make as they grapple with the challenge of twenty-first-century learning, the
development offlexible learning spaces and the rapidly changing nature of
knowledge and learning in a digital age. Teachers and leaders were selected from
the several case study schools that have participated since 2013. In 2015, data was
gathered through interviews, focus groups and observations of teachers working in
flexible spaces and/or implementing BYOD and/or e-Learning. The intent was to
continue to encourage these participants to explore and reflect on their lived pro-
fessional experiences in the context of twenty-first-century learning, but now with
the focus being on their evolving understanding and experience of leading and
managing their transition to modern teaching and learning practices. It was also
important to understand the challenges and obstacles they have encountered in this
transition process, and how they sustain fundamental pedagogical change.
Current Ministry of Education discourse and rhetoric is associated with the
development of the‘twenty-first century skills’that are a springboard for lifelong
economic success. The skills to be developed in young people are“resilience,
adaptability, the ability to think critically and solve problems, team work, and the
ability to independentlyfind and use information”(Ministry of Education 2014 ,
p. 30). An evaluation of practice in the selected case study schools should, there-
fore, be considered through the lenses of pedagogical principles that can be con-
sidered essential to the development of‘twenty-first century skills’, such as:
personalisation, interdisciplinary and project-based inquiry, student direction or
agency, and collaborative practices (Pearlman 2010 ).
One of the case study schools that had participated in the earlier project was
Rosehill College, and it was once again approached as it was in the second year of
BYOD implementation. This made it an ideal case study in view of the likelihood
of teachers living through the experience of implementing a significant new strat-
egy, which, as suggested above, would be placing demands on their pedagogy and
sense of professional identity.
20.7.2 Research Design
Initially, the design of the 2015 study was framed as a comparison of four case
study schools. Each of the four schools presents as a‘case’of teachers experiencing
transition. Within this design, it was intended that three teachers (or three teams of
teachers) would be observed three times each, would participate in various informal
debriefing discussions, and afinal staff focus group. In addition, the principal would
be interviewed.
Case study design is contentious, if only because there is no clarity over whether
it is a methodology or an approach (Chadderton and Torrance 2011 ). Further, there
are differences of opinion over where to draw the boundaries around a case, and
whether understanding the‘case’develops from the constructed meanings of the
participants, or from the account provided by the‘objective’researcher. To resolve
some of these issues, Chadderton and Torrance ( 2011 ), opted for a specific
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