Why Do Schools Lose Their Capacity to Learn?

This is the first of a four-part series exploring why a number of the innovative schools I’ve worked alongside or observed over the past two decades gradually drift back toward the very institutional patterns they set out to replace. Over the coming weeks I’ll unpack more of the patterns I’ve observed, why this happens, what leadership looks like when it’s resisted, and what might be done differently. This post lays the groundwork: what I’ve observed, and the historical lens that helped me finally make sense of it.

Introduction

During the past twenty years I have had the privilege of working alongside a number of communities establishing new schools across Aotearoa New Zealand. The excitement among these early innovators is infectious. Freed from inherited routines, these schools begin with bold aspirations, innovative learning environments, and a determination to create something different.

Yet I have also noticed a recurring pattern. Five or six years later, many of those same schools begin to look remarkably like the schools they were designed to replace. The language of innovation remains, but the habits become increasingly familiar. It isn’t because the leaders lacked courage or the ideas lacked merit. Something deeper is happening.

I need to emphasise, not every school follows this trajectory. I’ve worked with some schools that have managed to keep returning to each new challenge with the same experimental mindset that drove their founding – refreshing rather than settling. What distinguishes them isn’t luck, or the calibre of their original idea. It’s something about how they’ve chosen to keep responding, year after year, as the challenges facing them changed. That difference is worth naming now, because it’s the thread I’ll be pulling on through the rest of this series.

What the rise and fall of civilisations can teach us about educational transformation

Let me begin with sharing what prompted me to start thinking about this. A few weeks ago I was listening to a podcast when the host mentioned the historian Arnold Toynbee. I’d heard the name before but knew very little about his work, so, as often happens, I disappeared down one of those wonderful rabbit holes of curiosity.

Toynbee’s monumental A Study of History (1934–1961) explores why some civilisations flourish while others stagnate or decline. At the heart of his thinking is a deceptively simple idea: societies grow by responding creatively to the challenges they face. When they stop responding creatively, decline begins.

It seems a very timely idea given the state of political upheaval we’re experiencing here in NZ and around the world at the moment, but the more I read, I became distracted from thinking about civilisations and instead thinking about my experiences with these new schools I had experience with. As I reflected on those experiences, I realised that Toynbee’s ideas offered a helpful lens for understanding the pattern I’d been noticing for years, but had never quite been able to explain.

What I’ve observed and learned

My experience in working alongside communities establishing new schools in Aotearoa began initially in regions where new schools were being planned and built in response to population growth, green-fields building in the true sense of the word. Then came the re-build of many schools following the earthquakes in Christchurch, including the green-field building of schools in areas of the city where new suburbs were being developed.

The process with new school builds follows a familiar path. Once the demographic need for a new school is justified and a site is identified and purchased by the Ministry of Education, an establishment board is created to work on behalf of the community to develop a shared set of beliefs that will guide the vision, mission and values for this new school. These things are described in a project brief, and are intended to provide the foundation for a school culture and ways of working that reflect the needs and aspirations of the community.

The process to this point can be straight forward enough when working with the community of an existing school that is undergoing a re-build, or groups looking to establish a new charter school for example. In these cases there is an existing community to work with and consult. But it can be problematic for a green-fields school where there is no established community as the housing developments surrounding the school site are yet to be completed. Identifying whose feedback should inform the strategic vision for the school can be problematic, with the final decisions left to just a small group of people appointed to the establishment board.

Once the project brief has been written, the next phase in a green-fields build is to engage architects who will use information about the physical site, the vision for the educational approach that has been developed and the guidelines supplied by the Ministry of Education to first come up with a master plan for what might be developed, and then, through a period of consultation on this, formulate a final plan that can be used to go to tender to find a building company to complete the work.

While the building programme is underway, the establishment board engage in the process of recruiting an establishment principal. This is a part of the process that seems a little ‘out of synch’ for me – the employing of the principal after all of the visioning work has been done. Generally the requirements for the role include previous experience in leading a school (either as principal or deputy principal) and a personal philosophy and vision for education that aligns with what the establishment board have developed.

Being a part of this process has been one of the most rewarding opportunities of my career. It’s the dream of someone who has devoted much of his career to asking questions about the purpose of education and what will serve us best into the future. Most schools inherit their culture. These schools had the opportunity to create one.

As I’ve been reflecting on these experiences and looking back over more than two decades of this work, I see some really exciting things that have been achieved. But I have also observed that despite being given such an innovative start, many of these new schools have gradually begun to look remarkably like the schools they were designed to be different from. Not failures. Not poor schools. Simply… familiar.

The Pattern I’ve Come to Recognise

Over time I’ve noticed a pattern emerging. It wasn’t confined to one school or one community. Nor was it the result of poor leadership or a lack of commitment. If anything, many of these schools were led by some of the most capable and visionary educators I’ve worked alongside.

The pattern seemed to emerge almost regardless. I’ve tried to capture it in the diagram here which is described in more detail below:

The development of a new school generally begins with a challenge. A new community. A blank piece of land. An opportunity to think differently about what schooling could become. That challenge releases enormous creative energy.

Next comes the design phase resulting in a creative response. The founding members question long-held assumptions. They visit innovative schools. They debate the purpose of education. They imagine new ways of organising learning, designing spaces, building relationships with whānau, and supporting learner agency. The conversations are exciting because almost nothing was taken for granted.

Those innovative ideas are then put into practice. The early years or these schools were characterised by experimentation. Staff worked collaboratively, adapting as they learned. New routines emerged. Fresh approaches were tested and refined. There was a strong sense that everyone was building something together. Through this phase most of these schools experienced early success and flourished.

But as enrolments grew a different set of challenges emerged. As the roll grew so did the number of new staff being employed. Systems needed to be documented. Expectations become clearer. Successful practices are embedded so that new staff can learn them quickly. Consistency and coherence become increasingly important. And so the focus gradually shifted from creating something new to making sure what had been created could be sustained – the focus shifts to building the institution.

None of this was wrong. In fact, much of it was necessary. Growing organisations need reliable systems. Families value predictability. Teachers need clarity. Students benefit from stability. Yet alongside these strengths, something else often began to happen.

Over time the questions became fewer. Experimentation became less common. Practices that had once been innovative slowly became “the way we do things here,” and it became expected that these ways of working would suffice as new challenges were experienced. The energy that had driven invention was increasingly directed towards protecting what had already been built.

This is the point where school leaders and their communities reach a decision point – to focus on the project of sustaining the school as an institution – or to embark on a process of refresh, to keep things responsive to the new challenges they are presented with. These challenges might be new knowledge about learning, different student needs, developments in technology (AI), changing community priorities etc. All of these things require a school to be ‘responsive‘ not merely sustaining.

The refresh route repeats the cycle, returning to the identification of new creative responses to the challenges experienced through innovative approaches marked by the preparedness to experiment, permission to take risks, persevere with promising results, and to learn from failure. These lead to new forms of success which, in turn are adopted into the way the school is organised and operates. And so that cycle continues.

The institutionalisation route occurs when the school remains focused on sustaining what has been established, and over time, the school begins operating very much like the ones the original visionaries of the school were trying to ‘break free’ from.

Why this matters

None of this is academic. Every establishment board that opens a new school is, in effect, making a bet – that this time, the bold aspirations in the founding documents will hold. Toynbee’s insight is that civilisations don’t usually fall because they run out of ideas. They fall because the people responsible for responding creatively stop doing so, often without noticing, and the old patterns quietly reassert themselves under new language.

The same appears to be true of schools. So as you read this, it’s worth pausing on a few questions about your own context:

Where in your school’s story would you place yourselves right now – still in the “creative response” phase, or drifting toward institutionalised habit?
What language has stayed the same in your school even as the practice behind it has quietly changed?
Who, in your setting, is currently playing the role Toynbee would call the “creative minority” – and are they still being backed, or increasingly worn down?

I don’t think there’s anything inevitable about the slide from innovative to institutional. But avoiding it seems to depend heavily on the people carrying it – which is where I’ll turn next. In the second post in this series, I’ll look more closely at the particular qualities of leadership I’ve seen distinguish the schools that hold their edge from those that don’t.

