Resistance to blogging (guest post)

My colleague, Fiona Casserly, an Early Years teacher, has shared her thoughts after the Blog of the Term award for her students.

The concept of informal and formal learning and preference for a particular kind of pedagogy seem fundamental to whether a student blogs or not. 

In my observations today I can see that the students who find blogging an addition to their course are predominantly the students that - it seems to me - have high self-efficacy and are high achievers.  This idea about their abilities to perform academically may lead them with feelings that they can achieve highly awarded assessments or learning gains without the help of blogs. Their stimuli response to handing in work has always (or mostly) been one that is positive. Combined with this high self-efficacy, students may have a more behaviourist attitude towards teaching and learning. They may see that formal learning only takes place in the classroom whereby the teacher can ‘pour’ in knowledge and that less learning takes place outside of the classroom arena. If learning activities outside of the classroom are viewed as informal this may then be seen as an add-on to their already loaded studies, rather than being an integral part of their course. 

Students which may have low self-efficacy may feel that they need more guidance and support and therefore are more inclined to view the work of others to create feelings of security, for example that they are on the right tracks.  This does relate to their level of performance, as in terms of formal assessment they fall in the mid to lower brackets on the marking scale.

My immidiate reaction is that there can be another explanation why high-achieving learmers may be reluctant to engage into blogging for learning: they spend their time studying differently. This is not a judgement on blogging: it will be interesting to see the outcomes in two years time when that group leaves the college to continue their last two years of the course at university.