I think it’s still very much possible to get them at their appropriate levels, but

within that specific strand.

Mr. Anderson refers back to his teaching experience at a previous school where he became

familiar with a math practice program called iXL. He liked the fact that this program allowed the

teacher to assign practice problems around a certain topic. “It will just throw you problem after

problem of adding fractions, say,” Mr. Anderson describes, “and then when you get one wrong,

you can look at ‘well, here’s why you got it wrong,’ and they’ll give an explanation for it.” To be

clear, he finds the lack of real-time help in iXL to be a limitation, but wants this kind of practice

for his students. Mr. Anderson is not alone in feeling frustrated at the fractured nature of his

math class. Another math teacher at Holy Trinity, Ms. Krantz, expressed a similar frustration and

went so far as asking the administration if students could work on TTM in their after school

131

tutoring program, which is mandatory for all students at Holy Trinity. She sees the merit in

adaptive math content on computers and the gap remediation that is possible through it, but

simply questions when the most appropriate time to utilize that kind of program might be.

Interestingly, in several classes within Holy Trinity, teachers have used logbooks or

journals in order to have students be explicit about their metacognitive processes that can often

be hidden on computer work. These metacognitive skills of self-reflection and idea refinement

are key parts of an assessment-centered educational environment and teachers like Ms. Krantz

have instituted this practice of students logging what they are working on so that they can reflect

on their work with the teacher and create a pencil-and-paper accountability system.

Knowledge-centered

Knowledge-centered classrooms help students build skills and deep understanding of

concepts by constructing their own mental frameworks of meaning. Using blended learning

software to contribute to a knowledge-centered classroom can be a difficult task for schools in

their first year of a blended learning implementation. The skill automaticity aspect of a

knowledge-centered classroom is often much more attainable than the deep, synthetic thinking

that is the other hallmark of knowledge-centered learning environments. In their first year of

blended learning at Holy Trinity, the CBLN set very simple goals for using blended learning in

the classroom. The first month, the goal was to simply just make sure that every teacher was

using the blended learning software weekly and to ensure that students could accomplish the

rotation process in under 30 seconds. According to Mr. Burke, the blended learning coordinator,

after that first phase is complete,

then you start to look at, “Okay, how does this connect with what I’m doing in the

classroom?” So that’s kind of like the Phase 2 part of it, and then along with that is “how

132

do I motivate students?” So then Phase 3 would be like finding a total integration, so that

things line up: “This is what I’m teaching in class and this is what they’re doing on

blended learning.”

Rachele Coyle didn’t want to wait for Phase 2. She teaches sixth and seventh grade reading and

writing and each grade has a 105-minute block of time. In these large blocks of time, Ms. Coyle

wanted to utilize the blended learning software—Achieve3000, which she and many others at the

school just refer to as “Achieve”—so that she could engage students in meaningful work while

she worked in small groups or one-on-one with students to help struggling readers or focus on

improving their writing skills. When she saw that her students mastered the station rotation

transition within a few days, she grew impatient of this slow roll-out of the phases and started

exploring the software on her own. She began by assigning students articles on Achieve3000.

I started using a lot of the different features that Achieve offered so to me. Like

Achieve’s “article” feature, which is where the students take a pre-poll, and it will ask a

question like, “Do you agree or disagree with this statement?” And the statement might

say, “It is important to maintain cultural traditions?” So something like that and they’d

have to agree or disagree, and that pre-poll would lead them into the reading of the article.

So they would read an article and based on the beginning of their Lexile score, that article

would be a certain length, it would include a certain complexity of word choice, etc., etc.

Some guys would have a feature where they could listen to the article if their Lexile was

lower. If their Lexile was very high, they would not have that option, and in the sidebar

they would have a list of important vocabulary that was included in the article that was

highlighted and underlined. They could click on that and hear the definition, hear how the

word was pronounced. So there were some really great features with the articles, and it

133

was going very well, I thought. It wasn’t going perfectly, but for the beginning of the

year, the students seemed to be engaged.

Following each article, Achieve3000 presents a student with an activity and eight “thought

questions” that they are asked to answer based on the content of the article. Ms. Coyle set a

classroom goal of 75% on these “thought questions.” Students seemed excited to try and reach

that score, but Ms. Coyle anticipated they might soon get bored of this task. She recalls,

I didn’t want them to burn out on these articles. I didn’t want them to dread going into the

blended station if this was going to become somewhat monotonous. So I started looking

at Achieve’s other features and noticed they had a writing center, which was really

exciting for me. I started including some of the writing activities and writing prompts,

etc., into my lessons so I would use it as a way to, not necessarily supplement, but to give

them extra practice in their writing. So if we were working in direct instruction, if we

working on an argumentative essay, then I would set up beforehand a writing lesson on

Achieve that would involve them taking a stand and arguing a certain claim using

relevant evidence just as they were doing in direct with me to see how well they could

now do this independently without any sort of guidance from me.

Ms. Coyle found success with this approach, but soon became a bit overwhelmed with all of the

data feedback pouring in from Achieve3000 and the double or even triple amount of correcting

that she found herself doing each night. She slowed the process down a bit, especially when she

noticed that students were rushing through the assignments just to get to the end.

Ms. Coyle went exploring in the program again and found that Achieve3000 had its own

internal email program where she could send messages back and forth to students based on their

writing assignments. Her students immediately became excited about this kind of feedback.

134

I noticed that students who were less likely to talk to me at all in class or just were shy or

maybe too timid to talk in front of their peers were responding with all sorts of wonderful

ideas and questions to me about what I had said about their writing. Normally . . . when

you receive your paper and it’s got red, or whatever color the teacher uses all over it, you

might glance at it and just look at how much red there is, but you don’t actually read the

comments, and of course, middle school boys aren’t going to take the time to read their

comments unless you make it a lesson, and we don’t have time for that. But I had guys

writing me back paragraphs! “Thank you, misses, for grading my work. I saw what you

meant about my run-on sentence. Here’s how I fixed it.” And they would send me back

their revised sentence. I was very excited. In fact, I started copying and pasting their

comments and sending them on to other language arts teachers and showing them how

excited I was.

Further, Ms. Coyle noticed that with each article she assigned, Achieve3000 deployed a generic

graphic organizer to help students read the articles. Using the EngageNY curriculum, Ms. Coyle

created her own series of graphic organizers that she gives out with each article to help students

compare or contrast information or contextualize vocabulary.

In the first half of the first year that Holy Trinity has integrated blended learning, Ms.

Coyle has found masterful ways of leveraging Achieve 3000’s features to transform simple

reading comprehension assignments into self-reflective writing exercises that help build to

knowledge-centered conversations and textual analyses while engaging all students in thoughtful

critiques of their writing.

On a more macro level, Mr. Burke, the CBLN data and blended learning expert at Holy

Trinity, looks at school-wide data in addition to doing classrooms visits around the school. As he

135

assists teachers in improving their integration of the blended learning tools, he has noticed an

effect that a blended learning approach has had on students’ sense of independence as learners.

Mr. Burke explains how this is a new skill for many of Holy Trinity’s students:

Independent thought for a lot of these students—discovering or looking for something by

yourself—is a completely new concept. In the past when they didn’t have the blended

piece, a lot of times the teacher would teach the material, the students would understand

it, and then they’d do well. Now they’re sort of exploring new topics that they’ve never

seen before and having to learn it on their own. Not necessarily hear it, intake it from a

teacher, process it, and then do it again.

This kind of self-guided and independent learning helps students form their own learning

pathways and make sense of new information in their own way. Building upon this skill is clear

evidence of a knowledge-centered learning environment.

Community-centered

A community-centered learning environment is one that connects learners with the larger

community while also being internally supportive, particularly when learners fail or make

mistakes. Given the fact that students spend nearly 11 hours each day of the school year at Holy

Trinity in addition to their summer camp where they are with each other all day, every day, for

five straight weeks, it is not surprising that there appears to be a strong sense of community

among the students and faculty at Holy Trinity. When I ask students to describe their school to

me, one student, Alejandro, tells me that he likes the fact that Holy Trinity is a “smaller school.”

“We really get to know each other here. We really get to see who everyone really is and we

spend a lot of time with each other and we basically live with each other. We’re a family.”

Another student, Marco, chimes in,

136

It’s like a 1.5 family. We have our first family and then it’s like Holy Trinity. So

whenever you can’t rely on your family, or if you have a problem, you can just come to

one of your friends and stuff. And the teachers are great. You can talk to them, or you can

have a one-on-one kind of meeting with them about your studies or about just whatever

you want to talk about.

From conversations like these, it is evident that Holy Trinity is a tight-knit community where

students see teachers as advocates, mentors, and caring adults. And as was modeled in the

morning assembly described at the beginning of this chapter, adults at Holy Trinity readily

model equanimity even as they public admit mistakes. This does not go unnoticed by students, as

evidenced by this conversation with Holy Trinity seventh grader, Ben. When I ask him what it

feels like to make mistakes at his school, he responds with a surprisingly mature answer:

Oh, it actually feels like you’re not making a mistake. It feels like you’re improving,

because like again with the family environment, it’s just like you and your family. Sure,

they’ll make fun of you in a funny way like, “dude, come on,” or something like that.

But you know that they care about you and that they’re going to help you in order to

succeed. That’s how you grow into it here.

This sense of caring that Ben speaks about is further evidence of a culture where there is a low

cost of failure, which points to a community-centered learning environment. Interestingly, while

there is strong sense of community among students, there is not much evidence to suggest that

students are using technology to connect with their community or the world at large. While the

blended learning program at Holy Trinity hones in on reading, writing, and math skills, other

skills that involve technology may be underdeveloped. Mr. Anderson, the fifth grade teacher,

points out the tension between keeping students safe and allowing them to explore the larger

137

world through technology, a skillset that he sees as essential in creating independent learners

who will succeed in high school, college, and beyond:

In order for them to be totally independent, they need a little more freedom, versus saying,

“Go to this website, do that.” It takes a little more teacher work to monitor what students

are doing . . . . It’s easier from a tech side: you don’t run into as many problems with

firewalls and inappropriate content and all this. And I understand that, especially because

I have some responsibilities and experience from the tech side, but I also know there are

points where I have kind of needed to be like, “Well, I’m not totally ready for this in

terms of the security or limiting the students, but it’s not fair to them to keep limiting the

possibilities just because this element of it isn’t ready or we still haven’t rolled it out.”

It opens up a can of worms with appropriate use and all that, but then we’ve got to

say, “Look, we’re preparing them for the future, and we can’t keep it from them because

they’re going to need it down the road.” We’ve just got to teach them to use it well. . . .

[We need to say to students], “There’s inappropriate stuff. There’s stuff that doesn’t help

you as much as it should even if it’s not inappropriate. It’s just not good.” I mean, that’s

my take on it, and that’s why I would love to see us pushing to use the Chromebooks for

more stuff.

Mr. Anderson’s desire to give students more freedom and independence with the tools of

technology that students are using daily brings up an interesting challenge for Holy Trinity. The

way the CBLN has limited the functionality of the Chromebooks and narrowed the available

websites students can access to just a few “whitelisted” sites limits their ability of a blended

learning program to help students become informed navigators of technology. Yet this narrowed

focus ensures students stay focused while on the Chromebooks and develop good habits of using

138

technology for work-related tasks. In this sense though, despite the fact that Holy Trinity has the

infrastructure and potential to connect students with affinity groups and communicate with the

world at large, they have chosen to limit this interaction—at least for now.

Summary

Holy Trinity, a very urban, 100% Latino Catholic school entered into a unique

partnership with CBLN in order to transition to a whole school, blended learning approach. They

were already an incredibly high-performing school that has had strong leadership, teaching, and

school culture. Yet they pursued a blended learning approach in order to further strengthen their

ability to meet the needs of their students—many of whom are coming to Holy Trinity in need of

language remediation—and prepare them for success in high school, college, and beyond.

Teachers at Holy Trinity report that students on the high and low end of classes are

benefitting most from the personalization that a blended learning approach affords. Teachers

who would not otherwise have time to spend on skill remediation speak positively about the way

this is happening through the blended learning software, and there are several reports of some

ancillary effects, such as engaging quieter students and building confidence as learners see their

own discernable progress. All of these data point to a growing sense at Holy Trinity that blended

learning can strengthen its learner-centered environment.

The immediate feedback that students receive on formative assessments, as a part of the

blended learning software they are using, contributes to a strongly assessment-centered

environment at Holy Trinity. In Spanish class, students use online adaptive flashcards for

vocabulary practice while their teacher gives them guided practice in their language use.

Although students’ use of Think Through Math (TTM) adaptive mathematics program allows

students to get real-time help and immediate feedback on their work, several teachers expressed

139

a desire to more closely align in-class work on computers with direct instruction topics. Even

though these are still strongly assessment-centered classrooms, the content alignment is less than

ideal for some teachers at Holy Trinity.

During this first year of implementation, much of the work on computers at Holy Trinity

is adaptive skill work. Yet teachers like Ms. Coyle have surged ahead in using a tool like

Achieve3000 in a way that promotes thoughtful writing exercises, self-reflective critiques, and

deep textual analyses—truly knowledge-centered practices. The blended learning coordinator

spoke about the way that students are building skills for independent learning as they work on

programs like TTM away from the teacher’s direct control. This skill, he claims, will benefit

students beyond middle school and prepare them for future success.

Finally, there is ample evidence to suggest that Holy Trinity is a strongly community-

centered school, although much of that is due to the extended school day, family atmosphere, and

5-week summer camp in which all students participate. There is no evidence to suggest the

blended learning approach has had either a positive or negative effect on this aspect of Holy

Trinity, yet one teacher in particular spoke about a desire to allow students to unlock some of the

potential of the laptops in use for blended instruction. He sees the potential risk in doing so, but

believes allowing students to explore, teaching them digital citizenship, and helping them

communicate effectively beyond the school walls is essential in preparing students for life in

high school beyond Holy Trinity. This type of communication is one aspect of a community-

centered learning environment and a potential area for Holy Trinity to grow.

140

Case 3: St. Stephen’s

St. Stephen’s K-8 Catholic school boasts small class sizes and a demanding curriculum

amidst high-performing, suburban district. They decided to introduce blended learning across

their school curriculum as a way to get to know and use each student’s performance data to

improve instruction for every individual student. This case begins with an introduction to the

school’s setting, a description of St. Stephen’s history and background, the design of blended

learning that they implemented, and then describes any evidence of the HPL framework at this

school.

Introduction

Science teacher Rachel Miller walks me through the brightly lit hallways of St. Stephen’s

Catholic school. To get to the third grade classroom, we walk by repurposed classrooms, where

daycare workers are rocking babies to sleep, and then up a staircase to bypass an entire floor that

has been leased to a small startup charter school. Within moments of being in St. Stephen’s

school, it is clear that the school is using some creative thinking to stay afloat financially. The

staircase is adorned with colorful pictures made up of small protruding pieces of paper. Each

piece of paper is carefully colored on both sides and then folded so that one sees a caterpillar on

one side coming up the stairs and a butterfly on the other side when going down. Each of the

students we pass in the hallway is neatly dressed in their tucked-in, blue and green uniforms. Ms.

Miller greets each of them by name, and they politely greet us and smile back. St. Stephen’s is a

small enough—only 107 students in the whole K-8—that Ms. Miller and, indeed, nearly all of

the teachers get to know not just their students, but their students’ entire families.

For most Catholic schools, enrollment means tuition, and tuition means financial survival.

A small enrollment like St. Stephen’s would be worrisome to most Catholic schools, but at St.

141

Stephen’s they have turned it into a selling point, proudly advertising small enrollments along

with their rigorous curriculum, outside activities, faith formation, and blended learning as unique

characteristics of their school. In St. Stephen’s incredibly competitive and successful school

district, Catholic schools are trying to emphasize what makes them unique and attractive to

potential students and their families beyond academic achievement. And while each of the

aforementioned aspects of St. Stephen’s school may indeed make it unique, the challenge of

managing a declining enrollment as students move to public schools is the story of many (if not

most) Catholic schools in the United States. It remains to be seen if blended learning can help

schools like St. Stephen’s distinguish itself from its public school peers and pique the interest of

potential students in a high-performing district.

