Digital Technologies and Innovative Learning Environments in Schooling: A New Zealand Experience

Abstract

The rise of innovative learning environments, with multiple teachers and larger cohorts of students, can de-privatise practice as teachers have the opportunity to observe each other teaching. However, they also provide the opportunity for collaboratively planning and teaching, and engaging in reflective dialogue about specific pedagogical approaches to enhance student learning and achievement. This may enable teachers and senior staff to promote effective and sustained student learning. Digitally enabled learning environments with the spatial affordances of innovative learning environments can provide the opportunity for the school environment to be a link to knowledges and understandings within the global world. This article reports on a national online survey of 335 primary and secondary principals’ and teachers’ perceptions of work in innovative learning environments with multiple teachers. Multiple-choice and open-ended questions were analysed. The focus was on exploring the use of digital technologies within schooling in Innovative Learning Environments. The findings indicated that respondents were generally positive about the use of Innovative Learning Environments, particularly as experience of such environments increased. The research also found that cloud-based information communication technology enabled a shared online approach to communications, particularly teachers’ collaborative planning and writing of reports. Nevertheless, regardless of the enhancement of digital technologies, most of the respondents perceived that the effectiveness of the teacher, their relationships with the students and their pedagogical practices remained critical.