Where do you even begin with an AI policy for your school?

Where do you start when your Board asks for an AI policy?

Do you begin by banning certain tools?
By writing rules about student use?
By deciding which AI platform teachers should or shouldn’t use?
Or do you start somewhere entirely different?

These are conversations I’m having more regularly now with school leaders across Aotearoa. There is a growing recognition that artificial intelligence will change almost every aspect of schooling – from teaching and learning to assessment, administration and community engagement. Yet many Boards of Trustees and leadership teams are understandably asking, “Where do we even begin?”

The challenge is that AI is moving so quickly that any policy focused solely on today’s technologies risks becoming obsolete almost as soon as it is written. That led me to a different question.

Perhaps the issue isn’t really “What should our AI policy say?”

Perhaps it is “How do we lead our school through a period of profound change?”

That shift in thinking became the foundation for the paper I’ve recently completed titled Leading like a wayfinder towards an AI-enabled future – available on the FutureMakers website in the Thought Pieces tab.

Rather than treating AI as simply another piece of technology to manage, the paper frames it as a leadership and governance challenge. AI is the catalyst – but it isn’t the story. The real work of governance is helping a school navigate uncertainty while remaining anchored in its purpose, values and aspirations for learners.

To explore this, I draw on three ideas that have shaped my own thinking.

The first is the metaphor of the waka. Good governance isn’t about trying to control every wave or predict every change in the weather. It’s about knowing where you’re heading, reading the conditions, and navigating together.
The second is the Prosper – Prepare – Protect framework (taken from a recent Brookings Institute report). Rather than seeing opportunity, capability building and risk management as competing priorities, this framework encourages Boards to hold all three together in balance.
The third is a Three Horizons model, helping schools distinguish between what requires immediate action, what capabilities need to be developed over time, and what kind of future they ultimately want to create for their learners.

Running through the paper is another conviction that I believe is essential. AI must become a force for greater equity, not greater inequality. Every governance decision should ask how emerging technologies can strengthen opportunities and outcomes for all learners, particularly Māori and Pasifika, rather than unintentionally widening existing disparities.

This isn’t a technical guide to AI tools, and it deliberately avoids chasing the latest product announcements or platform updates. Instead, it’s a resource for Boards, principals and senior leadership teams that aims to support thoughtful conversations, informed decision-making and governance that will remain relevant long after today’s AI models have been replaced by tomorrow’s.

If your Board or leadership team has been wondering where to begin, my hope is that this paper provides a practical and enduring place to start. Because the future won’t be shaped by the schools with the best AI policy. It will be shaped by the schools with the clearest sense of purpose, the strongest capacity to learn, and the courage to navigate change together.

ACCESS The document

I am available to provide support for school leaders and board of trustees in developing an AI strategy for their school. Please contact me to discuss what might be appropriate in your setting. Email me – derek@futuremakers.nz

Why child-centred learning isn’t the ‘soft’ option

In my latest podcast conversation with Dr Sarah Aiono she describes taking a teacher by the arm and asking them to “melt into the wall” of their own classroom, inviting them to “stand back, watch, tell me what you see”. The teacher struggles. So Sarah starts pointing out the curriculum happening in front of her, and the teacher’s face changes. “It’s like I’ve given them my glasses,” she says, “and they can see differently.”

It’s a small anecdote, but it’s really the whole conversation in miniature – the difference between believing in something and having the ability to see it, support it, and defend it under pressure.

Sarah’s spent two decades in that space – training as a primary teacher, working with trauma-impacted kids in South Auckland, and completing doctoral research into play and child-led learning alongside her mother, who left mainstream teaching to found a forest school. So when she pushes back on the current framing of child-centred learning versus direct instruction, it’s not an abstract position. It’s a frustration with how a genuinely complex craft keeps getting flattened into a lazy binary – either you “let them work it out for themselves,” or you drill them in rows.

Instead, Sarah uses the metaphor of a toolbox. Knowing which tool to reach for and use when a moment calls is the actual skill, and it’s a harder, not easier, thing to do well. Teachers choosing the integrated path, she told me, aren’t choosing the soft option – they’re choosing the most demanding one, and most aren’t given the support to sustain it.

That’s the thread I keep coming back to. Because underneath the pedagogy debate is a structural one. Sarah’s doctoral research kept surfacing a “knowledge to practice gap” – teachers who believe in this approach but hit a room of 25 diverse learners and genuinely don’t know how to translate belief into what happens on a Tuesday afternoon. Her answer isn’t simply to hold another PD day, it’s granular and sustained – change built from the ground up, teacher by teacher, not mandated from above.

We touched on AI too, and her framing cut through a lot of the noise for me – her concern isn’t AI replacing the teacher as content-deliverer, it’s whether we’re building children who can interrogate what AI tells them rather than accept it at face value, the way a worksheet answer gets accepted. A thinking partner that gets challenged back, not a tutor that hands over knowledge.

It’s Sarah’s closing image, though, that gives the episode its title. She describes this whole moment in education – here and internationally – as a chrysalis: messy, mucky, full of push and pull, because that’s what real transformation looks like from the inside. Not comfortable. Not resolved. But moving.

Watch the full conversation with Dr Sarah Aiono below:

Check out the other episodes in this podcast series:

Conversations on the future of education

Evidence is no match for ideology

What happens when 44 years of hard-won educational wisdom collides with the current moment? You get one of the most provocative, refreshing, and urgently necessary conversations I’ve had in a long time.

A number of years ago now I first met Gary Stager when he was a keynote speaker at one of our annual ULearn conferences. Gary is based in the US, and is an educator, author, maker, provocateur, and one of the longest-standing advocates for learner-centred, project-based education in the world. He joined me earlier this week to record another podcast interview in my ‘Conversations about the future of education series”. Knowing a bit about Gary’s work and his views on education I wasn’t expecting a quiet conversation. I wasn’t disappointed.

Gary has been working in education for 44 years. He co-authored Invent to Learn, worked alongside the late Seymour Papert (one of the founding fathers of both AI and educational computing), taught everyone from preschoolers to doctoral students, and built a project-based learning environment inside a prison for teenagers. He’s also currently using AI tools to preserve Papert’s legacy for scholars and practitioners – and the stories he tells about what’s possible are nothing short of extraordinary.

But what struck me most in our conversation wasn’t the future-gazing. It was the clarity of his diagnosis about right now.

“Evidence Is No Match for Ideology”

If there’s a through-line in our conversation, it’s this sentence: “evidence is no match for ideology”. Gary offered it almost in passing, but it really grabbed my attention and has been playing on my mind ever since.

In New Zealand, as in the United States and many parts of the world, we are witnessing what Gary describes as a rise of pedagogical authoritarianism – a doubling down on explicit direct instruction, scripted curricula, phonics sequences, and a deficit model of children that treats them as empty vessels requiring filling. In our conversation he was characteristically blunt, saying; “Explicit direct instruction is a delusionary form of cruelty that fails at first contact with an actual child.”

This maps directly onto something I’ve been tracking in the Education Environment Scan 2026: the tension between evidence-based, relational, future-focused pedagogy and the ideologically-driven policy settings that are currently dominating the conversation in Aotearoa. It’s not a pedagogical debate, it’s a political one. The structured literacy push, the direct instruction drift, the narrowing of the curriculum – Gary’s critique names what many teachers and school leaders are experiencing but struggling to articulate in the face of policy pressure.

His point isn’t that literacy doesn’t matter. It’s that the policy recommendations never seem to start with “get kids books, love them, and surround them with people who love reading.” Instead, we get mandated sequences, scripted lessons, and a level of distrust toward both children and teachers that is, as Gary claims, “mean-spirited.”

The Amnesia Problem

One of Gary’s most compelling observations is what he calls the cure for amnesia problem. He explained how Papert predicted – in much detail – exactly how educational systems would reject innovation, no matter how beneficial it may be to children. And yet, decade after decade, we keep rediscovering the same things, losing the same insights, and repeating the same policy mistakes.