From the third grade classroom, Ms. Miller shows me to Kelli Arenz’s fourth grade

classroom. Ms. Arenz is among the newest and youngest members of the seven full-time and

seven part-time faculty at St. Stephen’s. Her classroom is well-organized and inviting with

clustered islands of desks in the middle of the room and a cozy reading corner on the far side of

the room. The entire room is superhero-themed, and every bulletin board is neatly decorated in

bold primary colors. Most of the wall space is utilized, but it doesn’t feel cluttered—as if

everything on the walls aligns to some invisible grid running through the classroom. A

description of different types of texts hang on the bulletin board that proclaims, “Reading gives

us superpowers.” Students track their progress on a board that says, “Write like a superhero.”

Even the assignment of classroom jobs fits the theme. Next to the list of student names a clothes

pin is clipped with the name of the job, which proclaims, “This looks like a job for. . .” What Ms.

Arenz lacks in experience, she makes up for in enthusiasm, professionalism, and organization.

142

Her room has a couple more laptops than an average Catholic school might have, but

otherwise, it looks like typical fourth grade classroom, with one exception that Ms. Arenz

explains: “I don’t have a desk. I got rid of it this year.” Instead, she has a file cabinet and a half-

donut shaped table with several bright red, kid-sized stools, where small groups of students join

her, while their classmates work on other things. Ms. Arenz does have her own, school-issued

laptop, but she counts it among the other computers that students can use during the day for their

blended learning rotations. While other teachers might shudder in horror at the idea of a student

using their computer, Ms. Arenz sees it as a pragmatic solution to a challenge that nearly every

teacher at St. Stephen’s mentions: a scarcity of computers. Ms. Arenz describes an elaborate and

dizzying schedule of lending and borrowing among the teachers on her floor based on other class

schedules and availability. Colleagues are generous in helping each other out and sharing the

technology freely, but nearly all are facing this same challenge.

The teachers at St. Stephen’s have encountered many of these growing pains in this first

year that St. Stephen’s has adopted a blended learning model. Each teacher in the K-5 wing of

the school has found a way of incorporating blended learning into their weekly routines. They

deftly maneuver around the potentially frustrating laptop shortage with a flurry of weekly emails

to each other. They convert the students’ reading-level scores that the blended learning programs

report to another system that is the school-wide and library standard. They spent their first few

months of this school year constantly asking each other questions and finding ad hoc ways of

addressing these challenges. But most of the solutions they have found have taken the better part

of a year to evolve. And while teachers in the K-5 wing of St. Stephen’s are integrating blended

learning into math and English/language arts blocks in a regular and systematic way, the

adoption rate among teachers in grades 6-8 are significantly lower. This disparity may point to

143

some of the technical, cultural, and curricular challenges facing the school, but it is also reflects

of the organic way that blended learning has been seeded and cultivated at St. Stephen’s.

Background

Not far from a major metropolitan area, the cozy and well maintained suburban town of

Knollwood has been a destination for generations of city dwellers who want to escape the

busyness of downtown and relax by one of Knollwood’s many lakes. St. Stephen’s parish church

was founded in the late 1940s and the parish school was built in 1959. Over the decades, this

area has become less of a vacation community and more of a residential stronghold for the upper

middle class. Just a block down the street from St. Stephen’s wooded campus is an intersection

that underscores this reality as it houses a boutique jewelry store, a coffeeshop, an upscale Italian

restaurant, a yoga and Pilates studio, a cigar bar, and an athletic club and spa. In recent years, St.

Stephen’s zip code has flirted with the edge of Forbes magazine’s “America’s 500 Most

Expensive Zip Codes” and actually made the list in 2011.

Along with rising property taxes, the quality of schools in Knollwood has steadily risen

over the decades. St. Stephen’s is just a mile away from a public elementary school that

prominently displays the national blue ribbon status it earned in 2013. Ms. Miller, a 14-year

veteran teacher at St. Stephen’s, talked about the difficulty that this small Catholic school has

faced in trying to keep up with area public schools:

I don’t know if “keep up” is the right word. And “compete” is not the right word

because we’re obviously not winning that way. . . . I mean out here, there’s

money on top of money and the Knollwood school district is one of the best in the

state. They have everything, and we don’t have to have everything, but we have

to have some of the tools that they have. And they don’t do blended learning, but

144

at the high school I think the kids either get an iPad or a laptop—I want to say it’s

an iPad. I think they have an iPad for all four years of high school.

This technological “arms race” among schools in this area puts pressure on schools and

administrators to achieve a 1:1 student-to-laptop (or iPad) ratio, just to keep up with what other

schools are offering. This is a costly endeavor, to be sure. And beyond the technology that

Knollwood schools offer their students, there is also a Spanish immersion school and a Chinese

immersion school that offer intense dual language environments for students. For the highest

performing students, the district offers an academically challenging magnet program called

“Explorers.” “That’s for the super, super high flyers,” says Ms. Miller. “We actually lost a

couple of kids a few years back to that program because their parents felt like we weren’t

meeting [students’ needs at] the top end.” This increased competition has challenged all of the

area schools to think creatively about what distinguishes them from other schools. Parents in this

high-performing district simply expect academic excellence and want to know what unique

opportunities sets one school apart from the others.

Amidst these challenges, St. Stephen’s school has faced its own internal difficulties. For

decades, the school was able to weather a series of administrative transitions including a rapid

succession of principals in the 1980s, a short-lived shared-principal model in the late ‘80s, and a

transition from religious and lay leadership (and then back again) throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Under the leadership of several dynamic and ambitious pastors, the original 1950s school was

expanded to include six more classrooms and a science lab in 2002, and key upgrades to the

facilities were made the following year. With this increased capacity, enrollment continued to

grow and the school thrived in the following years.

145

However, a series of leadership changes at the school and parish in the early 2010s led to

a rapid departure of families. Two principals were fired—one in the middle of the year—and

another was brought in temporarily. In one year, St. Stephen’s lost 100 students and continued to

hemorrhage students as a suitable replacement principal was difficult to find. Finally, in 2011,

the outgoing principal asked a learning specialist, Pam Rizzo, who has a background in special

education, if she had ever considered school leadership. Ms. Rizzo had been working part time at

St. Stephen’s for the better part of a decade and had really grown to love the school and its

mission. She applied for the principal position and became the fourth principal in three years for

St. Stephen’s.

Ms. Rizzo is still in position as principal and has added some consistency and stability

through her presence. Yet with all of this transition, St. Stephen’s began to lose touch with its

core mission, and this began to affect the culture of the school. “With all the principal changes

and everything,” Ms. Miller said, “we had this mission statement that, I’m pretty sure we wrote

at some point in time when I’ve been here, but we hadn’t updated it or anything.” She succinctly

summed up the way these transitions impacted the school: “nothing was consistent as far as—

well, anything.”

As a new principal, Ms. Rizzo had to make a series of difficult decisions based on the

financial realities that follow a decreased student enrollment. Ms. Rizzo recounts this experience:

Probably one of the toughest things I had to do that first year was do some

reductions and really right-size—I hate that term, but that’s what I was told—the

staff. . . . We’ve been at risk a few times for closing. We’ve been threatened that

if we didn’t have a certain number that we weren’t going to continue, so we’ve

146

done a lot of work in trying to create a system that makes sense and that’s

economical and efficient and still good for the kids.

The last part of that statement is a key caveat that stuck with Ms. Rizzo, even as she reduced the

staff. The new reality for St. Stephen’s would need to be consonant with her background as a

learning specialist who wanted to find the right solution for each child. Simply staying afloat

financially and being “economical and efficient” wasn’t enough. Rizzo worked creatively to

maximize the additional space St. Stephen’s now had with fewer students. They transformed

some classrooms into a daycare and preschool, and they leased an entire floor of an older wing of

St. Stephen’s to a small charter school. Ms. Rizzo also began to search the Internet for ideas as to

how other Catholic schools were dealing with smaller enrollment and staff while not sacrificing

academic excellence. She came across a school that was using “blended learning” with multi-age

classrooms and soon contacted the principal. While she was considering the merits of this idea,

the diocesan superintendent was working with a local foundation to introduce innovative models

of learning in Catholic schools. The superintendent invited a speaker to talk to a number of

schools in the area about blended learning, and after hearing about the potential and promise of

this approach, Ms. Rizzo was convinced that blended learning could attract students and

maintain academic excellence at St. Stephen’s.

Ms. Rizzo excitedly recounts the next steps toward adopting a blended learning approach.

I thought, this just makes so much sense. And then gosh, it was like a whirlwind.

[The diocesan superintendent] Barb said, “Okay, if you’re interested, we are in.”

So next thing we knew, Rachel and I were on a plane to visit a blended learning

school and how their classrooms work. There was no turning back from that point

on.

147

The foundation that was working with the superintendent and the diocese offered to pay for a

pair of consultants from a Midwest Catholic University to conduct a readiness assessment and

then lead the faculty training and professional development necessary to introduce some of the

concepts and structures needed to implement a blended learning model. These consultants

reported that they focused on seven areas in helping St. Stephen’s integrate blended learning into

their school:

1. Leadership capacity strengthening

2. Intentional school culture

3. Data driven instruction

4. PLCs and high yield PD

5. Instructional coaching

6. Enrollment management and staffing ratios

7. Blended learning facilitation

They also reported that they conducted six professional development sessions at the beginning of

the year with the entire faculty and staff in order to familiarize them with the blended learning

software, the models of rotation, and understanding and interpreting data. In addition, the

consultants did two site visits each semester, gave separate training workshops and toolkits to the

leadership team, and had weekly phone calls to support and coach the principal through the

transition to blended learning. Despite these supports, one of the consultants described their

intervention at St. Stephen’s to me as a “light touch,” meaning that he considered their help as

fairly minimal and mostly focused on empowering the teachers and leadership team at St.

Stephen’s to take a sense of ownership for this transition to blended learning.

148

Design

Ms. Arenz’s 16 fourth graders are approaching the end of their hour-long morning math

block, with just five minutes remaining until the daily agenda in the front of the room promises,

“snack.” Yet there is no indication that students are counting down the minutes. They are

scattered to the corners of their classroom, busily working on one of the activities that Ms. Arenz

has assigned to them on the Smartboard at the front of the room. Each student’s name is listed

under one of the three headings: “Teacher,” “Independent,” or “i-Ready.” Seven students work

independently, reading on comfy chairs or working on worksheets throughout the room, four of

them work along with Ms. Arenz around the half-donut shaped table, and the remaining six are

logged into i-Ready on the laptops or desktop computers throughout the classroom.

Four of the six students working on i-Ready sit in one corner of the room. Their screens

glow with colorful characters and pictures that illuminate their math lessons. They all have

headphones on, although the two girls in the corner have their headphones cocked to one side so

they can hear each other. One girl, Tasha, sits on a stool next to her classmate, Anna. She is

particularly chatty and perhaps even a little bit bossy as she points to objects on her screen and

then some on Anna’s screen. Tasha’s screen displays a cluster of brightly colored buttons on one

side and eight birdhouses on the other. The word problem on her screen reads, “We have 40

buttons and 8 birdhouses. We want to put the same number of buttons on each birdhouse. How

many buttons will go on each birdhouse?” Below the question in a large blue band, white text

directions read, “Fill in the multiplication equation that describes this problem.” Above the

colorful buttons, the equation reads “8 x ? = _____” and the blank is highlighted, waiting for her

answer as she types a 4 then a 0. This is typical of the questions that Tasha works through on i-

Ready during this math block. She listens to the questions read to her, takes her time, and fills in

149

her answer, occasionally discussing it with Anna. At one point, Anna reaches over and types

something into Tasha’s computer, ostensibly giving her the answer to an on-screen question.

There is no paraprofessional or teaching assistant in Ms. Arenz’s class (as there are in several

other classes at St. Stephen’s), so moments like this can happen while the teacher is engaged

with a group of students on the other side of the room.

The tradeoff for this type of independent work where teachers might not have their eyes

and ears attuned to all students at all times seems to be a lack of the “grand silence” that might be

the norm for some classrooms. The learning specialist at St. Stephen’s, Kristen Cox, mentions

this among the differences she has noticed around the school—particularly in the K-5-wing—

since they have adopted this blended learning approach:

Discipline isn’t as important anymore because you don’t have to worry about,

“Shh, we’re doing homework now. No talking.” There is going to be some noise

level, and I think everybody’s gotten used to that and is happier.

Ms. Cox sees this as a healthier environment for both students and teachers where they can focus

on learning and not shushing.

By contrast, just a couple feet away two other students are locked-in to their content with

what appears to be a an intense focus. Their headphones are secure on both ears and both

students work unaware of Tasha and Anna. One girl is working on her math problems, while the

boy to her right plays a math game—a reward at the end of the lesson he just completed. They

focus intently on their screens until one boy looks up, raises his arms and quietly blurts out, “I

saved the castle!” He quickly glances around to see if anyone was listening to his triumphant

declaration (no one else was, even the chatty girls). Then he looks at me, knowing I heard it, and

I give a little nod and wink. He looks back down at his computer, shifts back in forth in his seat a

150

bit, smiles warmly, and gets back to work. For students like these two, no paraprofessional or

accountability seems necessary—a task or game that is pleasantly challenging holds their

attention without the need for external accountability.

In Ms. Arenz’s fourth grade class, some part of every student’s day includes work on i-

Ready and iXL, ranking the level of blended learning adoption in her class among the highest at

St. Stephen’s. Because Ms. Rizzo and the school in general have taken a less aggressive, less

mandated approach to blended learning—even though it was clear from several teacher

conversations that there was an expectation and sometimes even “pressure” to use the software

the school purchased—there exists a wide variety of integration throughout the school.

Additionally, although i-Ready and iXL provide full math and English/language arts curricula,

every one of the K-5 teachers identified their use of these programs as “supplementary.”

When deciding exactly how St. Stephen’s might utilize blended learning, Ms. Rizzo took

several realities into account: “It was all about helping kids learn, helping teachers work with the

standards, working with multi-age groups, and making it possible for every child to get what

they need with only seven full-time teachers.” Ms. Rizzo, in consultation with her leadership

team, decided on a Station Rotation model for St. Stephen’s. On their visit to another blended

learning school, Ms. Rizzo and Ms. Miller had seen a station rotation model in action and

thought that this might fit nicely within the existing structures that were already taking place in

several of the classrooms in grades 1-5. Ms. Rizzo recounts,

[The teachers were already] familiar with the “Daily Five,” and we had a good

station rotation system going already in a couple of our grades. And so we

thought, well, this technology piece would make the perfect station, and that

would make sure the kids are really getting the content that they need.

151

They acquired several more laptops and distributed the fairly new desktop computers from their

computer lab to classrooms throughout the school. Ms. Rizzo and her leadership team along with

the consultants determined that i-Ready and iXL were both affordable and the most effective

software choices available for St. Stephen’s. Before school began, all teachers were trained on

how they might utilize these programs in their curriculum in order to differentiate instruction,

begin collecting real-time performance data, and move to a more school-wide model of data-

informed instruction. Although nearly all of the teachers were “on-board” with this vision of

blended learning at St. Stephen’s, toward the end of their first year, some classrooms are far

more “blended” than others. Particularly in the upper grades (6-8), teachers have run into several

challenges that have stymied a more robust adoption of blended learning.

In explaining this disparity, one 6-8 teacher mentioned that with a large eighth grade

class and a school-wide ratio of three computers to one student, she found it difficult to get

students—even half a class—all on computers at the same time. Another told me that as students

progressed on i-Ready, the problems became more time-intensive, such as reading a several-page

passage and then answering comprehension questions, and their schedule did not allow for a long,

sustained amount of time to complete these activities. A third mentioned that she found her

students didn’t connect with the rather cartoony and childish characters that they encountered in

these programs. The confluence of these issues led to a far lower adoption rate of blended

learning in in 6-8 than K-5, at least in this first year. Still, these classes all participated in the

mandated i-Ready diagnostic tests throughout the year, and many found assigning iXL problems

for homework was a useful and quick way to assign formative assessments. Ms. Rizzo hopes that

over the next year or two, blended learning will get a bit more traction at these grades when

teachers, students, and parents realize how lower grades are benefitting from this type of

152

teaching and learning. Until then, the K-5 classrooms continue to model how this can be done for

the rest of the school.

During rotation time in Ms. Arenz’s classroom, the fourth graders are split into three

ability groups that are typically working on similar skills and topics on the i-Ready and iXL. She

made these groupings after reviewing the students’ i-Ready diagnostic tests to decide which

students might be at similar reading and math levels. Ms. Arenz then uses the data from the

previous days or weeks to determine if she can remediate a skill that students are struggling to

comprehend or if she can move forward and cover new material with that particular group.

