A blended learning model for K12 professional education

Meaningful learning. Didactic transposition. Active methodologies. Digital information and communication technologies.

The covid-19 pandemic brought a period of suspension of face-to-face classes that gave many Brazilian teachers the opportunity to try out new pedagogical practices mixing face-to-face and non-face-to-face moments, broadly called hybrid teaching, implemented by teachers throughout Brazil. There was not, however, a broad theoretical-conceptual debate about what hybrid teaching is and whether learning, using this model, could take place in a meaningful way. Bringing the problem to the Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Sul (IFRS), the following question was asked: how can IFRS teachers appropriate and apply, according to the principles of meaningful learning, pedagogical practices involving hybrid teaching? The general objective of this dissertation is to develop a reference guide, with concepts and proposals for the application of hybrid teaching at the Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Sul (IFRS), in the context of Integrated High School, based on the principles of meaningful learning. Therefore, we sought to: a) describe how blended learning, based on meaningful learning, has been applied in high school in Brazil through a state-of-the-art literature review; b) to know the profile of technical education teachers integrated into IFRS secondary education in relation to their prior knowledge about blended learning, recording reports and evaluations of experiences on blended learning lived by them, involving questionnaires, interviews and participation in online applications. line; c) to transpose the theoretical knowledge and empirical information obtained, in a didactic way, adopting the assumptions of the theory of didactic transposition for the production of the guide. With the bibliographic research, 276 works were found dealing with the application of hybrid teaching in high schools in Brazil. Of these, 28 were selected that used the assumptions of meaningful learning as part of the theoretical framework. How and where knowledge is being produced is discussed; the hybrid teaching models used; how the activities were applied and what were the motivations, objectives and conclusions of the authors in relation to obtaining meaningful learning through the application of blended learning. The publications analyzed involved personalization of teaching; measurement of subsumers and meaningful learning; construction of concept maps; use of digital information and communication technologies; use of gamification; dynamics of the three pedagogical moments; application of didactic sequences; construction of potentially significant educational units; applying blended learning to entire courses and applying modified versions of blended learning models. As for the field study, ninety professors answered the questionnaire, which corresponds to 6.6% of the institution's total professors. The interaction on the online platform and on the instant messaging application involved the participation of 51 professors, five of whom were interviewed. The interaction with the professors demonstrated that most of them already have a formed concept about blended learning and have already put it into practice, if not using the theoretical framework presented here, at least intuitively. For this audience, the guide produced as a result of this dissertation will be of great value to develop meaningful learning. The greatest difficulty, however, will lie with those professors who have a different concept of hybrid teaching from that presented in this dissertation or who simply do not want to apply hybrid teaching for any other reason. It emphasizes the importance of the education product, result of the research carried out in this dissertation, elaborated in the light of the theory of didactic transposition and the importance of the dialogue between the academic production, the professors and the didactic materials, mediated by the didactic transposition, having the programs of professional master's degrees, such as IFRS's Informatics in Education, a leading role in this process.