Gary has spent years maintaining The Daily Papert, an archive of Papert’s written, audio, and video work, precisely because he believes powerful ideas are alarmingly temporal. “If you want to improve education,” he says, “the first thing you can do is find a cure for amnesia.”

This resonates deeply with what I’ve been arguing in the scan’s closing section about the need for long-term, cross-party commitment to education – something more like the NZ Superannuation Fund model than the current short-cycle policy environment. We keep starting over. We keep losing the thread. And in the meantime, as Jonathan Kozol (whom Gary quotes with great affection) reminds us: you’re only seven once.

Technology, Phones, and the Equity Blindspot

Gary’s position on technology is more nuanced than his reputation as a tech advocate might suggest. He acknowledges freely that 99.6% of what’s done with computers in schools is “garbage.” But he’s emphatic that the other 0.4% is “absolutely vital.”

His critique of phone bans cuts to something I’ve also been circling in the scan’s equity thread. When we ban devices from schools – particularly in lower-decile communities – we’re not levelling the playing field. We’re taxing the children who have nothing else. As Gary puts it: “This phone, this thing, might be the only thing of value society has granted them, has trusted them with. How dare you yank it out of their hands.”

Rich independent schools, he notes wryly, can afford to market phone bans as an educational philosophy precisely because their students already have laptops, tablets, and home environments saturated with knowledge resources. The ban becomes branding. For everyone else, Gary maintains, it’s deprivation.

The answer to problematic phone use in classrooms isn’t a ban, he argues – it’s the same social sanction we apply in concert halls and aeroplanes. Ask them to put it away. Then give them something worth being present for.

AI: Not for Instruction. For Making.

Gary’s take on AI in education is one of the more refreshing I’ve heard – not because it’s optimistic, but because it’s specific.

He is not interested in AI as a content delivery system, a tutor, or an administrative chore-eliminator. He’s interested in AI as a making tool – something that allows learners and teachers to create things that would have been impossible without it.

He tells the story of his friend Brett Moller, a teacher who used AI to build a custom app for a school excursion to Melbourne – one that tracked students, managed dietary restrictions, ran a scavenger hunt, created parent newsletters, and drew geofenced boundaries on the fly. “This was billions of dollars of programming that no one needs – no one needs but him.”

This (and other anecdotes he uses in the podcast) connects directly to the AI and assessment thread in my environment scan – the growing recognition that the question isn’t whether students use AI, but what kind of learning we’re actually trying to make visible and why.

The Monday/Someday Conundrum

At the end of our conversation I asked Gary for his advice to educators in New Zealand (and elsewhere) as they look to cope with the present but with an eye on the future. He responded by quoting something that Seymour Papert used to say, and it’s the piece of advice I’d most want every school leader in New Zealand to sit with:

“It’s okay to worry about what you’re going to do Monday, as long as it points in the direction of what you hope to do someday.”

That requires, he says, an informed, consistent, coherent vision of what kind of world you want to live in. Not a strategic plan. A vision. Something that orients every small decision toward a larger possibility.

Why You Should Listen

This is a conversation about the current moment in education – but it’s also a conversation about 44 years of pattern recognition, and what happens when someone who’s seen it all before refuses to pretend the emperor has clothes.

Gary Stager is funny, fierce, fiercely kind toward children, and entirely without patience for what he calls “scientific cosplay” dressed up as policy. He is also one of the most serious thinkers I know about what learning is actually for.

If you’re a school leader trying to hold the line between what you know works and what the system is currently demanding, this conversation will feel like oxygen.

For more, read:

About Gary – https://professorgarystager.com/collaborate
Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom – https://amzn.to/2CRw4AY
Twenty Things to Do with a Computer Forward 50: Future Visions of Education Inspired by Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon’s Seminal Work – https://amzn.to/3DawajE
The Learner’s Apprentice: AI and the Amplification of Human Creativity – https://amzn.to/3XaeSiT
Papert Archives – https://dailypapert.com
2026 Education Environment Scan – https://futuremakers.nz/thought-pieces/environment-scan-2026/
Conversations on the Future of Education Podcast series – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR0qV31usqmVzWfOHk_MSkyLXm9hAitY8

View the podcast:

When the urgent drowns out the important

I’ve just been reading through the newly released findings from NZCER’s 2025 National Survey of Secondary Schools – a survey of 106 secondary principals across Aotearoa conducted between October 2025 and March 2026. It’s the kind of document that rewards careful reading, not because it contains many surprises, but because it puts hard numbers around things that many of us have been sensing for some time. And it prompted me to write this.

What emerges for me from the survey is a portrait of a profession stretched to its limits – a similar finding to what I found in my own Roadblocks and Drivers thought piece from 2023. Most principals are working at least 56 hours a week – with 12% exceeding 70 hours. A third now agree that their workload is so high they are unable to do justice to their school. That figure was 22% just three years ago. The leading issue principals identified? “Keeping up with the pace and volume of educational change” – followed closely by “too much being asked of schools.”

This is what a burning platform looks like from the inside.

What concerns me most about that picture is when people are working at this intensity, simply surviving the week, the capacity for strategic thinking – for lifting one’s gaze to the horizon – is the first casualty.

We see this in one quietly concerning data point from the survey where only one-third of principals said they had information about their school’s carbon footprint. This, despite clear policy signals from the Ministry of Education about the need to reduce climate emissions across the sector.

I don’t read that finding as indifference to climate. I read it as a workforce so consumed by the immediate that the important – including preparing young people for a climate-altered future – is being structurally crowded out. The issue isn’t awareness. It’s capacity.

This is a thread I’ve been tracking closely in the Education Environment Scan 2026 – the idea that we are facing not a series of separate challenges, but a convergence of pressures arriving simultaneously. Climate disruption, workforce depletion, AI-driven change to learning and assessment, equity gaps that refuse to close, and a policy environment characterised by short cycles and shifting priorities. Each of these is significant on its own. Together, they create something qualitatively different: a system that is structurally incapable of looking up from the urgent long enough to prepare for what’s coming.

The NZCER data adds texture to that argument. Recruiting teachers remains an issue for nearly two-thirds of principals. Demand for external support – mental health services, social workers, youth workers – consistently outstrips supply. The disestablishment of Kāhui Ako has left 41% of principals thinking they will collaborate less with neighbouring schools. These aren’t isolated data points. They describe a workforce that is narrowing, not expanding – that is being pulled inward by demand rather than freed to think outward about the future.

What would it take to change that? I don’t think the answer is simply more professional learning, more resourcing, or even a slower pace of reform – though all of those would help. The deeper issue is that we haven’t yet designed an education system that takes seriously its own need to think strategically about the future while simultaneously serving the present. That requires protected time, distributed leadership, genuine cross-sector collaboration, and – critically – a policy environment that provides stability and coherence over the long term rather than perpetual reinvention.

The principals in this survey aren’t asking for less. They’re asking for something harder to provide – the conditions in which their professional judgement, experience, and vision can actually be brought to bear on what matters most.

The NZCER survey is a snapshot of a moment. But it’s also a signal. And if we’re serious about future-focused education in Aotearoa, we need to start asking who is going to be left standing to lead it – and what kind of thinking they’ll have the capacity to do.

Download the document

Download the documents by clicking on the image below:

Our kids are at risk!

Last week I was speaking at the Hawkes Bay Primary Principals Association conference about the work I’ve been doing with the 2026 Education Environment Scan. At the event I had the opportunity to sit in on a talk by Ray Finch, CEO of the Laura Fergusson Foundation, on a topic most of us would rather not look directly at: the deliberate, organised targeting of children online by people who want to exploit, manipulate, and ultimately destroy them. It seemed very timely given that this is identified in the Scan as one of the four ‘burning platform’ issues we must address.

It wasn’t a comfortable hour. It shouldn’t be. But I came away convinced that this is now squarely an education issue, not just a policing or parenting one – and that school leaders need a working understanding of what’s happening, even if the detail is confronting.

Here’s the short version of what stayed with me.