If I’m pulling a small group, I can find five kids who are all working on finding

the main idea and details, and they’ve all struggled with it. It’s putting all that

data right in front of me instead of me having to decipher through worksheets or

whatever we’re doing in class, so I really like it telling me for the most part

exactly what they need to work on.

In Ms. Arenz’s class, there is a two-way flow of reinforcement and remediation based on the data

that is collected through i-Ready and iXL. This circular process of using the computer programs

to remediate learning gaps and practice skills and then using performance data to then make

targeted remediations or introduce new concepts in small ability groupings is an ideal use of the

power of data-informed instruction in a station rotation model. Interestingly, while Ms. Arenz

seems to both utilize and value the work students do on i-Ready and iXL, when I ask how

student work on the computers ties in with the broader curriculum, she replies, “It’s mostly

supplementary. However, when I get the chance—especially in reading—I kind of break away

and I try to do units based off a genre so that they’re writing the stuff they’re also reading.”

Although Ms. Arenz identifies her use of the blended learning programs as “supplementary,”

153

because there is not a direct curricular link, a more accurate description might be

“complementary,” as she and the programs work to return to concepts that need work, strengthen

current skills, and introduce new concepts when students are ready.

Ms. Arenz seemed to be in the minority of K-5 teachers who use the formative data

feedback on a regular basis, even though several teachers referred to the initial i-Ready

diagnostic test results as a helpful compass to guide whole class instruction. Whether teachers

are using the blended learning software in a truly supplementary way that is unconnected with

other classwork or, like Ms. Arenz, they are using it in a complementary way to aid data-

informed instruction, it is notable that all of them view the role of blended learning as

“supplementary,” not connected to or part of the primary curriculum. Several teachers found

creative ways of using the software to encourage skill practice and others used it to remediate

learning gaps. Interestingly, none of the teachers factored the blended work into students’ grades.

Though it is difficult to extract meaning from this fact (much of the work students do during a

given day is ungraded), it may lend credence to the overall feeling toward blended learning at St.

Stephen’s: it is a tool, albeit a powerful one, for practice and remediation, not a fundamentally

different approach to education.

Yet a fundamental change in pedagogy assisted by technology was not the goal of

adopting a blended learning approach at St. Stephen’s. They worked within an existing building,

with nearly the same staff, a small investment in technology, and a modest amount of

professional development and coaching. St. Stephen’s is a small school, and although smaller

class sizes can encourage greater attention to individual students (as they advertise to distinguish

themselves from other area schools), small does not guarantee a deep knowledge of student

performance data or the ability to diagnose and remediate learning gaps. In one short year with

154

blended learning, St. Stephen’s seems to have made notable progress on this front, and Ms.

Rizzo summed up her feeling about blended learning well: “I love it. I love that kids are getting

what they need. I love that we know, even when you have a class of 15 kids, you can say we

know all our kids.”

Learner-centered

A learner-centered educational setting is one where incomplete understandings of

concepts and false beliefs are surfaced while students are first learning a new concept. Learner-

centered environments are also attentive to culturally relevant examples in helping students learn.

Creating a learner-centered environment at St. Stephen’s involved using blended learning tools

to differentiate instruction, fill-in skill gaps, and help all students succeed.

Kathleen Martinelli is only a couple years out of college and quite a bit younger than the

parents of her students. This is Ms. Martinelli’s second year at St. Stephen’s, but it is clear that

she has well-established classroom management expectations and routines, as her students know

exactly what they should be doing during their “Daily Five” time. She is a down-to-business and

focused fifth grade teacher who also teaches pre-algebra and algebra in the middle school. Ms.

Martinelli sees the adaptive blended learning software as a way to turn the constant of

instructional time into a variable. In telling me about how blended learning works in her

classroom, she gives me this hypothetical scenario:

In sixth grade, let’s say that they’re having trouble with concepts like place value,

which is a fifth grade concept. We don’t have time to cover that as a class as a

whole. Not everybody is struggling with that same concept, so it’s nice that I can

send them to i-Ready and say, “Here. We need to build you up in that area of

numbers and operations. You’re still getting what the whole class is getting and

155

we’re still moving-on, but you’re kind of weak in this area. We gotta build you up

so that everything is kind of level and brings it together.”

Ms. Martinelli also sees the utility of using i-Ready to challenge students at the higher-end of her

class:

Likewise you have those students who are flying through the lessons at night, and

they’re grasping the concepts. Maybe you need more of a challenge. Well, hey,

you’re doing sixth grade work in i-Ready, perfect. That’s where you’re going to

get the challenge from and you can move on to different concepts.

This second scenario is “learner-centered” in that it is helping to create a learning environment

that is responsive to the learner’s individual needs while maintaining engagement.

At the beginning of the year, Ms. Martinelli’s pre-algebra and algebra classes would do

20-minute rotations between small group instruction and i-Ready. As the year went on, students

encountered more difficult lessons in i-Ready that took more time to complete. She didn’t like

the idea of her students starting a problem, rotating to another idea, and then coming back to it

the next day after they had forgotten much of the context. Her solution was to split her class into

two groups and switch to 40-minute blocks of time where students were either with her for the

whole time or on i-Ready the whole time. The next day, the groups would switch. This seems to

have worked well for most students, and Ms. Martinelli was pleased with the small-group

instruction time and the individualized practice that resulted in actionable data from i-Ready.

Although this approach seems to work well for most of her students, for one transfer

student, it was clear that a deeper intervention was necessary. Courtney transferred to St.

Stephen’s from a local public school this year as a sixth grader. Ms. Martinelli’s sixth graders are

split into two groups: one is learning pre-algebra and the other is tackling algebra. It was unclear

156

which group Courtney might fit into, so they initially placed her in the pre-algebra group. But Ms.

Martinelli noticed she was having trouble even as they were reviewing past concepts at the

beginning of the year: “I’m looking at her homework and I’m like, wow, we’re really off base. I

need to cover this with you again.” Soon after arriving for this new school year, students took the

i-Ready diagnostic test over several days. The results confirmed Ms. Martinelli’s suspicions:

Two weeks into school, I looked at the i-Ready data and went, “Whoa, you’re at a

fourth grade level for some of this data. No wonder this isn’t making any sense to

you!” It would be like me picking up a book in Chinese and being expected to

read it. I’m sure she had no clue, and I felt so bad.

It was clear to Ms. Martinelli that Courtney needed help on fourth grade foundational math skills

before she could even get close to working on the pre-algebra content. But moving to a new

school is hard enough, and Ms. Martinelli didn’t want to send Courtney to the 4th grade class for

math (even though she could have because of their common math time). She called Courtney’s

mom and left the decision up to her:

I said [to Courtney’s mom], “Here’s what I want to do, I think she should strictly

be in our i-Ready program.” I was honest and said, “You’re going to be our

guinea pig with it—this is our first year. I’m not trying to send you back to a

fifth/fourth grade class because I don’t feel like that’s beneficial confidence-wise,

but we really need to build those foundational skills.”

Courtney’s mom agreed, and Ms. Martinelli set Courtney on her own learning path. During class

time, she would work on i-Ready and then have homework at the fourth-grade level on iXL so

Ms. Martinelli could get instant feedback on her progress. Courtney progressed well throughout

her first several months of school, and they decided to manually set her at a higher level in both

157

i-Ready and iXL. Courtney started to struggle again with individual lessons, so Ms. Martinelli

met with her several times per week after school to give her some extra help with the lessons

with which she was struggling. By April, Courtney took the i-Ready diagnostic and had

progressed from fourth to early sixth grade in less than one full school year. Her mother was

thrilled, as was Ms. Martinelli:

I felt like it just worked really well for her. It was a nice option without saying,

hey, we’re going to have to send you back to a fourth grade math class. That

doesn’t do anything for your confidence. She had a little bit of that perception to

begin with where she didn’t want to work in the classroom—she didn’t want the

kids to know what she was working at. And I said, I totally understand that, I can

accommodate that, that’s not a problem. . . . I just loved to show her, “This is how

much you’ve progressed. You’ve grown so much. I’m really proud of you for

putting in the hard work.”

This mix of diagnosis, skill practice, progress monitoring, and targeted remediation gave

Courtney an academic boost while being sensitive to her social-emotional needs to stay in class

with her developmental peers. In using a mix of computer adaptive content and in-person

instruction, Ms. Martinelli found a successful mix of learning modalities that helped Courtney to

accelerate her learning and catch up to the sixth grade content.

Denise Kramer, a 15-year veteran teacher at St. Stephen’s, sees blended learning as

simply a way to accomplish true differentiation in her classroom of 23 second graders. When she

was first introduced to the concept of blended learning, she asked, “Isn’t it really just

differentiated instruction?” It took a good part of this first year for Ms. Kramer to feel

comfortable with the station rotation model and integrating technology into her classroom. She

158

recalls vividly when all of the pieces final came together for her and her students as she told two

of her colleagues, “You guys, 74 days into school and I think I finally got it!” After this point,

she sees this approach as a way of truly doing the differentiation she had hoped to achieve in past

years. Ms. Kramer says, “It’s differentiation, but with a lot more tools available to have 23 kids

in the classroom do 23 different things.” Ms. Kramer does not dig into the individual student data

like Ms. Arenz does. Rather, she took some of the initial diagnostic information as a whole and

found that nearly her entire class of second graders struggled with finding the author’s purpose in

their language arts assessment. So throughout the semester, she has been hammering on that skill

with every reading assignment they do with her. It is notable that Ms. Kramer’s second graders

are only using the i-Ready or iXL about 10-15% of their day. Still, while arguably not using the

whole potential of this software or a blended learning model, Ms. Kramer is getting the

differentiation she wants and feels as though the technology is being utilized meaningfully for

students. She speaks effusively about how much of a difference this has made for her class,

particularly those students who struggle:

This [blended learning] program has been a game changer. These kids are doing

so much individual work, individually set for them, based on their level. Even the

kids who struggle with our basal reader—it’s still at their level and we still can

offer questions of comprehension and all that. We can still do that. . . . I’m still

asking them the same questions that I would ask the higher group but just at a

lower level for them to understand what they’re reading.

Although it took a while for this “game changer” to take shape in Ms. Kramer’s class, it is clear

that she is beginning to unlock the potential of what she sees as a powerful tool for

differentiation.

159

Assessment-centered

Assessment-centered learning environments provide regular feedback for students to help

shape their understanding of concepts while also teaching them to be self-reflective on their

learning. In their first year of blended learning integration, the teachers at St. Stephen’s have a

rather wide range of assessment-centered practices. Because all of the students at St. Stephen’s

have computers and Internet access at home, many of the teachers have opted to assign lessons

on i-Ready or iXL for homework. This serves several purposes including (1) allowing students to

go at their own pace on this work, (2) providing immediate feedback to both the student and the

teacher, which eliminates the need to correct homework using class time or the teacher’s prep

time, and (3) it gives parents exposure to some of the programs that students are working on at

school. Using data in real-time during class is a bit more rare to encounter at St. Stephen’s. One

of these rare exceptions is Lori Young, a second-career teacher with a background in

communications and child psychology. Prior to arriving at St. Stephen’s two years ago, Ms.

Young worked for 15 years in the pharmaceutical industry teaching adult training courses. Ms.

Young teaches middle school English, writing, and English extension (where students work on

writing projects for other subjects, such as their reports for a science fair). Ms. Young recognized

early on that the normal, station-rotation model that the K-5 classrooms had adopted would not

work for her middle school English class. She wanted to allow students to read novels, discuss

them in class, and develop skillful writers, not simply increase reading fluency and build broad

vocabularies, which is what she saw as the affordances of programs like i-Ready and iXL. Yet

she valued the data that the programs gave and could see the utility in some of the immediate

feedback she could get by using a blended learning approach. Ms. Young has found her own way

of using the blended learning software and the resulting data.

160

On a day-to-day basis, Ms. Young likes the way that iXL allows the teacher to assign

specific lessons that align with what she is doing in class. She works with one group on writing

and another she assigns practice problems on iXL so that they can put this knowledge into

practice right away.

I use iXL to get instant feedback. I can assign them “J1” which is, “identify the

gerunds in the sentence.” Then they can go through, and in that class period they

have to show me their score when they leave. And I can see immediately, did they

get 90% on it? Did they get 50%? Then I can figure out if I have to reteach that or

do that again. So that’s where I was able to incorporate blended learning, and I

really enjoyed having it for that small group breakout to get more instant feedback.

In this way, Ms. Young is building an assessment-centered classroom to give students immediate

feedback on their work while shaping her own pedagogy in response to student performance.

This might not be utilizing the software for personalization and differentiation, but certainly for

data-informed instruction.

Although Ms. Young doesn’t use i-Ready on a regular basis because she finds some parts

of it onerous or not helpful for students, Ms. Young found that the i-Ready diagnostic results

from the beginning of the year revealed class-wide learning gaps. In particular, she saw that the

eighth grade class scored low on identifying context clues and critical thinking based on a text,

so she adapted her course content to help eighth graders work on these skills.

I really changed my whole curriculum based off the i-Ready diagnostic so that we

would hit the numbers on the reading comprehension. So for Twelfth Night and all

of that, I went back through . . . my writing and grammar units every month tie to

the literature that they’re currently reading, and the vocabulary words come out of

161

the novels that they’re reading, and they’re all Greek and Latin root based so

everything ties together. . . . So what I did is after I got those diagnostics in

September, I went back through and I figured out we had to do more with reading

comprehension and just that whole critical thinking skills. Like maybe you give

them less direction on their writing and see if they can figure out exactly how to

get the answer. I mean not so much handholding. I took away study guides from

some of the books and said, “You have to make your own study guide based on

what you think the author finds relevant.”

The changes that Ms. Young made to the eighth grade English curriculum reflect a thoughtful

and assessment-driven adaptation made on a macro, class-wide level. Given her narrow approach

of using just class-level diagnostic information to adapt her curriculum along with immediate

assessment information she has gleaned from iXL, one might conclude that Ms. Young is a

blended learning novice. On the contrary, when I asked her what advice she might give to a

teacher who was starting a blended learning integration, she replied with the authority of a

knowledgeable power-user:

Don’t be afraid. You’re still the teacher, you can grab the stuff and manhandle it

however you want and make it work with what you have. You don’t have to be

afraid that you’re going to have to abandon everything you’ve ever done and let i-

Ready direct you. It’s a program—just rip it apart, shut things down, turn things

on. I mean, just take control of the technology and make it a benefit. Don’t be

afraid that it’s telling me they need to do these things. Who cares? I know a lot of

teachers started to follow the i-Ready and it was like, don’t do that. Just grab

ahold, wrestle it to the ground, and just do as you want.

162

From these comments, it is clear that Ms. Young is making the technology work for her in

precisely the way she wants. Beyond the causal user, she has used these programs enough to get

into the nuances of switching preferences on and off and gleaning what utility she finds from

them without being beholden to their direction. Yet, curiously, Ms. Young is toward the lower-

end of blended learning adoption at St. Stephen’s. Her students are only on computers once each

week, and at one point, she had a literature unit where they didn’t touch the computers for three

weeks straight. Ms. Young debunks the idea that if teachers were more familiar with the

technology, they would use it more. She is not opposed to a blended learning model, and she

knows these programs well, yet she finds limited utility. So instead, she is using the blended

learning software in a very precise, focused, and limited way as a support to her existing

curriculum and teaching methodology. Her experience and insight make a strong case for

reevaluating the software that is currently in use for 6-8 grades and adopting something that she

and others find less restrictive and more relevant and helpful to students. With software like this

in place, Ms. Young would likely lead the charge for blended learning in the upper grades.

Knowledge-centered

Knowledge-centered classrooms challenge students to build skill competency while

allowing students to mentally organize new knowledge in meaningful ways. It is easy to observe

students working on skill competency on blended learning programs at St. Stephen’s, especially

in the K-5 classrooms. The repetitive and tireless nature of computer-based problems allows

students to drill and re-drill on skill gaps until they get it right. But blended learning is not

simply multiplication tables or spelling quizzes that happen to be online. St. Stephen’s students’

work while on programs like i-Ready also require concentration and thoughtful responses. As I

spoke to teachers throughout St. Stephen’s, it became apparent that they were surprised at the

163

rigor embedded in the blended learning programs. For the first part of the year, Ms. Miller taught

in the combined first-and-second grade classroom during their afternoon rotation time—with

both groups together, it was only 18 students. The grades were combined so that teachers could

work with individual students while others were on i-Ready. Miss Miller expressed her surprise

at the types of questions that i-Ready was asking these students:

With the second graders that I was working with—just seeing some of the stuff

that they were doing on i-Ready, some of the problem solving, the word problems

that they were having to read, in multi-step problems—I was like, “gosh!” We’ve

been using Saxon math for probably 5-6 years now and I really like Saxon. I liked

it a lot when I was teaching it, and I could see the kids improving with Saxon. But

i-Ready is like Saxon on steroids—just the way it asks questions, and it covers

such a breadth of material even at the lower grade levels.

