Teachers’ digital days are shaped long before they log in. Timetables, yard duties, meeting schedules, policies, enterprise agreements and system level decisions about platforms and data all set the conditions for what digital work is required, when it must be done, and how much support is available. I use this pillar to focus on those organisational and industrial settings, and on what they mean for leadership, workload and the sustainability of digital practice.
In the research, this sits alongside classroom observation and staffroom stories. The same task, for example logging a welfare concern or chasing missing work, can feel routine in one school and impossible in another, depending on platform choices, roster design, expectations about response times and how workload conversations are handled. Looking at structures helps explain those differences.
What this work looks like
When you zoom out from an individual lesson, schools shape digital practice through everyday decisions such as:
• which platforms are mandatory, optional or quietly abandoned
• how many systems teachers are expected to keep up to date at once
• when staff are given time to do digital tasks, and when they are expected to “fit it in”
• who is expected to respond to which messages, and how quickly
• how enterprise agreements and policies talk about administration, records and data
These choices are rarely neutral. A timetable that leaves no gap between teaching blocks pushes digital recording into evenings and weekends. A platform rollout without protected time for learning and setup increases reliance on informal “go to” people. A policy that demands multiple layers of documentation without removing older requirements simply stacks new digital work on top of old.
Why it matters
It is easy to read teachers’ digital struggles as individual problems of skill, mindset or “resistance”. The findings from this project suggest a different story. Teachers’ capacity to use digital tools well depends heavily on:
• whether they have regular, protected time to do digital work
• whether systems are integrated or fragmented
• whether expectations are explicit, realistic and shared
• whether informal support is recognised and distributed, or left to a few overburdened colleagues
Focusing on structures also shifts the conversation about accountability. If a welfare system is out of date, or a reporting platform is filled at the last minute, the question is not just “why did this teacher not keep up”. It becomes “how have we designed the day, the policies and the toolset that makes timely, careful digital work possible or impossible”.
For leaders, this opens up practical levers for change. Some involve technology choices, but many sit in timetabling, meeting loads, documentation requirements and how professional learning is organised. For teachers, it can be grounding to see that what feels like a personal failure is often a predictable result of structural conditions.
How this pillar links to the rest of the site
• Digitally Mediated Work of Teachers describes the digital tasks teachers actually carry out.
• Informal exchange of digital practices shows how teachers help each other survive and improve that workload.
• How schools shape digital practice asks which organisational and industrial settings make those tasks and exchanges sustainable, and which turn them into a source of overload.
This pillar holds the backdrop for the other two:
Together they make it possible to talk about digital practice without collapsing everything into personal resilience or enthusiasm for technology.
Explore how schools shape digital practice
If you would like to go further into this pillar, you might start with:
• How School Policies Shape Teachers’ Digital Days
• Timetables, Yard Duty and Digital Workload
• Why Adding “Just One More Platform” Is Never Simple
• A Checklist for Leaders Before Introducing a New Digital Tool
Read all blog posts →
Dominic Brash 