This isn’t the radicalisation we’re used to thinking about

Finch drew a sharp distinction between politically or religiously motivated extremism – which has a recognisable shape, a goal, “chatter” that intelligence agencies can track – and what he calls nihilistic violent extremism: harm with no ideological purpose at all, organised chaos whose only real aim is societal destruction. It’s harder to detect precisely because it doesn’t follow any of the patterns we’ve trained ourselves to look for, and its primary target is children.

The recruitment pattern he described is depressingly consistent – a child meets a stranger in a game environment, gets “love-bombed” with intense, round-the-clock affection and attention, then is gradually drawn into sharing something compromising – a photo, a link, a personal detail. From there it escalates into blackmail, coercion, and control, sometimes pushing kids towards self-harm, violence, or worse, with the perpetrator using threats against the child’s family to keep them compliant. Finch shared how colleagues at New Zealand’s DIA and NZSIS have linked some of this activity in NZ.

Why banning platforms won’t fix this

Finch was specific about where a lot of this starts: gaming platforms popular with children, Roblox prominent among them, precisely because they’re framed – and marketed – as safe, social, age-appropriate fun. The danger isn’t that these platforms are inherently malicious; it’s that the safety settings most parents assume are switched on by default usually aren’t, and most adults have no idea what to look for.

But his core argument wasn’t “ban the platform.” Ban one, and the activity simply migrates – to the next app, the next chat tool, the next encrypted corner of the internet. He’s seen it happen repeatedly. The strategy of bad actors depends on constant movement between platforms specifically to outrun whatever gets shut down or legislated against. Treating this as a platform problem we can legislate or block our way out of misreads the nature of the threat.

What actually helps

Finch’s advice to educators and parents was less about surveillance and more about relationship and openness:

Make online life a normal topic of conversation, not a hidden one. The goal is for kids to come home and talk about what they saw online the way they’d talk about a sports game – not because they’re in trouble, but because it’s just part of the conversation. Secrecy is the enemy here, on both sides. Predators thrive on isolating a child from the adults around them, so the antidote is making sure no part of a child’s online life feels like something they have to hide.
Watch for behavioural shifts, not “phases.” Sudden withdrawal, increased secrecy about devices, new security-consciousness (VPNs, hidden apps), changes in friend groups, or a marked change in mental health are signals worth a closer look – not dismissed as typical teenage behaviour.
Know that isolation is the biggest risk factor. Children who are socially isolated, who’ve experienced bullying, or who spend long unsupervised stretches alone online are disproportionately targeted. Vulnerability isn’t about being “the kind of kid this happens to” – loneliness itself is what gets exploited.
Build digital literacy and resilience directly into how we teach, not as a one-off assembly. Programmes like NetSafe’s Headspace Invaders (aimed at 10–14-year-olds) exist specifically to help kids recognise manipulation tactics in an age-appropriate, non-alarming way.
Treat reporting as help, not punishment. Finch was emphatic that a child needs to know that flagging a concern – about themselves or a friend – leads to support, not consequences. Pathways exist through schools, NZSIS, and Internal Affairs, but they only work if children and parents know about them and trust them enough to use them.

Why this belongs in our thinking about education’s future

It would be easy to file this under “online safety” and move on. I’d resist that. This sits right at the intersection of the things I keep coming back to in this work – agency, equity, and what it actually means to equip young people to navigate a complex world rather than just protect them from it.

Banning, blocking, and legislating have a role, but they’re floor-building moves. They reduce some risk, but they don’t build the judgement, resilience, and critical awareness a young person needs to recognise manipulation when it shows up in a form we haven’t legislated against yet. That’s a ceiling problem, and ceilings are built through relationship and education, not restriction.

Here’s a question for leaders: if a student at your school tried to describe what’s happening to them online to a trusted adult at your school tomorrow, would they know who that adult was – and would they actually choose to?

If you are in a position where you have come across instances of this sort of thing happening, Finch’s advice is to immediately report it via the NZSIS reporting platform. The concern will be picked up immediately by the specialist team there.

Know the signs of violent extremism grooming

Here’s a video that Finch shared with the group he was speaking to – it’s publicly available and has been designed to help educate parents, teachers and others who are concerned about this issue – you may find it useful to share with staff and others in your school context.

Moving from performance to learning

Here’s ten minutes of viewing that I think every New Zealand educator, principal, and policymaker should make time for.

Farida Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education, recently presented her latest report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The report’s focus is curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment and it precisely names the tension we’re living through here in Aotearoa right now, just from the opposite direction.

Shaheed’s argument starts by stating simply that curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment aren’t separate technical choices. Curriculum determines which knowledge, histories, languages, and values are recognised and promoted, while pedagogy determines whether learners experience education through participation or obedience, trust or surveillance, cooperation or competition. And assessment? It determines what is rewarded, what’s ignored, who is allowed to progress, and who is left behind. Three levers, one system – and they need to be aligned with each other and with what we actually say education is for.

That’s where it gets pointed. Education is rarely measured against its internationally recognised aims; instead, learning is commonly judged through narrow performance indicators, exam results, and international rankings. The result is predictable: what can be easily measured becomes dominant, displacing what is vital to human development but difficult to quantify – creativity, empathy, ethical judgment, cultural understanding.

This is precisely the territory I’ve been circling in recent posts on the Taylorist drift in our current policy settings – structured literacy mandates, direct instruction, a heavier reliance on exam-based assessment. Shaheed gives that drift a sharper edge, arguing that when assessment is used primarily for ranking and selection, it can intensify social inequalities, undermine motivation, and push learners – especially those affected by poverty, disability, displacement, language barriers, or interrupted schooling – to disengage and exit education altogether, often through no fault of their own ability, but because the system offers too little flexibility or recovery.

Her call to action is the line I think NZ’s leaders should consider. It involves a shift from rating performance to supporting learning – meaning less dependence on high-stakes standardised testing, more formative assessment, portfolios, and project – and peer-based approaches that recognise progress and reward a wider range of competencies. And crucially, she pairs this with a defence of teacher professionalism. Shaheed argues that teachers should be able to exercise professional judgment and adapt teaching to learners’ needs, which isn’t possible when they’re constrained by rigid curricula, excessive testing tied to funding, or poor working conditions.

Then the report does something I love – it hands the microphone to the people the system is actually for. Drawing on interviews with more than 300 children and young people, Shaheed shares testimony from the young people interviewed that reinforces how important it is that these voices are taken notice of as we look to design education into the future. One young person she interviewed put it this way: “we spend years memorising answers but very little time learning how to think, question, create, or solve problems – we are trained to pass tests, not to understand the world around us”. Another asked for an education that prepares young people not only to pass exams but to live with dignity, think critically, and contribute meaningfully to their communities – and reminded us that relevance is not the same as immediate economic utility.

One student contribution captured something I haven’t heard said this plainly in any policy document. The student said that school has taught real strength and opened doors, but that the weight of those doors, the pressure of grades and exams, often crowds out care; that students carry more into class than books, including the quiet fear of falling behind that nobody grades. Read in full, in the addendum to her report, it’s a gut-punch – and exactly the kind of evidence base our system-level conversations are too often missing.

Here’s why I’m sharing this so directly with my network. We are, right now, swinging hard towards exactly the model Shaheed is asking the world to move away from – more standardisation, more high-stakes testing, more curriculum prescription, less room for teacher judgment. I don’t think anyone driving that swing intends harm. But intentions don’t change outcomes, and Shaheed’s report is about as clear a statement as you’ll find of what the evidence – and the young people living inside these systems – are telling us about where that road leads.

If you only have ten minutes this week, spend them watching this. Then ask yourself the question I’m asking myself: what would it take for “from rating performance to supporting learning” to become our guiding mantra, rather than the road not taken?

Beyond the personalisation debate

During the past week I read a post by Daisy Christodoulou titled Why personalising education based on student interests doesn’t work, which got me thinking about the current state of our education system, where so much of what is being advocated leans into standardisation and structured approaches.