Ms. Miller’s surprise at the level of complexity and breadth of i-Ready’s content was a common

reaction among teachers at St. Stephen’s. Many saw the work students did online as

supplemental work that just supported the real curriculum while remediating learning gaps. This

vision of blended learning as “supplemental” trickled down to students as well. A sixth grade

student that I spoke to reinforced this impression:

Some of the stuff that we just never learned, we just go right past it. And then it’s

summer, and you totally forget everything. But if you do i-Ready or i-XL in

between it, you can learn and fill those gaps with stuff that you need to know.

Interestingly, when I asked teachers like Ms. Martinelli what types of intellectual tasks students

were doing online, she said, “Well, I wouldn’t call it ‘heavy lifting,’” because she saw students

mostly encountering material that was at their level. But she noted that students couldn’t just

164

mindlessly click their way through content or work half-heartedly: “You’re going to have to pay

attention.” The wide-ranging uncertainty as to the limits and affordances of the online content is

understandable, given that this is the first year of using these programs at St. Stephen’s.

Contrary to this impression that the complex tasks were accomplished offline, when I

observed the combined first and second grade reading/English rotation, the teacher was leading a

spelling game with one group while another group of students was engaged with varying reading

comprehension tasks on i-Ready. So despite Ms. Martinelli’s perception that students do not

tackle “heavy lifting” while online, the students were actually engaged in the difficult task of

reading comprehension. Furthermore, by mixing up these modalities, students seem to get into a

knowledge-centered mindset where they are trying hard and constantly evaluating how to make

sense of their new knowledge, whether at an online or offline station.

Ms. Arenz sees limits to using the online content when it comes to her fourth graders,

particularly when it comes to mathematical problem solving. She considers it particularly

important to have a teacher there to be able to surface the students’ thinking (an assessment-

centered skill) and guide them to context clues:

I feel like some of the tricks I can teach them aren’t going to be on the computer.

For example, I’ve been working with a student on the “magic words” in word

problems that help you figure out if you need to add or subtract or multiply. I feel

like a teacher’s going to teach it better than the computer, as much as the

computer can point out, “here are the words you can look for,” and stuff like that.

But there’s something about being one-on-one and saying, “Oh, did you find the

magic word? Oh, there it is. What does that tell us?”

165

That, I think, makes a huge difference with a teacher [rather] than on the

computer. Also with problem-solving, narrowing down our options or like trial

and error isn’t going to happen with the computer. The teacher can say, “What do

you think? Do you think it could be we’re going to draw a picture?” Talking

through that and having that conversation about here’s why we wouldn’t draw a

picture for this problem is really important. On a computer it’s going to give you

the explanation, but there’s no back and forth with that and with problem solving.

There’s a lot of trial and error in learning, and you don’t get that conversation

with a computer.

Throughout this example, Ms. Arenz points to the importance of having a conversation in order

to shape a student’s ability to solve complex mathematical word problems. The give-and-take

that can occur with a teacher or tutor in this moment gets to the very core of knowledge-centered

learning. What she is describing is the formation of mental frameworks into which students can

organize their knowledge. Activities like the mathematical conversation she describes give

strong evidence of a knowledge-centered learning environment. It is clear that although several

of the teachers at St. Stephen’s recognize the rigor of the computer-based content students are

using, few see this content as contributing to the deep kind of knowledge-centered thinking that

is possible in small group or one-to-one contexts with a teacher. Consequently, the K-5 teachers

at St. Stephen’s consistently valued the blended learning content insofar as it enabled a

pedagogical model that allowed them to have more individual contact with students amidst a

large class setting.

For older students like Ms. Young’s 6-8 grade English/language arts students, that level

of guidance might not be as necessary. In fact, she takes nearly the opposite approach. When she

166

is working with one group on writing, she will send another group to complete English and

grammar lessons on iXL. Instead of helping them situate the knowledge within a larger

conceptual framework, she has them do it on their own.

There are some days that I’ll just set them off on their own, ‘cause they are the

clicker generation, and I’ll say, “Try it.” And they’re like, “Aren’t you going to

teach it to us first?” And I say, “Do you read the directions before you play a new

video game?” And they say, “No.” And I say, “Well, here’s your new video

game! Go see how quick[ly] you can teach yourself.”

By this approach, Ms. Young is acknowledging and engaging students’ well-honed discovery

skills and natural ability to figure-out the meaning of online content without much (or any)

direction. Her rather fun-lovingly flippant approach to letting students teach themselves shows a

more open-ended way of creating a knowledge-centered learning environment. She admits that

she only does this “when it’s a simple concept,” but it allows more mature students the

opportunity and freedom to practice building their own meaning for new concepts.

Community-centered

A school that is community-centered helps form interpersonal connections inside or

outside of the classroom while building a supportive environment where mistakes are corrected,

not condemned. The sense of community among members of St. Stephen’s is particularly strong.

I encountered only a handful of parents during my time at St. Stephen’s, but every one of them

knew who I was because they had read a brief notification of my presence in the principal’s

newsletter. It was immediately apparent that this was a school where the parents took the

principal’s newsletter seriously and read it with interest—a well-informed and invested

167

community. But this sense of community has been thriving for a while. Perhaps more interesting

was the way that using blended learning has affected the St. Stephen’s community.

Ms. Arenz noticed a difference in her own approach to her fourth graders since adopting

a blended learning approach:

This year with the blended learning, I don’t really care about their grades as much

because I know exactly what they need to work on and that they’re working at

their just-right level. I’m not as concerned about the grades they get on certain

things because I know they’re working and improving and I can constantly see

that data.

This emphasis on mastery, learning, and improvement over individual grades and even particular

assignments points to a great advantages of having truly differentiated learning paths and a large

pool of performance data to draw upon. Ms. Arenz’s confidence that students are growing and

learning allows them (along with Ms. Arenz and their parents) to focus on an overall upward

learning trajectory instead of individual assignment or test grades. This is building a much

healthier community-centered learning environment that is truly concerned about growth, not

obsessed about grades.

Some of the differences that blended learning has made at St. Stephen’s are a bit more

subtle, but no less important. Science teacher Rachel Miller mentioned that she senses this

generation of children are sensitive about correction for wrong answers and do better when they

can make mistakes quietly and without public embarrassment. She says,

I think this era of children is willing to take an incorrect from a computer more

than from a person. If it’s wrong on the computer, I don’t know, I guess maybe it

doesn’t feel as personal if it’s a computer telling you no versus a teacher saying,

168

no you didn’t get that right, try again, because nobody wants to hear you’re wrong.

But if that tells you you’re wrong, you know you’re going to get another shot at it

somewhere down the line.

Interestingly, in the same breath, she hopes out loud that this is not limiting students’ resilience

and social acumen: “You still have to interact with people. You still have to be able to hear that

‘no.’ You still have to be able to pick yourself up and go ‘alright, no big deal, I made a mistake, I

have to carry on.’” This statement adds a fascinating nuance to the perceived advantages of

making mistakes on-screen that could be concerning at a school where a larger percentage of

work was done online. This points to important future research (beyond the scope of this paper)

about the effects of blended learning on social skills. Yet it is clear from Ms. Miller’s comment

that she perceives a lower social and emotional cost for making mistakes when students are

working on the blended learning software. In this way, the blended learning implementation at St.

Stephen’s is contributing to community-centered learning environment where it is acceptable to

make mistakes.

Ms. Arenz, the fourth grade teacher who is among the most eager adopters of blended

learning at St. Stephen’s, noted the way that blended learning has affected the sense of self-

confidence of the students in her class who often struggle academically.

I’ve seen huge improvement in some of my kids on the lower end—they’re a lot

more confident too. . . . I think for the most part the kids have kind of finally

realized that it doesn’t matter if you’re in a “high group” or a “low group,” it’s

just whatever you’re working on, it’s your just right level. And so they’re not as

concerned about it.

169

Ms. Arenz attributes this confidence boost that she has witnessed in students on the “lower end”

to the fact that all of her students have adopted more of a mindset where they’re just concerned

about moving forward at their level, not being ahead or behind their peers. Going further, Ms.

Arenz thinks that this mentality and spirit has spread beyond her classroom as the teachers at St.

Stephen’s have embraced this idea over the course of this first year of blended learning: “I think

just the environment and the community in both the classroom and the whole school is just, ‘It’s

okay. You’re working at your just-right level. So just worry about that.’” Her perception that this

mentality has taken-root across the entirety of the school reflects a strong community-centered

school culture that lowers the stakes for failure and values the individual growth of each student

above all.

Finally, second grade teacher Denise Kramer saw the move to blended learning among

her K-5 colleagues as a point of unification that allowed them to communicate, share ideas, and

help each other out. Much of this, according to Ms. Kramer, was facilitated by the professional

learning communities that Ms. Rizzo and the consultants set up, the workshops that they

conducted at the end of the last year and throughout this year, and the shared reading they did

during the school year. All of this led to a greater sense of community and collegiality among her

colleagues. Ms. Kramer states,

This year was the first year that I felt that I could go to my colleagues and get

some help . . . now that we’re all doing iXL, i-Ready, we’re doing Saxon, we’re

all doing the same thing but at different levels. So I would go to them [and ask],

“Okay, how are you doing this?” or “How are you doing your word work? How

are you dividing up?” And they’re able to tell me how they’re doing it, and I can

apply it to what I’m doing in here. So taking what I got from them, what we

170

learned from reading the book, and from the blended learning people that provide

us the workshops, I’m able to incorporate these things.

Although the collaboration and shared problem-solving among faculty that Ms. Kramer mentions

is not a direct result of the blended learning integration, it is clear that the supports that Ms.

Rizzo and the consultants put in place for blended learning to succeed have proven fruitful in

building a more community-centered environment among St. Stephen’s faculty.

Summary

The move to blended learning at St. Stephen’s this year was motivated by two goals: to

distinguish themselves from other schools in the area by offering a blended learning approach

and to know their students more deeply and provide personalized, data-informed educational

supports. With a modest initial investment and outside funding for consulting fees alone, Ms.

Rizzo and two consultants from a large Catholic university were able to plant the seeds of a

blended learning program that took root most firmly in the K-5 classrooms. With these minimal

supports and an organic—not mandated—approach to implementing blended learning, there is

significance variance in how much blended learning is being used throughout St. Stephen’s. And

although teachers identify their use of blended learning software as “supplementary,” several

teachers have reached far beyond the basic level they are giving themselves credit for as they use

the blended learning software (and resulting data) to fill learning gaps, differentiate instruction

for diverse learners, and practice data-informed instruction.

In building a more learner-centered environment, teachers have used blended learning to

challenge students at their individual levels. Particularly in the K-5 classrooms, teachers who had

already been using the “Daily 5” model of rotating learning tasks have now integrated i-Ready

and iXL in a station rotation model to fill in learning gaps and give students the time they need to

171

work on the skills they most need to practice. In the rather exceptional case of a sixth grade

transfer student who had not mastered a fourth grade level, working on i-Ready allowed her

teacher to find the right mix of diagnosis, skill practice, progress monitoring, and targeted

remediation to bring her up to grade-level in just one year while keeping her in class with her

developmental peers.

St. Stephen’s students in classrooms that are regularly using blended learning experience

the immediate feedback that is the hallmark of assessment-centered learning environments. But

many teachers are using the data feedback from these programs in mostly general and macro

ways. The middle school English/language-arts teacher made significant changes to her

curriculum and learning supports based on the results of the eighth grade i-Ready diagnostic test

results. Yet she (and most of the 6-8 grade teachers) use the blended learning software on a

rather limited basis to do instant feedback in check-for-understanding exercises in-class or as

homework.

The skill practice that students in the K-5 station rotation model of blended learning get a

lot of skill practice on blended learning programs that can lead to one of the goals of a

knowledge-centered classroom: automaticity. Yet there seems to be a rather stark division of

opinion as to the depth of thinking that students do online. While some see the curriculum as

challenging and difficult, others see the limitations of the software and leave the intellectual

“heavy lifting” to direct instruction by the teacher.

Finally, teachers attribute a reduced focus on grades, an emphasis on individual growth, a

boost in confidence among struggling learners, and an increased collegiality and collaboration

among teachers to the work the leadership team and the consultants have done throughout the

year to bring about the blended learning implementation. These have helped to build a more

172

community-centered learning environment where students can succeed without fear of failure

and everyone at St. Stephen’s truly knows their children better.

While this first year of blended learning posed a good number of challenges to St.

Stephen’s, there has been significant buy-in by teachers who see data-informed instruction,

assisted by blended learning, as a positive step forward for St. Stephen’s. The learning specialist,

Ms. Cox saw this year as an attempt to “incorporate technology in a mindful way, not just throw

in some iPads so kids can take pictures of each other or play silly games.” The outside help that

St. Stephen’s received seeded, supported, and encouraged the growth of blended learning

throughout the school, and this has produced promising results and greater confidence in a

school that has experienced some rocky years of leadership and direction. Fifteen-year veteran

second grade teacher Ms. Kramer optimistically sums up the school’s progress: “I’ve gone

through a lot here: three principals . . . changes in curriculum, some that made sense and others, I

don’t know. . . . Now after so many years it just feels like we’re on the right path.”

173

Discussion and Recommendations

In this final section, I first consider the data findings in light of the research questions of this

paper and then make several recommendations for practice and further research. I begin with the

discussion section.

Discussion

In the discussion section, I relate the data findings to the research questions of this paper,

namely,

1. What are the characteristics of teaching and learning in blended learning schools?

2. What (if any) evidence of the four characteristics of effectively designed learning

environments in the How People Learn (HPL) framework can be found in blended

learning schools?

3. How suitable is the HPL framework as a measure of effectiveness for blended learning

schools?

In the previous three chapters on each of the three blended learning schools I studied, I sought to

answer the first research question by relaying a sense of the characteristics of teaching and

learning in blended learning schools. In this section, I first propose the term “powered learning”

as a point of clarity based on some of the challenges posed in my data collection. I then address

my second research question in the “Results of the HPL framework” section by discussing the

evidence I found of each of the four characteristics of the HPL framework across all three cases.

In the next section, “Suitability of the framework,” I address the third research question by

discussing the affordances and limitations of the HPL framework, including any significant

findings that were not captured by the HPL framework. Following that section, I draw two

174

conclusions from the data and discussion. And finally, I include implications for practice and

implications for further research based on my findings and analysis.

Toward defining “Powered Learning”

I began my literature review with a discussion of the embattled definition of blended

learning. Throughout my research across all three schools, I found the broad and rather nebulous

nature of the definition of blended learning to actually be one of the central sources of confusion

(and sometimes tension) among teachers and administrators regarding what is and is not blended

learning. Some teachers referred to work that students did on the computers as the time when

kids were doing “blended work.” In my interview protocol, I asked teachers, “what percentage of

your school’s instruction is blended?” and most teachers responded to this with a percentage of

time that students were in front of computers. This confusion leads me to consider a redefinition

of the term “blended learning” in order to truly reflect what is a meaningful use of technology for

students and teachers.

The Staker and Horn (2012) definition states “blended learning is a formal education

program in which a student learns (1) at least in part through online learning, with some element

of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace; (2) at least in part in a supervised brick-

and-mortar location away from home; (3) and the modalities along each student’s learning path

within a course or subject are connected to provide an integrated learning experience” (p. 3).

This definition has been operational throughout my research, yet it seems too broad of a

definition in that it does not help practitioners know when they are (or are not) “doing” blended

learning. While I think part one of this definition is helpful in its aspiration to give agency to

students, this seems to be limited by the constraints of the software students are using. The

second part of the definition is useful in creating a separation between blended learning and total

175

cyberlearning. Yet the third part of this definition is critically important and often not fully

considered by practitioners. Several teachers across the three schools thought they were using a

blended learning approach when they were actually just sending students to use adaptive

computer programs as part of a rotation and trusting that something useful was happening when

they did so. When teachers are not reflecting on the rich data feedback that these programs are

collecting in a thoughtful and regular way, this is more appropriately called using technology as

simply an engaging digital babysitter. Perhaps this could be called “cybersitting.” The third part

of Staker and Horn’s definition attempts to address this very problem, yet the language is

perhaps too broad or esoteric to be useful. Further, the umbrella term “blended learning” covers

such immense ground in its description of the different types of learning that it seems there may

be room for a more specific definition that captures the kind of teaching and learning that

leverages the affordances of technology in the classroom.

