This summer I'm going to train two different groups (so far!) of principals on blended learning. I guess I'm qualified to do this since I've been leading an online high school for the past four years, and the biggest piece to blended learning that high schools don't have is the online part of it.
To prepare for this training, I have been reading a lot of internet articles, blogs, and blended by Michael Horn. I highly recommend it, and I might review it if I ever get time.
One of the biggest hurdles for principals to overcome when introducing blended learning in their schools is changing the mindset from a teacher-centered to a student-centered classroom. Some people call this teacher-lead versus student-centered instruction. Others call it learner-centered instruction instead of student-centered. It doesn't matter what the nomenclature is, it's still the same thing: it's the notion that the teacher doesn't hold all the knowledge in the classroom, and in its ideal form, the teacher is the lead learner. This is the essence of Dr. Eric Glover's Leading, Teaching, Learning triad.
So what's the difference between teacher-lead instruction and student-centered instruction? The University of Connecticut has a great comparison of the paradigms here.
So how do principals get teachers to move towards student-centered learning? I'll reflect on that in part 2 of this series.