Daisy’s article argues against a particular version of personalisation – one where students choose what to learn, how, and when, often mediated by technology and with minimal guidance from a teacher. I have a broader view. I’m not disagreeing with much of what she says; many of her critiques are valid. Students don’t always know what they need to learn, and knowledge matters. So does expert teaching and structure. But I think the way she presents the debate is being framed too narrowly.

Increasingly, the discussion about personalised learning is framed as a choice between student-directed inquiry and explicit instruction – between learner agency and structured teaching, between engagement and achievement. Perhaps this framing misses the point.

The problem with the extremes

Extreme 1: Personalisation as unlimited choice

Many of the criticisms of personalised learning are actually criticisms of unconstrained autonomy – the assumption that learners should decide everything for themselves. Learner agency is something quite different. It is about learners understanding, influencing, and taking increasing responsibility for their learning within a purposeful and supportive environment, as discussed in my post titled Four questions that matter most in learning.

When students are left to choose what to learn and how to demonstrate it, things can become fragmented and inequitable. Fragmented because learners may miss important concepts and connections, resulting in a patchwork of experiences rather than coherent knowledge. Inequitable because not all learners come to school with the same confidence, prior knowledge, or awareness of opportunities. Those with greater social and cultural capital are better positioned to make effective choices, while others may inadvertently narrow their options.

Agency, therefore, should not be confused with autonomy. Agency is developed when learners are supported to understand the purpose of their learning, participate in meaningful decisions about it, and reflect on their progress – all within a framework of carefully designed experiences and shared expectations. Agency is not the absence of structure; it is what enables learners to make productive use of it. (For more on this read my book; Agency By Design: An Educator’s Playbook)

Extreme 2: Standardisation as uniformity

At the other extreme lies a view of education where every learner is expected to learn the same content, in the same sequence, in the same way. The appeal is understandable – it promises consistency and the assurance that all learners are exposed to important knowledge. It also has great appeal to some in the teaching profession who struggle with the challenge of responding to individual needs in their classroom. Yet there is a danger when standardisation becomes synonymous with uniformity.

Learners arrive at school with different experiences, identities, strengths, cultural backgrounds, and ways of making sense of the world. A system that assumes otherwise risks overlooking the very factors that determine whether learning is meaningful and successful. As I have written elsewhere, this tendency reflects a broader pedagogy of compliance – an approach that rewards obedience and task completion rather than curiosity, critical thinking, and self-direction. Learners may learn how to follow instructions, but not necessarily how to think for themselves.

This tendency reflects a broader shift I have described elsewhere as the corporatisation of education. In such a view, schools are expected to operate like efficient organisations, where consistency, predictability, measurement, and performance indicators become the primary markers of success.

The challenge, then, is not whether we should have standards. Standards matter. The challenge is ensuring that our commitment to standards does not come at the expense of engagement, identity, and human flourishing. Common goals need not require uniform experiences. Indeed, if our aim is deep and enduring learning, they almost certainly demand something more.

Learning requires engagement

Much of the current debate assumes that learning is something that can be delivered, provided we find the right curriculum, pedagogy, or technology. John Dewey challenged this idea more than a century ago. He argued that education is not the passive transmission of knowledge but an active process of meaning-making. Teachers can explain, demonstrate, scaffold, and provide feedback – but they cannot do the learning on behalf of the learner.

This is not a rejection of the science of learning. The research on how memory works, how knowledge is encoded and retrieved, and how novices learn differently from experts offers genuinely valuable insights for teachers. But the science of learning describes cognitive mechanisms – it does not prescribe a single mode of instruction. Dewey’s insight sits alongside this evidence, not against it: whatever approach a teacher uses – explicit instruction, guided inquiry, collaborative learning, or direct modelling – the learner must still do the cognitive work of making meaning. The risk is when the science of learning gets flattened into a single instructional method, applied uniformly, rather than drawn on as one part of a responsive and varied pedagogical repertoire.

This is where both extremes begin to unravel. Advocates of unrestricted choice often assume that engagement alone is sufficient for learning. Advocates of standardisation often assume that exposure to carefully sequenced content is sufficient. Neither is entirely correct. Engagement without intellectual challenge can result in activity without learning. Knowledge without engagement can result in compliance without understanding.

The more important question, therefore, is not whether learners should engage with important knowledge – of course they should. The question is: How do we ensure learners engage deeply with important knowledge? This shifts the conversation significantly. Instead of asking whether learners should have choice or whether learning should be standardised, we begin asking how learning can be made meaningful.

In their book The Disengaged Teen, Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson argue that engagement emerges when learners experience learning as relevant, authentic, and purposeful – when they can see why something matters, how it connects to their lives, and what it enables them to do. This is not the same as enjoyment or compliance. Genuine engagement involves curiosity, ownership, and a willingness to persevere through difficulty because the learning feels worth the effort.

This matters because engagement and agency are not separate goals – they are mutually reinforcing. Engagement provides the conditions in which agency can grow: when learners experience learning as meaningful and purposeful, they begin to develop a greater sense of ownership over it. And as that sense of agency deepens, it strengthens engagement further. Over time, this is how learners move from compliance to genuine investment – from doing what is required to understanding why it matters and choosing to persist.

Interest is not the destination – but it is often the doorway

I agree that not everything should be taught through football, Taylor Swift, or whatever happens to be capturing a learner’s attention at a given moment. Nor should learners be free to opt out of important learning simply because it doesn’t align with their interests. There is knowledge and capability that every young person deserves access to, regardless of whether they would choose it for themselves.

Yet there is a danger in dismissing the role of interests altogether. The issue is not whether student interests should determine the curriculum. The issue is whether learning can be connected to purposes and experiences that learners find meaningful.

A learner may have little intrinsic interest in decoding text, but may be highly motivated to follow instructions for building something, research a topic they care about, or engage with stories that capture their imagination. The literacy learning remains important and non-negotiable. What changes is the context and the purpose it serves. The same principle applies in mathematics – abstract procedures become compelling when they help learners solve problems, make sense of patterns, or investigate issues they care about. The rigour is unchanged; the difference is that the learner can see why it matters.

Dewey understood this well. He argued that education begins with the learner’s experience but does not end there. The role of education is to build bridges from current experience towards new knowledge, new perspectives, and new possibilities. Seen this way, personalisation is not about replacing important learning with student interests – it is about creating pathways into important learning through experiences that carry meaning for the learner.

The goal is not to ask, “What do students want to learn?”; The goal is to ask, “How can we help students understand why this learning matters?”; Interest is not the destination. It is often the doorway.

A better way to think about personalisation

Perhaps we need a broader and more nuanced understanding of what personalisation means. If we accept that learners are different, then some degree of responsiveness is not simply desirable – it is necessary. The question is not whether learning should be personalised, but what aspects should be responsive to the learner and what aspects should remain common for all.

From this perspective, personalisation is not primarily about choice of content. It is about recognising and responding to learner variability while maintaining high expectations and shared goals. It can occur in several dimensions:

Pace

Learners do not all learn at the same rate. Equity is not achieved by expecting everyone to progress at exactly the same pace. Sometimes learners need more support; sometimes more challenge. Personalisation of pace ensures that learners experience an appropriate level of stretch while remaining capable of success – without abandoning a common curriculum.

Context

The knowledge being learned may be common; the context through which learners encounter it may vary. A literacy programme may focus on the same foundational skills for all learners while drawing on texts, examples, and applications that reflect learners’ interests, cultures, and communities. A mathematics lesson may address the same concepts through contexts that make the learning more meaningful. This is not about changing the destination – it is about creating multiple points of entry.

Pathway

While common outcomes matter, there is often more than one route to achieving them. Some learners benefit from collaborative learning; others from independent inquiry. Some demonstrate understanding through writing; others through presentation, design, or practical application. Personalisation of pathway allows flexibility in how learning occurs while maintaining clarity about outcomes. The pathways are purposeful and aligned to agreed goals. What varies is the route, not the destination.

Relationships

Perhaps the most important form of personalisation is also the most human. It requires knowing learners well – their strengths, needs, interests, cultural identities, aspirations, and circumstances. It involves building relationships of trust that enable learners to feel seen, valued, and supported. The most effective teachers have always personalised in this sense. They know when to challenge, when to encourage, when to intervene, and when to step back. This form of personalisation cannot be automated or standardised. It emerges through relationships.