I propose the term “powered learning” to mean: a form of learning where students use

adaptive software in a classroom setting to personalize their engagement with content while

teachers employ high yield instructional practices and optimize their role, including utilizing data

from the software in regular and thoughtful ways to make targeted interventions. This type of

learning might be thought of as being “powered” by the affordances of adaptive software to

personalize instruction on the student side and give teachers actionable, helpful, and timely

performance data on the instructional side while also freeing them up to do less of the mundane,

low-level, and clerical work (such as grading and developing worksheets) and more personal

engagement with students and other high yield practices. This more narrow and focused

definition is not meant to stifle innovation or limit the bounds of what is possible, it is simply

meant to create a baseline and shared understanding of what it means to leverage the affordances

176

of technology in a classroom setting while avoiding getting lost within the broad taxonomy of

blended learning.

Results of the HPL Framework

The following section gives a comparative analysis of the evidence found across the three

schools in each of the four HPL areas. Following this discussion, there is a visual re-

representation of the HPL framework based on the data collected.

Learner-centered: filling in skill gaps, maximizing time, from floaters to swimmers, and

age-appropriate content

In my observations and discussions, I found that in every classroom that is utilizing

blended learning across all three cases, there is evidence of learner-centered practices in that they

are beginning with the individual learner’s ability and appropriate learning level in mind. In

some cases, this is evidenced by the use of diagnostic tests that students take before using i-

Ready, Achieve3000, or TTM. These programs use the results of these diagnostic tests to curate

the content and learning path for students based on their internal algorithms. Although the

accuracy of these tests can fluctuate, even students at St. Stephen’s who initially thought the

content was too easy or too hard found that the program was able to self-correct as it amassed

more performance data from students. In other cases where teachers are more directive in

assigning the content that students engage (as with iXL or other assignable programs), the

content becomes learner-centered as it allows students to practice skills and concepts as needed

and progresses when students show content mastery.

In several instances, a strong learner-centered environment allowed teachers to use

blended learning to diagnose and remediate important skill gaps. At St. Mary’s, Ms. Ewing

described the way that they were able to use assessment data to uncover and remediate learning

177

gaps for a sixth grade student named Jack. At St. Stephen’s, taking a blended learning diagnostic

test revealed that a sixth grade transfer student named Courtney was working at a fourth grade

math level. In both of these cases, teachers working closely with blended learning software

allowed them to diagnose issues, practice needed skills, monitor student progress, and provide

targeted remediation for students who might otherwise have fallen behind.

Using the lens of learner-centered educational environments also uncovered the way that

teachers and students alike talk about maximizing instructional time as the blended learning

software keeps pace with students and allows for differentiation of content. At St. Mary’s, Ms.

Kinney described the way a blended learning approach helped her give individual attention to

students so they could no longer be “floaters” in her class who let other students answer

questions while they simply rode the tide. Holy Trinity eighth grade student Antonio spoke about

TTM keeping pace with students and particularly helping those who can find the pace of whole

group instruction too fast or too slow. At St. Stephen’s, Ms. Kramer, a 15-year veteran teacher

said that she saw the value in blended learning software for allowing her to do true

differentiation in her instruction. In all three of these examples, using blended learning to create

a radically individualized learning environment allowed students to learn at a pace and level that

was right for them, not one that was dictated by a need to keep up with the rest of the class.

Another aspect of a “learner-centered” environment that was not as evident across all

three cases was the cultural responsiveness to individual learners. In the focus groups of students

at St. Mary’s and St. Stephen’s, one of the most common critiques of blended learning was the

disconnect between students’ own maturity level and the intended maturity level of the online

content. Older students felt the characters who interact with them—particularly in i-Ready—

were too childish. There was also a fear that a student who needed remediation that was several

178

grade-levels lower than his or her classmates would be embarrassed to be seen working on

activities or learning games that were clearly designed for younger users. However, in several

cases, teachers reported allowing students to stay with their developmental peers while working

at a different academic levels because of the differentiation afforded by the blended learning

content.

Assessment-centered: instant feedback, limited data use, and paper-and-pencil

metacognition

Among the four characteristics of effective learning environments in the HPL framework,

evidence of assessment-centered practices in blended learning classrooms seemed to be the most

prevalent. These data, gathered from classroom observations and interview data, reveal tight

assessment feedback loops while students are on blended learning computer programs. Receiving

regular formative assessment is just as important for students’ learning as it is often onerous for

teachers who have to correct every assignment that they give out. But when students were

working on blended learning programs at St. Mary’s, Holy Trinity, and St. Stephen’s, the

feedback students receive is effortless for the teacher and nearly always instant—with the

exception of diagnostic tests or summative assessments—for the student. Most of the programs

that students used had hint prompts to guide students in the right direction if they answered

incorrectly, and at St. Stephen’s, TTM even has a “live help” feature that allowed students to

connect to an off-site teacher to assist them if they had exhausted the online help.

Although these assessments were graded instantly and the resulting data were instantly

accessible to teachers, there appeared to be a rather wide range of data usage among the teachers

in the three schools. By “data usage,” I mean the number of times that the majority of the

teachers in the school accessed and reflected on the student performance data that blended

179

programs collected, either as a whole faculty, as PLCs, or in student conferences. This may be

related to the school’s number of years of experience using blended learning and/or the amount

of support that they were given (see Table 4), but this connection is merely speculative.

Table 4

Data Reflection and Support

School Data Reflection Years Blended Data support

St. Mary’s Weekly 4 Internal expertise among teachers and administrators

St. Stephen’s Twice per year 1 Off-site consultant support

Holy Trinity Monthly 1 On-site data and blended learning manager

Teachers spoke about student performance data being helpful, but for most of these teachers,

using student performance data on a regular basis was a new experience. Most of the teachers at

St. Stephen’s and Holy Trinity were aware of student performance on a more macro-level, like

Sr. Annmarie, the religious sister who had been teaching at St. Stephen’s for 34 years. She

proudly showed me a printout of her third graders’ fall i-Ready diagnostic test scores—neatly

color-coded into a spreadsheet with the help of their consultants—that she was using to inform

which chapters she would concentrate on in her direct math instruction. While most of the

blended learning software can provide real-time or daily performance data for students, many of

the teachers at both Holy Trinity and St. Stephens (both in their first year of blended learning)

are using the assessment data like Sr. Annemarie: it provides an interesting macro view of their

class, but it is not used for individual remediation. Instead, teachers in their first year of blended

learning seemed to simply trust that the computer programs were guiding students through

helpful exercises that did not require their intervention or attention. By contrast, teachers at St.

Mary’s who had four years of experience using blended learning programs regularly referred to

180

student performance data and reviewed students’ progress with them on a weekly (or nearly

weekly) basis in order to set new goals. There are notable exceptions to this broad depiction,

including Ms. Coyle’s ELA class at Holy Trinity, Ms. Rogers’ Spanish class at Holy Trinity, and

Ms. Young’s grade 6-8 ELA class at St. Stephen’s—all of which use assessment data in nearly

real-time to help students quickly assess and correct any mistakes they might be encountering.

In addition to the feedback that is part of an assessment-centered classroom, the HPL

framework also states the importance of practices that allow students to build assessment-

centered skills like self-assessment, reflection, and refining of thinking for better understanding.

Often, these skills are difficult to assess when students are using computers and are not required

to think out loud. In order to address this, at St. Mary’s, Mr. McClure requires students to work

on traditional pencil-and-paper math assessments along with online adaptive and diagnostic

assessments so students can reflect on their own learning and make corrections. Similarly,

several teachers at Holy Trinity have created logbooks or reflection sheets in order to help

students track their progress and reflect on their own thinking. Much like the knowledge-

centered practices, teachers mostly spoke of these kinds of skills being developed offline with

teacher assistance.

Knowledge-centered: skill fluency, offline heavy lifting, and educational pitching machines

Helping students create connections between concepts and situate their learning within a

larger framework of understanding is one of the essential parts of a knowledge-centered learning

environment and one that teachers see as an essential part of their role—not the computer’s—in

their classrooms. When I asked teachers whether this kind of thinking and learning is happening

while their students use blended learning computer programs, almost all of them, across all three

schools, said that it was not. Teachers talk about the value of the work that students are doing on

181

computer programs as building skill fluency as the programs either adapt to their performance or

are able to draw from a large bank of problems and activities. Building skill fluency is actually a

very important part of knowledge-centered learning environments, according to the HPL

framework, yet it is not the same as helping students to build deep understandings of concepts

that allow them to make connections between ideas.

Viewing all three schools through the lens of the HPL framework’s knowledge-centered

characteristics surfaced this common belief that the work students do on computers is not, as Ms.

Martinelli at St. Stephen’s put it, intellectual “heavy lifting.” Even teachers who recognized the

rigor of the online content were hesitant to say that the computer programs encouraged the

deeper kind of thinking that is the other essential part of a knowledge-centered classroom.

Whether or not this kind of thinking and learning is actually happening within the programs that

are in use at each of these schools is a question beyond the scope of this paper. But the fact

remains that in my interviews of teachers, the majority of them perceive knowledge-centered

kinds of connections and conversations happening offline. Teachers’ most common

acknowledgement as to the contribution of a blended learning approach to a knowledge-centered

learning environment is that it allows teachers to work one-on-one or in small groups with

students while the rest of the class is engaged in meaningful work on computers. This way, they

can assist students in making connections to prior learning and do the kind of mathematical or

scientific thinking that is the hallmark of knowledge-centered learning environments. This

acknowledgement is not necessarily a critique of blended learning. It simply underscores the

need for the “blend” of different learning modalities as teachers work to their strengths while

they allow the programs to handle skill practice.

182

The principal at St. Mary’s illustrated this distinction most poignantly as she described St.

Mary’s approach to using technology like a baseball coach uses a pitching machine—instead of

the coach spending his or her time pitching to each player on the team, a baseball coach lets a

pitching machine fire out fastballs while he or she corrects the players’ stance or grip. Similarly,

most teachers speak about online tools as assisting students in providing individualized practice,

while the more substantial and higher-level thinking skills are handled by the teacher.

Community-centered: freedom to fail, failure to connect

Across all three cases, there is substantial evidence of a culture of learning and support

surrounding students that makes it “okay” to fail. This was often a pre-existing condition within

the school before they adopted blended learning, yet in several instances, students stated (and

teachers affirmed) that they felt more comfortable making mistakes on computers than they did

in front of a class. Additionally, some of the affordances of the blended learning model such as

small group instruction and peer conferral (in multi-age classrooms at St. Mary’s) lower the

social consequences of making a mistake and more closely reflect the psychosocial moratorium

occurs in video games. A sense of community among students was also strengthened by the way

blended learning programs allowed students at St. Stephen’s and Holy Trinity to stay in class

with their developmental peers while working on remedial content rather than making them join

younger classes for this remediation.

Community-centered classrooms also encourage socially constructed learning

opportunities in the classroom, school, and with the outside world. With increased access to

technology and robust Internet connections at each of these three schools, this kind of

communication is certainly possible, yet communication with outside communities of practice or

affinity groups was either not encouraged or outright blocked. Students at St. Mary’s are

183

beginning to use tools of technology to create socially constructed learning with shared

documents on Google Apps, but from conversations with teachers, students, and observations,

this seems to be rather uncommon at these three schools. With rare exception, computers were

used for the sole purpose of running blended learning programs and students were not able to

access outside websites, much less use computers as tools for communication and connection.

Consequently, students in these three schools never had the opportunity to explore or engage

with affinity groups based on their own interests. In my conversations with students, I found no

evidence of students engaging in these kinds of online communities outside of school or certainly

not inside school. The limited amount of connection that students have with the outside world

seems to limit their ability to participate in these powerful incubators for learning and expression

through technology.

Re-visualizing the HPL framework based on these data

The four characteristics of the HPL framework are presented in the literature as four

interdependent design principles that incorporate the best of what educational psychology

understands about pedagogy and cognition. When the authors present this framework in diagram

form, they do so with three interlocking (and overlapping) circles and one circle that surrounds

the other three circles to indicate the community centered characteristics (see Figure 8).

184

Figure 8. How People Learn Framework (Bransford, et al., 2000)

While this diagram is meant to represent the This, no doubt, is to signify that this characteristic

describes the learning milieu and is the setting into which these other characteristics fit. Yet with

all due respect to the authors, this diagram is not actually representative of the framework that

they present where each part of the framework is largely independent. There are some notable

points of overlap in these characteristics which is captured by the overlapping parts. But perhaps

this framework might also be represented in the figure below where each of the four

characteristics are depicted as equal in size while still overlapping a bit (bearing in mind, of

course, that the overlap happens between all of the characteristics, not just the adjacent circles)

(see Diagram 8).

185

Figure 9. How People Learn Framework (modified)

If the relative sizes of these circles may be thought to represent the number of learner centered,

knowledge centered, assessment centered, or community centered practices a researcher might

observe in a school, the three blended learning schools I observed looked more like this:

Figure 4. How People Learn Framework (modified to represent learning practices in this study)

While this disparity does not directly translate to quality or effectiveness in these schools, it may

give teachers, administrators, and software developers a better sense of where they might expend

more energy and creativity as they seek to build more supportive and effective learning

environments.

186

Suitability of the framework

In this section, I address the third and final research question of this paper: how suitable

is the HPL framework as a measure of effectiveness for blended learning schools? I am using the

word “suitable” broadly to mean the overall “fit” of the framework as a way for researchers and

practitioners to consider blended learning contexts in general and their unique aspects in

particular. This section includes both the strengths and limitations of using the HPL framework

for understanding blended learning contexts.

Strengths of the HPL framework for blended learning contexts

The HPL framework gives a very helpful heuristic way of systematically viewing the

characteristics of learning environments. It is especially helpful in bringing a strong body of

research on effective classroom contexts to bear on emerging models of education, as in the case

of blended learning. While not much is known about the effectiveness of blended learning, the

four characteristics of the HPL framework represent a deep body of knowledge about learning

and cognition that can relate to any type of learning environment. This framework is a helpful

starting point for teachers and administrators who want to ensure the essential characteristics of a

effective learning environment are present: if a classroom is not learner-centered, assessment-

centered, knowledge-centered, and community-centered, there is work to be done in helping

create an environment where students learn best.

This framework was very helpful in identifying the characteristics of interactions among

teachers, students, and the tools of technology they employ in blended learning classrooms.

Further, it presents a thoughtful way of understanding the nature of current practices and the

potential for growth along this framework. For example, while Ms. Rogers’ Spanish classroom is

a nearly textbook example of a highly assessment-centered learning environment in terms of

187

immediate feedback for student work, she might consider using the other aspects of a

assessment-centered learning environment in the HPL framework incorporate assessment-

centered skills like self-assessment and metacognitive reflection into her pedagogy. Teachers in

blended learning schools could benefit from a deeper familiarity with this framework as a means

to self-reflection on pedagogy and a common language of school-wide improvement.

A particular strength of the HPL framework when considering blended learning contexts

is the ability to speak about the effectiveness of the educational context without bringing in the

traditional metrics of standardized test scores or quantitative evaluations of success. Reporting

on evidence of the four characteristics of the HPL framework is a potentially helpful way for

constituents to understand more about their school and plot trajectories for further growth

without falling into the trap of giving schools or blended learning programs letter grades, stars,

or a number out of another number. These measures may be necessary for an overall

understanding of progress toward learning, but the HPL framework can offer a way to

understand and grow, not simply judge.

Additionally, the HPL framework may be helpful for those who are designing a blended

learning implementation and/or are tasked with choosing which software they might use.

Evaluating software based on this framework and then being upfront and transparent with

teachers about the limitations of the computer programs could help them to intentionally

supplement or strengthen what is lacking in the technology through their pedagogical practices.

Limitations of the HPL framework for blended learning contexts

Using the HPL framework for understanding blended learning contexts as I have done in

this paper has surfaced some limitations. In conducting observations and interviews to address

the first research question of this paper, “What is teaching and learning like in blended learning

188

schools?” I encountered several rather crucial aspects of blended learning environments that

were not captured by the HPL framework. These limitations center around four main themes: the

unit and object of analysis, the exclusion of leadership practices, measures of non-cognitive

skills, and levels of integration of blended learning software into teacher practice.

The HPL framework provides a limited perspective on blended learning contexts because

its unit and object of analysis is the type of learning interactions that happen in the classroom.

