Online learning and children – critically exploring their lived experiences

Tina Hedger

Key words #HomeEducated #OnlineEducation #SchoolsOnline #phenomenological #post-intentional

Education in a physical school building as the only model of education, is being increasingly rejected by parents and their children.  Technology could be used to create an alternative model of education, in which it is possible for children, who are not geographically close, to engage in rich dialogic exchanges to develop their subject knowledge. However academic literature and government guidance provide conflicting views of what it is to be a child-pupil-student and what the shape of online-learning for children should be.

This research will provide an opportunity for children and their educators, to provide their own narratives, and express their own views of their experiences. The narratives will be part of the social phenomenon that is a home-educated child’s intentional interaction with technology to engage with others online to develop subject knowledge. This is a space where multiple powerful narratives influence the type and nature of engagement with the technology and a child’s ability to exercise their own autonomy.

My place within the research is that of an experienced educator and pastoral leader within secondary schools. My subjects were Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Computer Science and I was responsible for the academic progress and pastoral care of children in years 10 and 11 (aged 14 to 16 years), typically around 250 children.  My pastoral experiences formed my opinion that a school-based education worked well with some children, but not others. My experiences as a teacher and pastoral leader were that online resources were very available, and many were excellent, however, when a child was removed from a class and isolated, work had to be sufficiently easy for them to accomplish on their own. Taking a child out of a classroom, and isolating them from others, meant that any work that was in their Zone of Proximal Development was not completed. This limits an isolated child’s academic progression and has the potential to marginalise children who struggle to engage with school-based learning.

In the UK, government data shows that more than 3,000 children a day lost learning through suspension from schools in 2021-2022. This figure does not include the internally isolated students, or children who are registered as absent from school, and the government data shows that children who have recognised learning needs are more likely to be classed as persistently absent. This makes an investigation into alternative modalities of education of national importance.  Key to this is understanding the multiple provocations and subsequent online structures that influence online collaborative dialogic learning for children. This is an area that currently has limited academic research.

In this research, the narratives of the home-educated children and their educators, will be analysed taking a critical post-intentional phenomenological approach. This is a methodology that focuses on understanding how individual narratives form part of a social phenomenon. It examines how one experience connects with the experiences of many within a threaded web of connections. This then makes it possible to explore how the different dimensions of the social phenomenon assert power in ways that subvert the autonomy and agency of the home-educated children and their educators. This research aims to contribute to the active unsettling of existing narratives of childrens’ education. This will allow space to challenge the inequalities that have been shaped by social structures, systems and practices, exploring how the existing situation can be improved to reduce the potential for children who do not fit well into traditional school systems, to be marginalised.