Concluding thought: Holding the tension

The question is not whether learning should be personalised or standardised. That framing leads too quickly into a false choice. The real challenge is how we create learning experiences that combine the best of both: clear expectations and meaningful engagement; essential knowledge and learner agency; structure and relevance.

Agency without structure can become aimless; structure without agency can become compliance. Deep learning occurs when learners encounter ideas worth knowing and have opportunities to connect those ideas to their own lives, experiences, and aspirations.

Seen this way, personalisation is not the opposite of standards. It is one of the means by which standards become meaningful, accessible, and achievable for diverse learners. The aim is not uniformity or fragmentation, but coherence with responsiveness – common purpose, experienced through diverse pathways, contexts, and relationships.

A tale of two stadiums

Earlier this week I heard a friend of mine speaking to a group of people about his experience of change and a lesson he’d learned from attending a game of rugby the week before. My friend is a former rugby player who played at the top level. Like me, he spent years at Lancaster Park – that beloved, slightly battered ground that had been a cornerstone of Canterbury sporting and community life for 130 years, having opened officially in October 1881. Unlike me, he’d even played some of his top level rugby at that venue!

If you’ve ever stood in that crowd, packed among thousands of other Cantabrians, watching local heroes and international giants play out under open skies, you’ll know the feeling. There was something almost tribal about it – the cold, the noise, the shared belonging.

The earthquakes took it from us, of course. Not all at once, but eventually and irreversibly.

My friend described his recent experience at the new stadium, Te Kaha – arriving and immediately noticing how different it felt. The layout wasn’t quite right. The atmosphere seemed off. The seating struck him as strange. He caught himself comparing everything – unfavourably – to the old ground. Despite the fact that the new stadium is fully covered (so you’re no longer sitting in the freezing cold Christchurch Easterly, or being drenched during a Christchurch Southerly!), despite the better sight lines, despite the very real improvements, he found himself mourning Lancaster Park. Wanting it back. Feeling vaguely dissatisfied.

It wasn’t until somewhere around half time, a passage of play lit him up. He was on his feet, yelling. Completely absorbed in the game. And he paused, looked around, and realised: he was having a great time. His sense of disorientation lifted. His comment to me was simple but profound: “The new stadium is different. But the game is still being played. The crowds are still coming. And the old one is gone. I needed to accept that.”

Why This Matters for Schools

I’ve thought about this story a lot in the context of what’s happening in New Zealand education right now. School leaders – particularly principals – are experiencing a cascade of change. Curriculum reforms, assessment directions, structural shifts, and policy announcements that often arrive without adequate explanation, without meaningful consultation, and without time to prepare. A little like an earthquake, you might say: not always predictable, rarely welcome, and leaving people disoriented in the aftermath.

And when people are disoriented, something predictable happens. We reach for the familiar.

Psychologists call this status quo bias – our tendency to prefer the current state of affairs, or to idealise a past one, particularly when we feel we had no say in what changed. The research on this is robust: when change is imposed rather than chosen, people experience it not just as inconvenient but as a kind of loss. Daniel Kahneman’s work on loss aversion tells us that losses loom roughly twice as large as equivalent gains in our psychological experience. We don’t just prefer the old way – we feel the loss of it far more acutely than we feel any benefit from the new.

Added to this is what researchers call nostalgic recollection – our tendency to remember the past through a warmly distorted lens. The old stadium, in my friend’s memory, wasn’t just familiar. It was perfect. The atmosphere was better. Never mind the rain. Never mind the restricted views from certain stands. Never mind the ageing infrastructure. Memory is not a recording; it’s a reconstruction, and we reconstruct the past in ways that serve how we feel in the present. When we’re anxious and off-balance, the past feels safer than it ever actually was.

My friend was experiencing exactly this. He wasn’t really comparing two stadiums. He was comparing a lived present with an idealised memory – and the memory was always going to win that contest.

Looking in the Rear Vision Mirror

The thing that concerns me here is how many school leaders are currently navigating change in Aotearoa New Zealand. Too much energy is being spent looking in the rear vision mirror.

That’s not a criticism – it’s a completely understandable human response to loss and disruption. But when our focus is almost entirely fixed on what we’ve lost, what we used to do, what we believed was working, we lose our capacity to look forward. We lose our ability to read what’s actually in front of us and prepare our communities for it.

The risks of this are real. Schools that are institutionally exhausted by the grief of change find it harder to build the shared understanding their communities need. Leaders who are emotionally occupied by resentment or nostalgia are less available to ask the forward-facing questions: What will our students need in this environment? What opportunities exist here that didn’t before? How do we build the conditions for our people to make sense of this?

There’s a concept in psychological research called cognitive appraisal – the idea that our emotional response to a change is shaped not so much by the change itself as by how we interpret it. The same event, appraised as a threat, produces anxiety and resistance. Appraised as a challenge (or opportunity, even), it produces engagement and problem-solving. We don’t always get to choose what changes. But we have far more agency over how we appraise it than we typically exercise.

My friend’s half-time realisation was, in effect, a reappraisal. Not a denial of what was lost, but a re-engagement with what was actually present and real in front of him.

Sitting with the Discomfort – but Not Stopping There

I want to be careful here, because I’m not suggesting that school leaders should simply accept everything that’s coming down from above, or pretend that the current reform environment in New Zealand is beyond critique (it certainly isn’t!). Some of what is happening is genuinely poorly designed (and I’m trying to be polite here.) The pace is sometimes irresponsible (again, being polite). The consultation has in places been thin (or non-existent!). These are fair and important observations.

But there’s a distinction between holding a view – a considered, evidence-informed, professionally grounded view about what good looks like – and being so captured by what we’ve lost that we can’t function effectively in the present.

The educators I most admire are those who can do both things at once. They can grieve what was good about what existed before. They can advocate, clearly and calmly, for what the evidence supports. And they can still turn up fully for their staff, their students, and their families – not waiting for perfect conditions, but doing the important work in the conditions they actually have. Because the game, as my friend discovered, is still being played.

The children in our schools didn’t get a say in any of this either. They’re sitting in classrooms right now, and they need present, future-focused leaders who are scanning the horizon – not leaders who are lost in grief for a world that isn’t coming back.

A Different Kind of Preparation

My challenge to current school leaders is this: rather than waiting to respond to change as it arrives, what would it look like to prepare – actively, deliberately, collectively – for the change that’s coming?

This means staying close to the evidence about what works for learners, regardless of what’s being mandated from above. It means building the kind of shared professional culture in your school where people can hold uncertainty without it becoming paralysis. It means helping your community understand the broader drivers of change – not so they stop questioning, but so they can make sense of what’s happening and maintain trust in your leadership through it.

It also means scanning the broader environment to be aware of the forces at play that are driving the changes being experienced. This was for me, the motivation for pulling together the 2026 Education Environment Scan – not that we should all seek to become experts in national and international trends and politics. Rather, that by at least having an awareness of what is happening in the world around us, we might be better placed to anticipate and identify some of these shifts and changes before they suddenly impact us. (It also means that we may be better positioned to take pro-active action where appropriate, and to become active in voicing concerns before things become an issue to resolve.)

Put together, this is what I’d describe as a kind of principled adaptability: a clear sense of your values and your evidence base, held firmly, alongside a genuine willingness to engage with what the new landscape actually looks like – rather than endlessly mapping it against the old one.

The new stadium in Christchurch doesn’t carry the weight of 130 years of memory yet. It doesn’t have the worn edges and the shared history. But it has a roof. And it has a game being played inside it. And it has crowds who love rugby (or league, or concerts…) – who, once they let themselves be present, are just as alive and engaged and connected as they ever were at Lancaster Park.

The old stadium mattered. So does what’s here now.

The question is where we choose to put our attention.

Something to ponder…

If this resonates with you, I want to leave you with a few questions – not to answer all at once, but to carry with you into your week, your staff meetings, your quiet moments of reflection.