The HPL framework was created as a way to understand the design of learning environments.

The four characteristics of successful learning contexts are helpful in characterizing and

categorizing the interactions between teachers, students, and the tools of technology they are

utilizing; yet it does not actually measure learning itself. The object of analysis in the HPL

framework is the kind of interactions that are happening in a learning environment, not the

quality or efficacy of these interactions themselves. This is certainly one of the limitations of this

framework (and indeed a limitation of this paper) and should be carefully noted before making

assumptions about the effectiveness of blended learning environments or practices. Additionally,

the unit of analysis for the HPL framework is the classroom. Although this allows a researcher to

categorize some of the individual teacher practices, it does not include ways of understanding the

school as a whole, nor does it include a scaled evaluation or rubric as a tool of comparison.

Secondly, because the HLP framework focuses on characteristics of successful learning

environments, it leaves out considerations regarding the leadership level. While this may not be

the focus of the HPL framework, in my research of blended learning schools, leadership

practices appear to have a significant impact on the success of blended learning implementations.

For example, teachers at St. Stephen’s encountered some roadblocks in their first year of blended

learning centered around resource allocation and scheduling which needed to be addressed at the

189

leadership level. St. Mary’s utilizes an interesting model of distributed leadership that allows the

principal to be technically “part time” between two blended learning schools. Holy Trinity

utilized a principal/president model until this past year when they opted to remove the principal

and create a leadership team of key teachers, the president, and a school parent. This leadership

team played a critical role in the design of the blended learning implementation, the support

systems for faculty regarding blended learning, and the professional development that was given

to the faculty. When collecting data based on the HPL framework alone, it does not capture these

rather fascinating and seemingly important pieces of data. Fully understanding blended learning

contexts seems to require researchers to consider the practices of school leaders and how and to

what extent they are involved with the planning and execution of a blended learning

implementation and operation.

When teachers, administrators, and students talk about their blended learning contexts,

they often refer to the ancillary effects of this model of teaching and learning which are not all

captured in the HPL framework. While there are a significant number of so-called “non-

cognitive” skills that are mentioned as a part of the HPL framework—for example, self-

reflection, metacognition, and a feeling of security with one’s community—several emerged

outside the scope of this framework. These include independence, self-efficacy, self-motivation,

a growth mindset, collaboration, effective communication, and progress monitoring, to name just

a few. To truly understand whether a blended learning context is effective or not invites

considering some of the ways blended learning has a “halo effect” on theses and other non-

cognitive skills.

Finally, often in researching and reporting on the evidence of the HPL framework in

classrooms, the difference between teachers who leveraged the affordances of the blended

190

learning software and those who did not is not clearly captured in the four characteristics of the

HPL framework. This seems like a significant part of understanding and maximizing the power

and promise of blended learning. The extent to which teachers reported experiencing returns on

using blended learning software seemed to correspond with how integrated blended learning

content is within the teacher’s pedagogical practice. When teacher at St. Mary’s first began to

use blended learning, they were using static (non-adaptive) software to supplement instruction.

This ended up being essentially digital worksheets that were nearly disastrous for St. Mary’s.

Teachers like Ms. Kramer at St. Stephen’s uses i-Ready, an adaptive software tool, to

supplement her instruction—that is to say that she does not align her in-class instruction with the

online work students are doing. Teachers who did this often got marginal returns as they saw

students working at their “just right” level and potentially filling in skill gaps. Yet they were

often unaware of the effect of the supplemental blended learning software because it was

essentially a sophisticated educational babysitter that occupied students’ attention while the real

work of direct instruction was happening in small groups or one-on-one. When teachers used

blended learning to complement instruction, teachers leveraged the instant feedback possible

with blended learning software. In Ms. Rogers used the blended learning software to

complement her Spanish instruction, she saw significant learning returns as her students were

immersed in an environment where mistakes were immediately challenged while students

worked at their own pace. Finally, Mr. McClure at St. Mary’s uses the tools of blended learning

to augment math instruction in his classroom by letting students work at their own pace while

mixing online and in-person interactions with math material. Giving students agency over their

own pace of education and allowing them to surge ahead or take the time they need while staying

close to their performance data to make weekly goals and remediate skill gaps represents a

191

transformational approach to using the tools of blended learning. These distinct ways of using

different kinds of blended learning software are detailed in the table below (Table 5):

Table 5

Instructional Outcomes of Blended Learning Use Across Tools and Instructional Types

Student/tool interaction

Static (non-responsive to student)

Dynamic (adaptive to student)

How

teac

hers

are

usi

ng

blen

ded

lear

ning

con

tent

Supplement Instruction

(1) Skill repetition and general

enrichment

(2) Enrichment and exploration

Complement Instruction

(3) Reinforcement and practice

(4) Optimized skill practice

Transform Instruction

(5) Interest pursuit

(6) True differentiation and

discovery

In order to better understand the ways that teachers, students, and blended learning content

interact, it is perhaps helpful to first draw a distinction between two broad categories of the types

of content that are in use in blended learning classrooms: static and dynamic. The first category,

“static,” includes digital content (and here I broadly refer to “digital content” or “tools” as

inclusive of programs, apps, websites, and various other online material) that is agnostic to the

end-user. Static content is exactly the same for any user who is accessing it, and these tools

present information or problems to students in ways that do not adapt to their interest,

performance, or profile. This category of content does not collect diagnostic information prior to

instruction and proceeds along a predetermined, rutted path. Examples of static content for

192

blended learning might be the assignable bank of math problems in iXL, a collection of

educational YouTube videos, or a digital textbook.

A second category of content that is in use in blended learning classrooms is “dynamic.”

This type of digital content creates a profile of the user and then makes adaptations based on the

user’s performance data. Dynamic content is not the same for every user and makes changes for

the individual as to the difficulty, pace, type, or sequence of information or problems presented.

This category of content sometimes begins with a diagnostic pre-test or profile formation activity

and then delivers material that is customized to the individual. The appropriateness and

helpfulness of this adaptation obviously varies based on the sophistication of the algorithm and

amount of performance data the digital content collects. Still, numerous teachers and students in

the three blended learning schools involved in this study were impressed with the ability of the

dynamic content currently in-use at blended learning schools to accurately assess and then

challenge students at their “just right” level. The use of dynamic tools of technology—even in a

limited way—begins to address learning gaps by collecting data that can be used for remediation.

Some software may attempt to help fill in these gaps through basic skill practice, but the true

power of dynamic content is harnessed when teachers attend closely to the rich data feedback

that using these programs provides. Examples of dynamic content for blended learning are i-

Ready, ThinkThroughMath, Achieve3000, or wordplay.com.

Differences in the instructional outcomes in blended learning classrooms depend not only

on the category of digital content in use—perhaps more importantly are the ways that teachers

utilize the digital content at their disposal. There are several different ways that teachers might

use the tools of blended learning in their classrooms, but most fit into these three categories: in a

supplementary way, in a complementary way, and in a transformative way. Teachers who use

193

blended learning content in a supplemental manner allow students to work at computer stations

with little direct teacher guidance. This work—while perhaps valuable—is viewed by the teacher

as supplementary and not necessarily connected to the topic(s) that the teacher is covering in

direct instruction. Teachers using the tools of blended learning to supplement instruction may see

the value of computer-based content as occupying students’ attention so teachers can work one-

on-one or in small groups with other students. Teachers who use blended learning content to

complement their instruction find ways to integrate the work students do on computers with their

direct instruction. Engaging the technology in this way values these tools as vehicles for

optimization of current pedagogical practices with new ways of reinforcing skills and

remediating knowledge gaps. Teachers using blended learning content to transform instruction

allow the affordances of the digital tools at their disposal to fundamentally transform their

pedagogical practices in ways previously not possible without these tools of technology. This use

of technology is a radical departure from traditional teaching practices and may challenge

teachers and students to re-envision their roles in the classroom as students become less

dependent on teacher direction and teachers coach and guide students to knowledge rather than

being the keepers of knowledge themselves.

Sector details

Using static blended learning content to supplement instruction (see Sector 1 in Table 5)

involves having students work on digital content that may give immediate feedback, but this

content neither adapts to user performance nor does it directly connect with the content that

students are learning in class. At best, this can lead to general enrichment or skill refinement

through repetition inasmuch as students are helped by doing random pages out of a workbook. At

worst, this “digital worksheet” approach can bore students with no clear progression of content,

194

frustrate them when they answer problems incorrectly, and reinforce incorrect patterns of

thinking through unguided repetition of incorrect thinking. This is akin to hoping a baseball

player improves by telling them to “run laps” at a track to improve their general athleticism or

sending them to a batting cage without any coaching or instruction.

Using dynamic blended learning content to supplement instruction (see Sector 2 in Table

5) involves having students work on digital content that responds to their performance and gives

increasingly challenging material as students demonstrate mastery, though this material is not

directly connected with what is being taught by the teacher. This can lead to rich learning

experiences for students as they encounter new material or practice skills that the programs

determine they need to work on based on their performance. Independent learners may thrive

with this type of freedom to explore new content, though the supplemental nature of this work

can leave teachers confused as to their students’ level of exposure to new content and render

students bored with direct instruction content that they have previously mastered.

Using static blended learning content to complement instruction (see Sector 3 in Table 5)

involves having students practice and reinforce the skills or material that teachers are presenting

to them. Conversely, this can also involve having students encounter new concepts on static

media (for example, a Khan Academy video) while using their direct instruction time with a

teacher to reinforce concepts or correct erroneous thinking. This use of blended learning content

places much of the onus for curation on the teacher as they assign students specific practice

problems or direct them to the desired material. This use of blended learning content can be a

powerful way to reinforce concepts or optimize instructional time, but keeps students tightly

corralled and does not allow for much differentiation of pace or content for individual learners.

195

Using dynamic blended learning content to complement instruction (see Sector 4 in Table

5) involves linking the work students do on adaptive digital content to the direct instruction they

receive in class. This use of blended learning content might involve teacher practices such

assigning a class the same article on Achieve3000 (which is then customized to their individual

reading level) and then discussing it as a class. It might also involve allowing students to work

within a chapter or a unit on blended learning software for a period of several weeks so that

students can practice skills that they find challenging and master content in a sequence that they

choose while a teacher coaches and tutors students within that unit. When the given timeframe

ends, all students are expected to take a summative assessment. This allows teachers to work

more closely with individual students and provide data informed instruction while giving

students some agency in making choices about the path and pace of their learning. This ensures

students still reaching the same end-point in a curriculum, but it allows them some freedom in

reaching that point. Working in this sector is a way of optimizing traditional pedagogical

practices with the tools of technology.

Using static blended learning content in a transformative way (see Sector 5 in Table 5)

involves teachers finding ways to let technology augment traditional pedagogical practices. This

could include allowing students to learn about new ideas as they participate in online

communities, express their mastery of concepts through digital media or collaborative

GoogleDocs, or dive deeply into online videos regarding an area of interest. Using static

technology tools in this way does not simply use technology to optimize current teacher practices.

It invites teachers to reconsider their role as the keepers of knowledge in a classroom and allow

students to guide their own learning process through the use of digital tools.

196

Using dynamic blended learning content in a transformative way (see Sector 6 in Table 5)

involves teachers using adaptive, user-aware content to give students agency in making open-

ended decisions about their educational path and pace. This gives students the freedom and

agency to work with adaptive content while being coached and tutored by their instructor. This

radical departure from the “normal” way that we might envision classroom instruction taking

place allows for a true differentiation for all students where each child can work at their “just

right” level. Working with dynamic content in this way effectively takes the floor and ceiling off

of the traditional classroom as students can work above or below their grade level as content

adapts to their need and teachers can encourage, assist, remediate, and challenge each one of

their students while they keep a close eye on their data feedback that dynamic programs provide.

These six sectors represent the realities and possibilities of using digital content for

instructional practices that can reinforce or revolutionize teacher pedagogy and student learning.

The closer teachers can get to using dynamic content in ways that are complementary or

transformative, the more learning can be truly personalized for individual students. This is the

true promise and power of blended learning and an invitation to practitioners to utilize

technology for the benefit of their students.

Implications for practice

In this section I detail four implications for practice based on my research and data

findings regarding blended learning. These four suggestions are meant for practitioners who are

involved in K-12 education and those who are interested in implementing a blended learning

approach at their school. The collective case study design employed in this paper is meant to

provide a depth of understanding for these particular cases, not generalizable conclusions for all

contexts. Yet there are some key lessons that emerged from these three contexts that may be

197

relatable to other settings. My hope is that readers of this study take some ownership of the

insights and descriptions and make their own determination as to the study’s transfer to their own

context (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). In that spirit, in this subsection I propose the following four

implications for practice: (1) teachers should use interest, fiero, and transformation as a starting

point of blended learning designs and pedagogical practice, (2) schools should proactively use

blended learning to diagnose and fill “Tetris gaps,” (3) schools should use blended learning to

help students succeed in college and beyond, and (4) Catholic schools should consider adopting

blended learning as a matter of social justice and inclusion.

Teachers should use interest, fiero, and transformation as a starting point of blended

learning designs and pedagogical practice

I asked every teacher and administrator whom I interviewed to talk about why their

school decided on a blended learning approach. The responses varied from financial efficiencies

to a desire for deeper differentiation of instruction, to using technology in a way that would

distinguish their school from competitors. Most responses foregrounded student learning in some

way, but the changes that they hoped a blended learning approach might bring to their schools

were often incremental and concentrated more on efficiency than transformation. By efficiency, I

mean that teachers talked about the way that a blended learning approach could help them do the

kind of teaching that they currently do with greater ease, data, or differentiation. They spoke

about the advantages of having more one-on-one time with students as half the class (or more)

worked on blended learning programs. The truly promising power of blended learning seems to

be the ability to fundamentally transform teaching through technology. Transformative teaching

of this type might begin with ideas like student interests or individualized learning paths based

198

on unique styles of learning or perhaps project-based or socially constructed learning—all

powered by a blended learning approach. Beginning with student interest could involve students

in affinity groups and build interest-based learning with a sense of fiero as an end goal. This is

not to say that students in the three schools included in this study did not experience any of these

goals, but using these as a starting point has the potential to unlock the true promise and potential

of blended learning.

Schools should proactively use blended learning to diagnose and fill “Tetris gaps”

Tetris, the addictive Russian puzzle game, challenges players to move and stack blocks

that fall from the top of the screen in such a way that they complete an entire line, making them

disappear and scoring points. The shape and speed of the blocks make this seemingly simple task

quite difficult, particularly at higher levels. Often, when gaps begin to form toward the bottom of

the stack, mistakes can compound, and it becomes increasingly difficult to fill in those bottom

gaps. Similarly, if a map of any student’s learning might be constructed, there are often gaps.

Learning gaps can happen for any conceivable reason: as dramatic as a prolonged illness or

family tragedy or as mundane as a teacher who was difficult to understand or a time when a

student simply “zoned out.” Whatever their genesis, once those gaps are formed, like Tetris

blocks continuing to fall with increasing speed, educational content and skills continue to drop

on students throughout their schooling. Yet many times, learning new material assumes prior

knowledge and does not account for these Tetris-like gaps. Furthermore, teachers may be

unaware of these gaps that may have existed for years by time a student arrives in their

classroom.

Ms. Ewing, the principal of St. Mary’s, is convinced that the success story of a former

sixth grader named Jack is due to the large amounts actionable data that she and her math teacher

199

received from their blended learning software and then acted upon. Jack’s “Tetris gap” was a

misunderstanding of place value that most likely dated back to first or second grade. His Tetris

gap was successfully remediated and, over the course of several months of Jack’s hard work, he

was able to exit out of special needs services. This success story invites practitioners to reflect on

how they might use blended learning programs to gather student performance data in order to

diagnose and remediate Tetris gaps. As blended learning software becomes more sophisticated

and so-called “big data” analytics (that are already in use in business and finance contexts) are

brought to bear on student performance data, diagnosing and remediating student knowledge

gaps will no doubt become much more commonplace. Until then, stories like Jack’s represent an

aspirational yet attainable goal for practitioners using or considering blended learning.

Schools should use blended learning to help students succeed in college and beyond

The final implication of this research for practitioners relates to student success in high

school, college, and beyond. Across all three schools, teachers mentioned the development of a

skill as a result of the blended learning implementation: independence. Whether it was Ms.

