Hybrid learning helps ākonga become self-directed learners

Supporting ākonga to actively direct their own learning is a major goal for many schools.

In Tāmaki Makaurau, Wesley Primary|Te Kura Tuatahi o Wēteri, Greenhithe School, and Te Aho O Te Kura Pounamu (Te Kura) are fostering agency through hybrid learning.

“Hybrid Learning” means any learning programme that ākonga can access either in person or remotely. When learning can happen anytime, anywhere, all kinds of learner-directed choices become possible.

Choosing what to learn encourages active thinking about progress and goals, even without adult instructions. Te Kura ākonga Miriam, 16, says “You have to take motivation from yourself because you don’t have a teacher hounding after you saying, oh, do all of this. So it’s built a lot of self-motivation and self-management that I didn’t have before.”

The Pam Fergusson Charitable Trust conducted case studies of hybrid schools in Tāmaki Makaurau and found that this element of choice motivates and empowers ākonga.

Learning how to learn

““You have to take motivation from yourself because you don’t have a teacher hounding after you saying, oh, do all of this. So it’s built a lot of self-motivation and self-management that I didn’t have before.” ”

— Miriam, 16, Te Kura

When Sophie, 18, started at Te Kura, she only worked when her mum reminded her.

But soon, “I started finding my own way of doing things, having it open and ready, making sure I was doing it not in my bedroom, having an idea of what I was going to do before I started.”

Her classmate Dylan also had to adjust – he was burning out from trying to do every available option. “I was going as fast as I could,” he laughs. “But now I can pace myself, go slowly, and pick what I want to learn.”

Self-directing learning isn’t just about motivation and pace. Ākonga also need “adulting skills” as Te Kura kaiāwhina Leilani Kake says, and digital technology skills.

“It’s funny,” says Leilani, “we older ones think, they’ve got Google, they’ve got iPhones, they’re already clued up in terms of IT stuff. But that’s not true. Even general knowledge – what’s a PDF, what’s a .jpeg, how do you upload something to your dropbox, how to see your downloads.”

Her colleague Rita Beckmannflay says supporting new ākonga to build these skills is crucial. “Those sorts of things at the beginning are really key. If it’s a disconnect at the beginning it will be a disconnect all the way through.”

Dylan, who is used to being agentic at Te Kura, found a face-to-face barista course “a bit hand-fed” and was glad to follow it up with a more challenging course on the same topic.

Greenhithe makes a point of building this digital fluency in year three and four, so their self-directing year fives and sixes are confident online. Their system is still user-friendly enough, though, for new ākonga to jump right in.

Yanxi, who came to Greenhithe in year six, says, “When I came to this school… I liked it. A lot. Because the teacher didn’t have to tell me what to do.”

Freedom of choice

In year five and six at Greenhithe, ākonga choose daily can-do and must-do activities from that week’s set of “Learning Slides.”

Year five kaiako Adele Chichester says “All of their learning for the week is in one place for them to access at any point throughout the week. This means if they are away from school for whatever reason, the learning that’s happening in the class is still accessible.”

Ākonga complete tasks directly in the editable slideshows or follow links to external sites. Since everything they need is one one place, explains year 5 ākonga Ellie, “we rely less on our teachers and we work by ourselves more.”

Greenhithe year fives are “confident in themselves because they can see that we as teachers have confidence in them.”

“I think the choice is really good,” she continues, “because it makes you feel like, you don’t have to do this, you don’t have to do that. You can do whatever you want whenever you want.”

Yanxi seconds this, saying that “I like being able to choose what I want to learn… having the choice makes this school a lot better than my old school.”

Ellie’s classmate Bridget explains how tasks are organised by challenge level. “There’s easy levels and harder levels and you get to choose your type.”

Ellie adds, “If you don’t know, the teachers will tell you about where you’re at. But you can work it out – if you think the challenging one is too hard, you go for an easier one.”

Since Learning Slides were introduced, year six kaiako Emma Pierce notes that “students seem a lot more confident in themselves because they can see that we as teachers have confidence in them, and we trust them to manage themselves. So I think that giving them that confidence has made them feel like they can do more, and they push themselves further.”

“They are able to access their work whenever they need to. Students can be more independent and refer back to instructions… they don't have to constantly ask the teacher questions. It also allows the class to run smoothly and have a great mix of online and offline work.”

Bridget and Ellie say that year five is better than year 4 at Greenhithe because “we work more independently” and “you rely less on your teachers.”

Empowered in their community

Wēteri centres its hybrid programme around Manaiakalani’s learn, create, share pedagogy, in which ākonga blog to share their learning with whānau and community.

Ākonga take pride in their blogs and often maintain them over the summer. Seeing this, Wēteri began running optional summer learning opportunities onsite.

Principal Lou Reddy recalls, “Forty-five kids in the school holidays coming in daily to do maths – who would have thought?”

But to the tamariki, it’s not just maths. “What they’re doing is problem-solving with their mates. And it’s gamified, because every time they pitch [a solution] to each other, they get a buzz out of it, they get feedback from each other. They get the questions to go deeper from each other.”

Lou sees this kind of collaborative learning, where multiple perspectives are valued and multiple solutions are possible, as a positive move away from traditional learning models.

“We’ve been going on this journey with Māori Achievement Collaborative, and we did this thing called Unteach Racism. It gave us a systemic lens on the Eurocentric practices that we currently have in education and how they have failed Māori, Pasifika, migrants… it meant that we had to go deeper. Our curriculum design had to go back to core values” with purposeful links to the school’s culture.

“Manaakitanga and kaitiakitanga became central.”

This cultural focus helps ākonga feel valued at school, letting them take risks more confidently.

Lou mentions the valuable cultural capital and knowledge base that ākonga bring to the table, and the kaiāwhina at Te Kura second this. “When we come in,” says Rita, “we see them eye-to-eye. Like Leilani said, we’re learning from each other. That’s quite critical in terms of the learning process because a lot of our students have experienced bias and discrimination in the classroom. So we like to bring a safe space, and we can feel it when it’s not safe very quickly.”

Involving whānau and the wider community in learning is key for Lou. He describes co-designing graduate profiles with whānau and inviting whānau into school for talanoa (open dialogue) “to find what is meaningful” on the journey that the ākonga are making towards their futures.

Lou describes ākonga as “looking out for an island that isn’t on the horizon yet, but you know it’s there, and you know how you’re going to get there. So if our children are preparing themselves to get to that place, we are just the vessel along that journey. And their whānau, all of their culture, their beliefs, that’s behind them too. That’s providing the wind in the sails.”

“We are just one foundational piece. They have whānau, ECE, us – we are the third group of significant adults that has anything to do with those children. So we have to understand them and know where they have been already, to give them the best that they deserve.”

Wēteri Tumuaki Lou Reddy describes how a strong hybrid practice has empowered his ākonga and helped them transition smoothly to a new school building

This article is part of a three-part series detailing findings from case studies on future-focused education practices in Tāmaki Makaurau, conducted by the Pam Fergusson Charitable Trust with support from Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, Aotearoa’s Ministry of Education. Access the full project at https://omgtech.co.nz/future-of-learning

Hybrid Learning - Learner Agency