On your own response to change:

When you think honestly about the changes being asked of you right now, how much of your energy is being spent grieving what was – and how much is genuinely directed toward what could be?
Is there an “old stadium” in your professional life that you keep comparing the present to – and is that comparison helping you lead, or holding you back?
What would it take for you to have your own “half-time moment” – a point where you look around and realise you’re more engaged with the present than you thought?

On your school and community:

Do the people around you – your staff, your board, your whānau – have enough shared understanding of why things are changing to make sense of what they’re experiencing? Or are they navigating disruption without a map?
What’s one conversation you’ve been avoiding that, if you had it, might shift your school culture from reactive to responsive?

On looking forward:

What signals in your environment are you already picking up that suggest further change is coming – and what would it look like to get ahead of those, rather than be caught by them?
What does “principled adaptability” look like in your school, specifically? What are the non-negotiables you’d hold firm, and where is there genuine room to adapt?
If your students could see how you’re responding to the current environment, what would you want them to learn from watching you?

Screens, Learning, and Getting the Balance Right

This week I was asked to speak with the SLT group in a local school who are wrestling with the issues being raised in their community around the use of digital technologies in their school. It seems the conversation about digital technology in schools has taken a sharp turn. What was once driven by enthusiasm is now clouded by anxiety. Neither position fully serves our students – so what does a balanced, evidence-informed approach actually look like?

From Promise to Pushback

For me it doesn’t seem so long ago that digital technology in schools felt like a straightforward win. I was a lecturer in Educational Technology during the 1990s when much of this was happening. The promise was that devices would make learning more engaging, more personalised, more future-focused. Schools invested heavily. Every student would have a laptop. Classrooms would transform.

That enthusiasm has now collided with a harder reality. Concerns about digital distraction, screen time, wellbeing, and underwhelming academic outcomes have shifted the mood dramatically. In some quarters, the pendulum has swung all the way to calls for blanket bans – removing devices altogether and returning to pencil and paper.

The truth, as usual, sits somewhere more nuanced. And for schools trying to make sensible decisions, “somewhere more nuanced” isn’t particularly useful on its own. This post attempts to provide something more practical.

What the Research Actually Says

From my perspective, the honest summary of the international evidence is this: digital technologies are neither the revolution they were promised to be, nor the disaster some now fear. Their effects on learning are conditional, not automatic.

One New Zealand review found that some use of digital technology benefits learning – but that frequent or poorly structured use is associated with reduced outcomes. The context of use matters enormously: what task, for how long, whether teacher-directed or left to student choice. OECD research echoes this, finding that digital tools can meaningfully support learning – particularly when they provide targeted feedback or structured instructional scaffolding – but that benefits are uneven across tools, subjects, and age groups.

The most consistent finding is that technology works best when it extends a teaching strategy rather than replaces it. Adaptive software can help a teacher differentiate practice for students but it is far less effective as a stand-alone solution for developing deep understanding.

The areas where benefits are most reliably demonstrated include:

Personalised practice and feedback in literacy and numeracy
Simulations and intelligent tutoring systems that guide students step by step
Teacher-directed use integrated into a clear lesson plan

What has not been realised is the original headline promise: that ICT would automatically make learning more engaging, more effective, and more personalised across the board. The potential was real; it was simply overstated as a general solution when it works better as a carefully chosen instructional resource.

Beyond Tools: Technology as a Learning Environment

The three benefits listed above – personalised feedback, structured simulations, teacher-directed tasks – are real and evidence-backed. But they share a common assumption: that technology is essentially a tool, something a teacher deploys to support a specific learning activity. That framing, while useful, undersells what digital technology can do at its best.

Many schools I’ve worked with over recent years have moved toward something more ambitious: using platforms like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 not as a collection of tools, but as an integrated learning environment – a space where learning happens, is represented, and is curated over time.

Consider what this can look like in practice. A teacher shares the instructions, resources, and context for a topic within Google Classroom – not just once at the start of a lesson, but in a persistent, accessible form that students can return to whenever they need it. Students access curated links and materials as their understanding develops. They contribute resources they’ve discovered themselves, sharing them with peers in a common space. They engage in asynchronous dialogue – with classmates, with their teacher – reflecting on ideas outside the boundaries of a single lesson period.

As the work develops, students build a body of artefacts: notes, drafts, presentations, videos, collaborative documents. These aren’t just products to be handed in – they become a curated portfolio of learning that the student can navigate, reflect on, and add to over time. Against the indicator statements of a progression or rubric, students are encouraged to make ongoing judgements about their own performance, drawing on feedback from teachers, peers, and parents to build an evidence base that justifies an assessment decision.

This is a fundamentally different relationship with both learning and assessment. Rather than receiving instruction and demonstrating understanding at a single fixed point in time, the student becomes an active agent – taking ownership not just of what they learn, but of how they document, evaluate, and communicate their learning.

In SAMR terms, this is firmly in Redefinition territory. It describes learning experiences that are not simply enhanced by technology – they are made possible by it. A student curating evidence of their own growth over a year, engaging in dialogue with their teacher asynchronously, and making self-assessments against shared criteria cannot do that with a pencil and exercise book alone.

This is the version of educational technology worth fighting for. And it is also, arguably, the version that has been least visible in the public debate – which has tended to focus on devices in classrooms rather than on the deeper question of what a well-designed digital learning environment can enable.

Why the Mood Has Shifted

It’s worth pondering some of the reasons this shift in perspective is occurring – particularly for school leaders seeking to lead conversations within staff and community settings. Several forces are driving the change in tone – and it is worth separating them out, because they require different responses.

Distraction during learning time is one of the clearest concerns. OECD data indicates that nearly one in three students is distracted by digital devices in class, and that distraction is associated with weaker performance in mathematics. When devices are available for non-learning purposes during learning time, many students use them that way – and this is especially true when the alternative activity is demanding.

Wellbeing and health concerns extend well beyond the classroom. Questions about sleep disruption, attention span, physical activity, social development, and the design of social media platforms themselves have widened the debate. Paediatric guidance endorsed for New Zealand schools recommends age-sensitive limits and more deliberate, purposeful use. These are legitimate concerns that schools cannot simply set aside.

The quality of implementation has also been a problem. Much of what has happened under the banner of “educational technology” has operated at what educationalists call the substitution level – essentially using a device to do the same thing a textbook or exercise book would have done. Little use has genuinely transformed how students learn. A significant reason for this is that the education workforce has not been adequately prepared to integrate technology in ways that make a meaningful pedagogical difference.

A Framework Worth Knowing: SAMR

For those who want a mental model to evaluate how technology is being used, the SAMR framework (developed by Dr Ruben Puentedura) is a helpful lens. It describes four levels of technology integration:

Substitution – technology replaces a tool with no functional change (typing instead of writing)
Augmentation – technology replaces a tool with some functional improvement (using spell-check, hyperlinking)
Modification – technology allows significant redesign of the task (collaborative online documents, peer feedback tools)
Redefinition – technology enables learning that was previously not possible (global collaboration, real-time data collection, simulations)

The evidence suggests most school technology use sits at the bottom two levels. The higher levels – where technology genuinely changes what’s possible – require deeper pedagogical thinking and stronger teacher capability. The World Economic Forum’s work on the reskilling needed for Education 4.0 is relevant here: the technology has run ahead of the workforce capacity to use it well.

The Developmental Continuum Matters

One of the biggest mistakes in this debate is treating “digital technology in schools” as a single question with a single answer. It is not.

A blanket ban on devices in the early years of schooling, while children are building foundational literacy, numeracy, and social skills, may be entirely appropriate. Young children benefit from embodied, hands-on, relationship-rich learning. The evidence for significant learning gains from screens in this age group is thin, and the concerns about health and developmental impact are more acute.

At the senior secondary level, the picture is different. Students preparing to enter tertiary education, the workforce, and adult civic life in an increasingly digital world need genuine fluency with digital tools – the ability to research critically, evaluate sources, create and communicate digitally, and manage information responsibly. A school that bans devices in Year 12 may be protecting students from distraction while simultaneously leaving them underprepared for the world they are about to enter.