Young at St. Stephen’s telling her students to figure out a lesson without directions like they

would a new video game or Ms. Sanders having her K-2 students work independently at their

own level and find solutions to their problems before asking the teacher, there were dozens of

examples teachers mentioning “independence” as one of the things they liked about a blended

learning approach. My observations confirmed this and I noted several times in my field notes

that even young students seemed to be just “busy about their business” when engaged in blended

learning blocks of instruction. Students in these contexts seemed not to rely heavily on the

teacher for their next step and often conferred with fellow students when they faced challenges

rather than relying on the teacher. Further, empowering students to know and “own” their

200

personal performance data—a regular practice at St. Mary’s and an emerging practice at Holy

Trinity—helped students set attainable goals and seemed to help create some buy-in to their

educational success and next steps. Giving students agency like this is a powerful way of

involving them in their education and potentially increasing their motivation. It also may prepare

them to succeed in educational endeavors where teacher guidance and supports can be more

limited, as is often the case in high school, college, and beyond. Practitioners can further

encourage this development by allowing students to use technology to participate in or create

affinity groups and online communities of practice. Teachers can also assist students in

maximizing their independent work time by helping them develop skills to clearly define

problems they are encountering, to ask thoughtful questions of one another, and to hone

metacognitive skills for self-reflection and refinement of ideas.

Catholic schools should consider adopting blended learning as a matter of social justice and

inclusion

I entered into this study using Catholic schools as the setting, not the focus of my

research. The interview protocols I used and the data I collected was intentionally and decidedly

non-religious in nature. Yet it was clear that the school leaders and teachers I interviewed saw a

rationale for blended learning that was rooted in social justice, and indeed, their Catholic faith.

This led me to conclude that there are significant social justice connections and implications

from the use of a blended learning approach in Catholic schools in particular.

The most authoritative document on education from the Catholic Church is a document

of the Second Vatican Council entitled Gravissimum Educationis, which states, “All men [sic] of

every race, condition and age, since they enjoy the dignity of a human being, have an inalienable

right to an education” (Pope Paul VI, 1965). Yet Catholic schools have long been critiqued for

201

their inability to serve students who have exceptionalities and might need different kinds of

accommodations or levels of challenge that differ from their classmates. This is particularly

important for Catholic schools because currently, Latinos represent approximately 70% of all

practicing Catholics under the age of 35. Yet a shockingly low 3% of school-aged Latino

children are currently enrolled in Catholic schools. This is particularly tragic considering,

according to a 2009 study, Latino children are 40% more likely to graduate from high school and

more than twice as likely to graduate from college when they attend K-12 Catholic schools (The

Notre Dame Task Force on the Participation of Latino Children and Families in Catholic Schools,

2009). Yet without the proper tools and resources to serve these students, many of whom are not

native English speakers, Catholic schools cannot hope to continue to help them succeed.

In cases where Catholic teachers and leaders want to help students with these

exceptionalities, but feel unequipped to do so, blended learning may offer some significant help.

Several teachers at St. Mary’s, St. Stephen’s, and Holy Trinity spoke of blended learning

empowered them to differentiate the content and pace of the instruction that students received in

a way that was previously not possible. In particular, teachers at Holy Trinity who serve 100%

Latino students recognized the ways that blended learning helped students who were struggling

with language acquisition. Allowing a student to hear the words that they see on a screen in i-

Ready or Achieve3000 is an important help to a new English language learner. Giving students

the opportunity to get live help in their native language on TTM is a step toward further

inclusion. And having a rich, class-wide conversation with all students based on an article that

was delivered to each of them at their just-right reading level through Achieve3000 can give all

learners the chance to participate with their peers in an unprecedented way. These supports for

English language learners are ways in which blended learning is being leveraged for inclusion.

202

But inclusion assisted by blended learning is not limited to new English language learners.

At St. Stephen’s, putting a sixth-grade transfer student on i-Ready for remediation allowed her to

stay in class with her developmental peers instead of having to join a fourth grade classroom

down the hall. At St. Mary’s, blended learning allowed mathematics students in a multiage

classroom to work on content that was far beyond their grade level at a pace that was right for

each of them. In these cases, schools are using blended learning to treat each student with the

dignity that Catholic schools want to give all children because each child is created “in the image

and likeness of God” (Catechism of the Catholic Church §1701). Effectively, blended learning is

empowering schools to take the floor and ceiling off of the traditional classroom so that the

needs of every child are met. Catholic schools both large and small would do well to reflect on

the simple question that brought St. Stephen’s to a blended learning implementation: “how well

do we know our students?”

Implications for research

As stated above, there is a small but growing body of research regarding blended learning.

The research in this area is still in a very nascent stage and clearly there is ample room for more

academic studies of blended learning content, models, effective practices, and implementations.

In particular, for those who seek to study the effectiveness of individual programs or digital tools

for use in educational contexts, this study points to the importance of researchers taking into

account exactly how teachers are using the tools of technology in classroom contexts. The way

teachers use these tools and the data that they generate can amplify their effectiveness or render

them nearly useless. Chronicling effective and transformative uses of technology from blended

learning classrooms and schools would greatly benefit the field.

203

The role and importance of leaders in blended learning contexts is another significant yet

understudied area of research. Documenting effective leadership practices in successful blended

learning schools could help generate models for current school leaders and guide principal

training programs to empower and equip school leaders with the skills and points of view

particular to this model of teaching and learning.

More broadly, the field of blended learning is in need of researchers (not simply vendors)

to carry-out both large-scale surveys of blended learning schools nation-wide as well as

comprehensive, multi-year ethnographic studies of successful blended learning schools, from

their inception. Following students through the transition from blended learning grade schools

into non-blended high schools could offer interesting insights and challenges that could reflect

back on the design of blended learning elementary schools. Additionally, following blended

learning students’ progress into college could prove informative as researchers might reflect on

the importance of independence and other skills honed in blended learning schools.

Researchers interested in assessing and understanding blended learning contexts should

consider applying technology-related frameworks to these learning environments to see if they

promote a unique and helpful analysis. In particular, researchers should consider adapting and

using Connected Learning (Ito, 2013) and Participatory Cultures (Jenkins, 2007) as ways to

compare practices within blended learning schools with these thoughtful theoretical models of

technology use. The application of the HPL framework to the three blended learning schools in

this study presents merely a starting point for applying known educational frameworks to

blended learning schools.

A final question for researchers in the blended learning context is how might we measure

outcomes beyond test performance? Currently, success or failure of blended learning schools is

204

most commonly assessed with NWEA MAP scores or state standardized tests. How might we

more deeply understand the impact of learning for students in blended learning schools beyond

these standard markers of academic progress? Longitudinal studies of students who attended

blended learning schools and their success in high school and college could be helpful ways of

assessing the impact of a blended learning education. Further, skills beyond those that are

traditionally assessed in academic testing should be included in future assessments of blended

learning studies. Measuring the “non-cognitive” or “soft skills” that are being taught and

practiced in blended learning schools is an essential way of knowing the impact that this

different type of teaching and learning is having on students. Researchers should consider

measuring skills like persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-

confidence (Tough, 2012) or the social skills and cultural competencies that young people need

in order to participate fully in participatory culture like play, performance, simulation,

appropriation, multitasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia

navigation, networking, and negotiation (Jenkins, 2007). These skills or others that are indicators

of success in college and the workplace might be essential ways of understanding the impact of

blended learning beyond standardized test scores.

Conclusion

The power and potential of blended learning is enormous. Over the coming five to ten

years, what we now call “blended learning” will likely simply be known as “learning” and

schools that are pioneering these innovations will likely benefit from their years of experience.

Given current trends in education and technology, the quality and ubiquity of technology

available to educators continues to improve, yet without attention to how these tools are being

205

utilized and deployed, educators, students, and contributors are likely to become frustrated to the

point of abandonment. This study aims to challenge these frustrations by relating the stories of

three schools working to embrace and leverage the affordances of blended learning. Through use

of qualitative data, I have described the characteristics of blended learning schools, presented the

evidence of the HPL framework in these schools, and discussed both the strengths and

limitations of using the HPL framework as a way of understanding blended learning schools.

These discussions concluded that the HPL framework was helpful in focusing on measures of

effectiveness beyond traditional metrics of success, yet may need to be modified or

supplemented by measures of capturing leadership practices, levels of integration of blended

learning software, and non-cognitive skills. While the next iteration of blended learning is not yet

known, it is clear that teachers who are well-informed and well-equipping with these tools of

technology will continue to transform teaching and learning for the benefit of all students.

206

References

Anderson, J. R., Boyle, C. F., Corbett, A. T., & Lewis, M. W. (1990). Cognitive modeling and

intelligent tutoring. Artificial intelligence, 42(1), 7-49.

Anderson, J. R., Corbett, A. T., Koedinger, K. R., & Pelletier, R. (1995). Cognitive tutors:

Lessons learned. The journal of the learning sciences, 4(2), 167-207.

Atkinson, R. C. (1968). Computerized instruction and the learning process. American

psychologist, 23(4), 225.

Barton, D., & Hamilton, M. (1998). Local literacies: Reading and writing in one community.

London, UK: Routledge.

Bauer, M. I., Williamson, D. M., Mislevy, R. J., & Behrens, J. T. (2003). Using evidence-

centered design to develop advanced simulation-based assessment and training. In World

Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher

Education (Vol. 2003, No. 1, pp. 1495-1502).

Benaquisto, L. (2008). Axial Coding. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research

Methods (Vol. 1, pp. 52-53). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Benaquisto, L. (2008). Open Coding. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research

Methods (Vol. 2, p. 754). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Birnbaum, A. (1968) Some latent trait models and their use in inferring an examinee’s ability. In

Lord, F.M. and Novick, M.R., Statistical theories of mental test scores. Reading, MA:

Addison-Wesley.

Bloom, B. S. (1984). The 2 sigma problem: The search for methods of group instruction as

effective as one-to-one tutoring. Educational researcher, 4-16.

207

Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., & Cocking, R.R. (1999). How people learn: Brain, mind,

experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Catechism of the Catholic Church. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Liguori, MO: Liguori

Publications, 1994.

Cen, H., Koedinger, K. R., & Junker, B. (2007). Is Over Practice Necessary?- Improving

Learning Efficiency with the Cognitive Tutor through Educational Data Mining.

Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, 158, 511.

Cheung, A. C., & Slavin, R. E. (2012). How features of educational technology applications

affect student reading outcomes: A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 7(3),

198-215.

Christensen, C. M., Horn, M. B., & Johnson, C. W. (2008). Disrupting class: How disrupting

innovation will change the way the world learns. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Collins, A., & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking education in the age of technology: The digital

revolution and schooling in America. Teachers College Press.

Collins, A., Hawkins, J., & Carver, S. M. (1991) A cognitive apprenticeship for disadvantaged

students. In Teaching advanced skills to at-risk students, Means, B., Chelemer, C., &

Knapp, M. S., eds. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Conrad, C., & Serlin, R. (2005). The SAGE Handbook for Research in Education: Engaging

Ideas and Enriching Inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Cresswell, J.W. (2007). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five

Appproaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Cross, J. (2006). Forward. In C.J. Bonk & C.R. Graham (Eds.), Handbook of blended learning:

Global perspectives, local designs (p. xvii-xxiii). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.

208

Dziuban, C., Hartman, J., Moskal, P., “Blended Learning,” EDUCAUSE Review, Volume 2004,

Issue 7, 2004. ECAR, Boulder, Colorado.

Emerson, R. M., Fretz., R. I., and Shaw, L. L. (1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Chicago,

IL: University of Chicago Press.

Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Macmillan.

Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. New

York: Routledge, 2004.

Gibbs, M. G., Dosen, A. J., & Guerrero, R. B. (2008). Technology in Catholic Schools: Are

Schools Using the Technology They Have?. Journal of Catholic Education, 12 (2).

Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/ce/vol12/iss2/8

Given, L. (2008), Introduction. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods

(Vol. 1, p. xxix). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Glaser, G. G., & Strauss, A.L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory. Chicago: Aldine.

Graham, C. R. (2013). Emerging practice and research in blended learning. In M. G. Moore (Ed.),

Handbook of distance education (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Graham, C.R. (2006). Blended learning systems: Definition, current trends, and future directions.

In C.J. Bonk & C.R. Graham (Eds.), Handbook of blended learning: Global perspectives,

local designs (pp. 3-21). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.

Griffiths, M. D., & Hunt, N. (1998). Dependence on computer games by adolescents.

Psychological reports, 82(2), 475-480.

Güzer, B., & Caner, H. (2014). The Past, Present and Future of Blended Learning: An in Depth

Analysis of Literature. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 116, 4596-4603.

209

Halverson, L. R., Graham, C. R., Spring, K.J. & Drysdale, J.S. (2012): An analysis of high

impact scholarship and publication trends in blended learning, Distance Education, 33:3,

381-413

Hoeft, F., Watson, C. L., Kesler, S. R., Bettinger, K. E., & Reiss, A. L. (2008). Gender

differences in the mesocorticolimbic system during computer game-play. Journal of

Psychiatric Research, 42(4), 253-258.

Horn, M. B., & Staker, H. (2011). The rise of K-12 blended learning. Innosight Institute.

http://www.inacol.org/cms/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/iNACOL-Mean-What-You-Say-

October-2013.pdf

Horn, M. B., & Staker, H. (2015). Blended: Using disruptive innovation to improve schools. San

Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Weigel, M., Clinton, K., & Robison, A. (2010) Confronting the

Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge,

MA: The MIT Press

Kennedy, S., & Soifer, D. Why blended learning can't stand still: A commitment to constant

innovation is needed to realize the potential of individualized learning. Lexington

Institute.

Koedinger, K. R., & Corbett, A. T. (2006). Cognitive tutors: Technology bringing learning

science to the classroom. The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences, 13, 61-77.

Kulik, C. L. C., & Kulik, J. A. (1991). Effectiveness of computer-based instruction: An updated

analysis. Computers in human behavior, 7(1), 75-94.

Kulik, J. A. (2003). Effects of using instructional technology in elementary and secondary

schools: What controlled evaluation studies say. Arlington, VA: SRI International.

210

Lacey, J.W. (1977) Applications of computer based education to learning. In The Many Facets of

Educational Computing, Proceedings of NAUCAL conference, Dearborn, MI.

Lautzenheiser, D., and Hochleitner, T. (2014). Blended learning in DC public schools: how one

district is reinventing its classrooms. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for

Public Policy Research.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Lazzaro, N. (2004). Why We Play Games: Four Keys to More Emotion Without Story.

Whitepaper. Oakland, CA: XEODesign

Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E.B. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change

the world. Penguin.

McKechnie, L.E. (2008). Observational Research. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative

Research Methods (Vol. 2, p. 575). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., & Jones, K. (2009). Evaluation of evidence-

based practices in online learning: A meta-analysis and review of online learning studies.

U.S. Washington D.C.: Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and

Policy Development.

Merriam, S. B. (1998). Qualitative research and case study applications in education / (2nd ed.

ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Miller, P.M. (2008). Reliability. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods

(Vol. 2, p. 754). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

211

Miller, P.M. (2008). Validity. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods (Vol.

2, p. 909). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Mishler, E. (1986). The analysis of interview-narratives. Narrative Psychology: The Storied

Nature of Human Conduct, 233-255.

Moore, J. C. (2005). The Sloan consortium quality framework and the five pillars. The Sloan

Consortium. Retrieved July, 15, 2007.

Moore, M. G. (Ed.). (2013). Handbook of distance education (3rd ed.). New York, NY:

Routledge.

Norberg, A., Dziuban, C.D., & Moskal, P.D. (2011). A time-based blended learning model. On

the Horizon, 19(3), 207-216.

Ogden, R. (2008). Anonymity. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods

(Vol. 1, p. 16). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Otte, G., & Niemiec, M. (2005). Blended learning in higher education: A report from the 2005

Sloan-C workshop. In Second Sloan-C Workshop on Blended Learning, Chicago, IL.

Patrick, S., Kennedy, K., Powell, A. (2013). Mean what you say: Defining and integrating

personalized, blended, and competency education. Retrieved from

Paul-VI, P. (1965). Gravissimum Educationis. Retrieved Sept 15, 2014, from

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-

ii_decl_19651028_gravissimum-educationis_en.html

Picciano, A. G., & Seaman, J. (2007). K-12 Online Learning: A Survey of US School District

Administrators. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 11(3).

Picciano, A., and Dziuban, C. (2007). Blended Learning Research Perspectives. The Sloan

Consortium.

212

Queen, B., & Lewis, L. (2011). Distance Education Courses for Public Elementary and

Secondary School Students: 2009-10 (NCES 2012-009). U.S. Department of Education,

National Center for Education Statistics. http://nces.ed.gov/ pubs2012/2012008.pdf.