But fluency here means more than knowing how to use specific applications. The modern workplace increasingly operates within integrated digital environments – shared platforms where teams collaborate, communicate asynchronously, manage projects, curate knowledge, and document progress over time. The capability to work effectively within those environments – to manage your own contributions, engage in professional dialogue digitally, and take ownership of how your work is represented and evaluated – is now a baseline expectation in many fields. Students who have spent their senior years developing exactly those habits within a well-designed school learning environment are not just better prepared academically. They are better prepared for work and life.

This is one of the strongest arguments for the kind of integrated digital learning environment described earlier in this post. It is not merely good pedagogy. It is genuine preparation for the world students are about to enter.

Age-appropriate, developmentally informed policy is not a compromise – it is the right answer.

The ‘Whole Child’ Lens

One of the things I feel important to re-iterate here is that schools are not simply academic institutions. They are charged with looking after the whole child – academic progress and wellbeing, social development, physical health, and safety. Any honest approach to digital technology must hold both concerns simultaneously.

This means the health and safety dimensions – screen time, posture, lighting, online safety, cyberbullying, privacy, and the risks associated with social media – are not obstacles to good educational technology practice. They are part of it. Schools in New Zealand are legally obliged to manage these risks as health and safety responsibilities.

Framing this correctly is important. Schools that create clear boundaries around device use are not being anti-technology. They are being responsible stewards of the learning environment and the children in their care.

What Should Schools Actually Do?

The evidence points toward a clear direction, even if the details will differ by school context. Here are some principles I believe should guide decisions.

1. Start from your ‘why’

Any school’s approach to digital technology should be traceable back to its stated values, vision, and graduate profile. If your school says it is developing independent, critical thinkers who can evaluate information and distinguish fact from opinion, then your approach to how students access and use digital information must actually develop those capabilities – not undermine them.

This is the “line of sight” test: can you draw a clear line from the technology decision you are making to the kind of learner you are trying to develop? If not, the decision needs revisiting.

2. Be purposeful rather than expansive

The strongest policy direction from the evidence is not “more screens” or “no screens,” but more selective use. Give priority to tools with a genuine evidence base – structured literacy supports, adaptive practice platforms, simulations, tasks that would be harder to do as well without technology. Be sceptical of any technology that is being used simply because it is convenient or because the school invested in it.

3. Distinguish educational use from personal use

Schools need policies that clearly separate technology used for learning from personal or social device use. These are different activities with different effects, and they warrant different rules. A student using adaptive reading software is not the same as a student checking social media. Policy needs to reflect this distinction.

4. Apply age-appropriate limits

For the early years prioritise human interaction, physical activity, foundational skill development, and relationship-based learning. Technology use should be selective, brief, and directly purposeful. In the middle years introduce more structured, teacher-directed technology tasks while maintaining clear limits on personal device use during learning time. At the senior level develop genuine digital capability – critical evaluation, responsible creation, digital communication – as preparation for life beyond school.

5. Build teacher capability

Technology will only work as well as the educators using it. Schools and the system need to invest in professional learning that helps teachers design effective technology-integrated tasks – not just how to use tools, but when and why. It is important to note here that the professional learning must be ongoing – because of the changing nature of the technologies being used, we can never assume that a single PLD experience will equip teachers for whatever happens into the future. The ambition should be to move use up the SAMR framework toward genuine transformation.

6. Engage whānau and community

The wellbeing concerns about screen time, social media, and online safety extend well beyond school hours. Schools cannot address these concerns alone. Effective approaches involve parents and families in understanding the school’s approach, the reasoning behind it, and the role they play at home. On reflection I think this should be number one on my list – for unless there is a strong connection between what happens at home and at school on this issue, educators are limited in the ways they can address what needs to be done here.

The Question Worth Asking

The debate must move from “Should schools use digital technology?” to a better question: “What kinds of use are educationally justified, and under what safeguards?”

That is the right question. It acknowledges that the technology is here, that some of its applications genuinely support learning, that others genuinely cause harm, and that the difference lies in how thoughtfully schools design and govern its use.

The most defensible position for any school is not “digital or not digital” – it is “digital where it improves learning better than the available alternative, with appropriate safeguards for the whole child.”

That framing will not fit neatly on a policy poster. But it is honest, it is evidence-informed, and it is sustainable.

References used in developing this post:

Cullen; Marsh; Simmons; Duncan (2025) The impact of digital technologies on children and adolescents in Aotearoa New Zealand: A case for the development of best-practice recommendations for schools: Waikato Journal of Education (https://wje.org.nz/index.php/WJE/article/view/1095)
Dept. for Education (UK) (2025) Technology in Schools survey: 2024 to 2025 Research report (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/692834a6ce50d215cae9610e/Technology_in_schools_survey_2024_to_2025_research_report.pdf)
Ministry of Education (2025) Health and safety management of digital device use by staff and students (https://www.education.govt.nz/education-professionals/schools-year-0-13/health-and-safety/health-and-safety-management-digital-device-use-staff-and-students)
OECD (2025) The impact of digital technologies on students’ learning – Results from a literature review (https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/the-impact-of-digital-technologies-on-students-learning_9997e7b3-en.html)
OECD (2025) Can the targeted use of digital devices in education win over the naysayers? (https://oecdedutoday.com/can-the-targeted-use-of-digital-devices-in-education-win-over-the-naysayers)
OECD (2024) Managing screen time – How to protect and equip students against distraction (https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/managing-screen-time_7c225af4-en.html)
Paediatric Society of NZ (2025) Protecting Tamariki Online: A Paediatric Perspective on Harm, Responsibility, and Systemic Solutions (https://www.paediatrics.org.nz/knowledge-hub/view-resource?id=153)
Powerschool (2021) SAMR Model: A Practical Guide for K-12 Classroom Technology Integration (https://www.powerschool.com/blog/samr-model-a-practical-guide-for-k-12-classroom-technology-integration/)
Ruijia; Wenling; Zeumei (2025) The impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on learning outcomes in early childhood and primary education: a meta-analysis of moderating factors (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1540169/full)
World Economic Forum (2025) Reskilling Revolution | Ep 2 | The Role of AI in Education 4.0 (https://www.weforum.org/videos/reskilling-revolution-ai-education-4-0/)

Introduction

What the rise and fall of civilisations can teach us about educational transformation

What I’ve observed and learned

The Pattern I’ve Come to Recognise

Why this matters

Futuremakers Newsletter

Futuremakers Newsletter

Futuremakers Newsletter

“Evidence Is No Match for Ideology”

The Amnesia Problem

Technology, Phones, and the Equity Blindspot

AI: Not for Instruction. For Making.

The Monday/Someday Conundrum

Why You Should Listen

For more, read:

View the podcast:

Futuremakers Newsletter

Download the document

Futuremakers Newsletter

This isn’t the radicalisation we’re used to thinking about

Why banning platforms won’t fix this

What actually helps

Why this belongs in our thinking about education’s future

Know the signs of violent extremism grooming

Futuremakers Newsletter

Futuremakers Newsletter

The problem with the extremes

Extreme 1: Personalisation as unlimited choice

Extreme 2: Standardisation as uniformity

Learning requires engagement

Interest is not the destination – but it is often the doorway

A better way to think about personalisation

Pace

Context

Pathway

Relationships

Concluding thought: Holding the tension

Related posts:

Futuremakers Newsletter

Why This Matters for Schools

Looking in the Rear Vision Mirror

Sitting with the Discomfort – but Not Stopping There

A Different Kind of Preparation

Something to ponder…

On your own response to change:

On your school and community:

On looking forward:

Further reading

Futuremakers Newsletter

From Promise to Pushback

What the Research Actually Says

Beyond Tools: Technology as a Learning Environment

Why the Mood Has Shifted

A Framework Worth Knowing: SAMR

The Developmental Continuum Matters

The ‘Whole Child’ Lens

What Should Schools Actually Do?

The Question Worth Asking

References used in developing this post:

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What others say

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