Rothbauer, P.M. (2008). Triangulation. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research

Methods (Vol. 2, pp. 892-894). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Schofield, J. W. (1997). Psychology Computers and Classroom Social Processes—A Review of

the Literature. Social Science Computer Review, 15(1), 27-39.

Schrieber, J. B. (2008). Pilot Study. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods

(Vol. 2, p. 625). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Shaffer, D. W., Halverson, R., Squire, K. R., & Gee, J. P. (2005). Video Games and the Future of

Learning. WCER Working Paper No. 2005-4. Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Shea, P. (2007). Towards a Conceptual Framework for Learning in Blended Environments. In

Picciano, A.G. & Dziuban, C.D. (Eds.), Blended Learning: Research Perspectives (pp.

19-36). Needham, MA: Sloan Consortium.

Soe, K., Koki, S., & Chang, J. M. (2000). Effect of computer assisted instruction (CAI) on

reading achievement: A meta-analysis. Washington, DC: OERI.

Squire, K. D. (2006). From content to context: Videogames as designed experiences.

Educational Researcher, 35(1), 19-29.

Stake, R. (1995). The art of case study research (pp. 49-68). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Stake, R. E. (2000). Case studies (pp. 435-454). In, N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Guba (Eds.),

Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Staker, H. (2011). The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning: Profiles of Emerging Models. Innosight

Institute.

213

Staker, H., & Horn, M. B. (2012). Classifying K-12 Blended Learning. Innosight Institute.

Steinkuehler, C. (2011). The mismeasure of boys: Reading and online videogames (No. 2011-3).

WCER Working Paper.

Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for

developing grounded theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Suppes, P., & Macken, E. (1978). The Historical Path from Research and Development to

Operational Use of CAI. Educational Technology, 18(4), 9-12.

Suppes, P., & Morningstar, M. (1969). Computer-assisted instruction. Science, 166 (3903), 343-

350.

Suppes, P., & Morningstar, M. (1972). Computer-Assisted Instruction at Stanford, 1966-68: Data,

Models, and Evaluation of the Arithmetic Programs.

U.S. Department of Education. (2010). Transforming American education: Learning powered by

technology. Washington, DC: Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of

Education.

Van Campen, J. A. (1970). Project for application of learning theory to problems of second

language acquisition with particular reference to Russian. Report to US Office of

Education.

van der Linden, W. J., & Glas, C. A. (Eds.). (2000). Computerized adaptive testing: Theory and

practice. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.

VanLehn, K. (2011). The relative effectiveness of human tutoring, intelligent tutoring systems,

and other tutoring systems. Educational Psychologist, 46(4), 197-221.

214

Vignare, K. (2007). Review of literature blended learning: Using ALN to change the classroom

—Will it work? In Picciano, A.G. & Dziuban, C.D. (Eds.), Blended Learning: Research

Perspectives (pp. 37-63). Needham, MA: Sloan Consortium.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of the higher psychological processes.

Cambridge, MA: The Harvard University Press.

Walkington, C. (2013). Using Adaptive Learning Technologies to Personalize Instruction to

Student Interests: The Impact of Relevant Contexts on Performance and Learning

Outcomes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105, 932-945.

Watson, J., Murin, A., Vashaw, L., Gemin, B., and Rapp, C. (2013). Keeping Pace with K-12

Online & Blended Learning: An Annual Review of Policy and Practice. Evergreen

Education Group.

Yilmaz, K. (2013). Comparison of quantitative and qualitative research traditions:

Epistemological, theoretical, and methodological differences. European Journal of

Education, 48(2), 311-325.

Yin, R. K. (2014). Case study research: Design and methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Publications.

215

Appendices

Appendix A: Interview Protocol for Principals, Blended Learning Coordinators, Administrators

Interview Protocol for Principals, BL Coordinators, Administrators:

Name:

Location:

Date/Time of Interview:

1. Opening:

a. Can you tell me your name and your role here?

b. How long have you been in this position?

c. How long have you been at this school?

d. Tell me a little bit about this school.

2. Pedagogical practices:

a. Tell me about how blended learning works for your students during a typical day.

b. What is your favorite/most interesting/most compelling experience with blended

learning?

c. How did your school become a blended learning school?

d. Do you see certain advantages or disadvantages?

e. What programs, units, or tools do you as a (leader/administrator) recommend for

blended learning? Is there a particular platform, site, or topic that you like best?

f. On a typical day, what percentage of your school’s instruction is blended?

g. From your perspective, what percentage of the students’ typical day is spent on

blended learning?

216

h. What are the differences you observe in student learning or engagement in the

different contexts (blended versus non-blended)? Can you give me a story that

illustrates that from your classroom experience?

i. What is the connection between what happens on the computer programs and

what happens instructionally from the teacher?

j. What does using technology in the classroom allow your teachers to do that they

wouldn’t otherwise be able to do?

3. General

a. What challenges have you faced in using a blended learning approach in your

school?

b. What are the challenges now?

c. If a school were making the transition to blended learning, what are the three most

important lessons you would tell them?

d. Who have been the most important people in making blended learning work in

your school?

e. How have you assisted teachers in ramping up to blended learning? What has

been helpful or challenging in doing so?

4. Conclusion

a. Is there anything you want to add or explain further, related to the study or any of

the questions?

b. Do you have any questions for me?

217

Appendix B: Interview Protocol for Teachers

Interview Protocol for Teachers:

Name:

Location:

Date/Time of Interview:

1. Opening:

a. Can you tell me your name and your role here?

b. How long have you been in this position?

c. How long have you been at this school?

d. Tell me a little bit about this school.

2. Pedagogical Practices

a. Tell me about how blended learning works for your students during a typical day.

b. What is your favorite/most interesting/most compelling experience with blended

learning?

c. Do you see certain advantages or disadvantages?

d. What programs, units, or tools do you as a teacher use and recommend for

blended learning? Is there a particular platform, site, or topic that you like best?

e. On a typical day, what percentage of your instruction is blended?

f. From your perspective, what percentage of the students’ typical day is spent on

blended learning?

218

g. What are the differences you observe in student learning or engagement in the

different contexts (blended versus non-blended)? Can you give me a story that

illustrates that from your classroom experience?

h. How would you characterize your approach to teaching?

i. What is the connection between what happens on the computer programs and

what happens instructionally from the teacher?

j. What does using technology in the classroom allow you to do that you wouldn’t

otherwise be able to do?

k. I’m interested in knowing more about what happens in blended learning

environments. Can you talk a little about your experience as a teacher in a

blended learning school?

l. I’m also interested in knowing more about teaching practices in blended learning

environments. Could you tell me the ways that you try to find out where students

are and meet them where they’re at? Could you give me an example of that?

m. How have you been able to connect the curriculum with the learning that students

are doing on the computers? Can you give me an example of how you have dealt

with that issue?

n. How do you use the data that you receive from the programs that the kids use? Do

you share that with the individual students? Have you found this valuable?

o. How does using this much technology influence the sense of community among

your students?

p. How has a blended learning approach changed your teaching?

219

q. Can you give me an example of students making choices about the pace or path of

their educational activities in your class?

r. There’s a pretty universal feeling of “yes! I did it!” that we’ve all felt before.

Have you seen any evidence of this feeling in your class?

s. Do you feel as though you get to spend enough one-on-one time with students?

What types of things do you do with the one-on-one time that you do get with

them? Has the blended learning approach helped or hindered your ability to spend

one-on-one time with students?

3. General

a. What challenges have you faced in using a blended learning approach in your

classroom/school?

b. What are the challenges now?

c. If a school were making the transition to blended learning, what are the three most

important lessons you would tell them?

d. Who have been the most important people in making blended learning work in

your school?

4. Conclusion

a. Thank you for your participation and your openness to classroom observations.

Would you like to add anything?

b. Do you have any questions for me?

220

Appendix C: Discussion Questions for Student Focus Group

Discussion Questions for Student Focus Group

First Names of Students in Focus Group:

Location:

Date/Time of Focus Group:

1. Explanation of focus group and read through student assent form

2. Discussion Questions

a. What do you like most about your school?

b. Your school is probably different from a lot of other schools. Can you tell me how

it is different from other schools or maybe other schools you have attended?

c. I want to hear your thoughts about what it’s like to be a student in a blended

learning school.

d. You guys spend a lot of time on computers. What’s that like?

e. What are some descriptive words that you would use to talk about your school?

Why?

f. Can you talk about your best learning experience at your school?

g. Do you think the learning on computers is too hard or easy?

h. What is most challenging or difficult about being a student at your school?

3. Conclusion

a. Thank you so much for your participation in this group! Is there anything else

you’d like me to know about your school?

b. Do you have any questions for me?

221

Appendix D: Participant Information and Consent Form

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON Research Participant Information and Consent Form

Title of the Study: The Promise of K-12 Blended Learning: Understanding the Design and Experience of Blended Learning Environments Principal Investigator: Richard Halverson (faculty advisor) (608) 265-4772,

halverson@education.wisc.edu Student Researcher: Nathan Wills, csc willscsc@wisc.edu DESCRIPTION OF THE RESEARCH

You are invited to participate in a research study that seeks to understand the experience of teaching and learning in K-12 blended learning schools. You have been asked to participate because your school is one of the bold pioneers and exemplars of blended learning in the Midwest. The purpose of my research is to understand how teaching and learning occur in blended learning schools and to get a sense of the pedagogical practices happening in blended learning classrooms. This study will include three other K-12 schools in the Midwest that are implementing blended learning throughout their school as well. I will spend one week at each school as I conduct brief interviews with key faculty and administration, several classroom observations, and a small focus group of students who are interested in participating. Digital audio recordings will be made, though only those involved in this research will have access to these recordings and their transcripts. Audio files will be stored on a secure, off-site server and will be destroyed after their transcription.

WHAT WILL MY PARTICIPATION INVOLVE?

If you decide to participate in this study you will be asked to talk about teaching and learning in your blended learning school. I would like to learn about the pedagogical practices that take place in a blended learning classroom. As a part of this process, I would like to conduct interviews with the principal, the blended learning coordinator, and around six teachers at each school. Each interview will last approximately one hour (with the possibility of one additional interview if additional questions need to be asked later). I would like to conduct several classroom observations in the rooms of the teachers I have interviewed in order to gather first-hand data about the pedagogical practices in a

222

blended learning school. If you are able to share any documentation about the mission of your school and any publicly available demographic or relevant achievement data, those data would be a welcome addition to my study.

ARE THERE ANY RISKS TO ME?

I don't anticipate any risks to you from participation in this study. ARE THERE ANY BENEFITS TO ME?

You will be given a summary of the findings to build on the successful blended learning implementation in your school. Also, you will be helping other schools throughout the nation who will study the innovative ideas, policies, and practices that you have implemented.

HOW WILL MY CONFIDENTIALITY BE PROTECTED?

While there will likely be publications as a result of this study, your name will not be used. Only group characteristics and demographics will be used in publications. If you participate in this study, I would like to be able to quote you directly without using your name. If you agree to allow us to identify you in publications, please initial the statement at the bottom of this form.

WHOM SHOULD I CONTACT IF I HAVE QUESTIONS?

You may ask any questions about the research at any time. If you have questions about the research after you leave today you should contact the Principal Investigator Professor Richard Halverson at (608) 265-4772. You may also email the student researcher, Nathan Wills at willscsc@wisc.edu . If you are not satisfied with response of research team, have more questions, or want to talk with someone about your rights as a research participant, you should contact the Education and Social/Behavioral Science IRB Office at (608) 263-2320. Your participation is completely voluntary. If you begin participation and change your mind you may end your participation at any time without penalty. Your signature indicates that you have read this consent form, had an opportunity to ask any questions about your participation in this research and voluntarily consent to participate. You will receive a copy of this form for your records.

Name of Participant: (please print) Signature: Date: I give my permission to be quoted directly in publications without using my name. (please initial)

223

224

Appendix E: Parent Information and Consent Form

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON Parent Information and Consent Form

Title of the Study: The Promise of K-12 Blended Learning: Understanding the Design and Experience of Blended Learning Environments Principal Investigator: Richard Halverson (faculty advisor) (608) 265-4772 (office)

halverson@education.wisc.edu Student Researcher: Nathan Wills, csc, willscsc@wisc.edu

Your child is being asked to take part in a research study. This form has important information about the reason for doing this study, what we will ask your child to do, and the way we would like to use information from your child if you choose to allow your child to be in the study.

WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS STUDY?

Your child is being invited to give his/her impression of what it is like to learn in a blended learning school. This is part of a larger study that will interview teachers, principals, and administrators of technology-rich schools to see how teaching and learning are different in schools like your son/daughter’s. In order to get a student’s perspective on this, I will conduct a focus group consisting of several students from your child’s school who are willing to give their impressions of learning in a blended learning school. This focus group should last about one hour. I will use an audio recorder during the focus group in order to accurately record the children’s comments. These will be stored on a secure, off-site server and only those involved in this research will have access to these recordings and their transcripts. The audio files will be destroyed after their transcription.

WHAT WILL MY CHILD BE ASKED TO DO IN THIS STUDY?

If you allow your child to participate in this study, he or she will be asked to talk about his or her experience of what it is like to be a student at a blended learning school. We will ask him/her to speak about his/her impressions of blended learning, how this might

225

differ from other experiences of schooling, and any other insights that might help us to get a clearer picture of what it is like to be a student at a blended learning school.

ARE THERE ANY RISKS TO MY CHILD?

We don’t anticipate any risks to your child from participation in this study. WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE BENEFITS FOR MY CHILD OR OTHERS?

Your child is not likely to have any direct benefit from being in this research study. This study is designed to learn more about blended learning in the K-12 context. The study results may be used to help inform other people about schools like your child’s in the future.

HOW WILL MY CONFIDENTIALITY BE PROTECTED?

While there will likely be publications as a result of this study, all identities will be protected. If we use direct quotes from your child in any publication, we will not use their real name and will change the name of their school so that they cannot be identified. If you agree to allow us to use direct quotes from your child in publications (while still changing their name), please initial the statement at the bottom of this form.

WHOM SHOULD I CONTACT IF I HAVE QUESTIONS?

You may ask any questions about the research at any time. If you have questions about the research, you may contact the Principal Investigator, Professor Richard Halverson, at (608) 265-4772. You may also contact the student researcher, Nathan Wills at willscsc@wisc.edu . If you are not satisfied with the research team response, have more questions, or want to talk with someone about your rights as a research participant, you should contact the Education & Social/Behavioral Science IRB Office at (608) 263-2320. The participation of your child is voluntary. If you and your child decide not to be in this study, this will not affect the relationship you and your child have with your child’s school in any way. Your child’s grades will not be affected if you choose not to let your child be in this study. Your signature indicates that you have read this consent form, had an opportunity to ask any questions about your participation in this research and voluntarily consent to participate. You will receive a copy of this form for your records.

Name of Child Obtaining Parental Permission (please print) Parent/Legal Guardian’s Name (please print) and Signature:

226

Date I give my permission to be quoted directly in publications without using my name. (please initial) Parents, please be aware that under the Protection of Pupils Rights Act (20 U.S.C. Section 1232(c)(1)(A)), you have the right to review a copy of the questions asked of or materials that will be used with students. If you would like to do so, you should contact [Principal Investigator] to obtain a copy of the questions or materials.

227

Appendix F: Student Participant Information and Consent Form

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON Student Participant Information and Consent Form

We are doing a study to learn about what it is like to be a student at a blended learning school. A blended learning school is one where kids use computer programs to learn skills and subjects and teachers also use them to help students learn. We are asking you to help because we don’t know very much about schools like yours and want to find out more. If you agree to be in our study, we are going to ask you some questions about what it is like to learn on computers and what types of learning activities you typically do in your classroom. You and several of your classmates will sit around a table and tell the researcher what it is like to be in a blended learning school. You can ask questions about this study at any time. If you decide at any time you do not want to be a part of the group of students we are asking questions to, you can ask us to stop. The questions we will ask are only about what you think. There are no right or wrong answers because this is not a test. If you sign this paper, it means that you have read this and that you want to be in the study. If you don’t want to be in the study, don’t sign this paper. Being in the study is up to you, and no one will be upset if you don’t sign this paper or if you change your mind later. Your signature: ___________________________________________ Date ____________ Your printed name: ________________________________________ Date ____________ Signature of person obtaining consent: _________________________ Date ____________ Printed name of person obtaining consent: ______________________ Date ____________