Summer 2006

Innovation in education

Gasp! Not the 'I' word

We’ve all heard it—the latest, greatest, newest idea—usually delivered on a Thursday afternoon just when we were starting to pretend that the weekend had almost arrived. Where does innovation fit into teaching? Kerri McKenna provides an answer.

So what is ‘innovation’?

Firstly innovation is about a good idea—often sparked by someone else’s idea or discovery, or a new context. There is no definite consensus on what innovation is—Wikipedia gives us seven ‘classic’ definitions—but basically to be an innovation there needs to be more than the idea, there has to be a plan. The ‘Learning Innovation and Technology Consortium’ (LITC) defines innovation as ‘the process of thinking and acting creatively to solve an identified problem with the outcome being a new process or product that acts as a catalyst for new cycles of development’. I like this definition because it captures the elements of newness, relevance and ongoing process which are most appropriate in innovation in the school context. Innovation can start top-down or develop bottom-up, but once it is embedded in practice it is no longer ‘innovation’.

Why all the interest?

Learners today need to become experts in their own learning; they have to be able to evaluate what they do and don’t know, and how to learn what’s needed. David Warner writes: ‘The critical knowledge era skills include self-directed learning, adaptability, collaboration, risk taking, communication, self-reflection and ability to change direction, self-management and self-discipline.’ People in schools are interested in innovation because they realise that they have to be; that doing what we have traditionally done as ‘education’ (with just a bit of new jargon) isn’t developing the skills, knowledge and beliefs that we know young people want and need. But it isn’t just schools: interest in innovation is widespread. The LITC noted in 2004 that Amazon listed about 78,000 books about innovation. The current number is 162,370. Warner’s ‘new world’ is here!

What is the place of innovation in teaching and learning?

All sections of learning communities can gain from innovation. When teachers feel supported in trying new things at the individual and team levels they are free to relish inspiration and reach new levels of satisfaction and fulfilment. By participating in the innovations of others and having opportunities to initiate their own, young people gain opportunities to lead, to be team members, to take risks and to have an ‘authentic’ voice in what they learn and how they learn it. Communities need innovation to ensure that habits aren’t encoded as traditions for no real purpose—to ensure that we can critique our beliefs and actions and problem-solve how to change what needs changing.

We have to establish room for innovation in schools, and validate it, because it is how we model risk taking, it is how we provide opportunities for students to take risks and it is how we demonstrate the development of good ideas about teaching and learning into action. It is how we realise strategic change.

How does innovation become practice?

To become practice, innovation has to become embedded in the mainstream activity of the individual or organisation, that is, the innovation has to be taken up by the main group of stakeholders.

Technology innovation in educational organisations has often been depicted as a steep-sided figure (adapted from Rueter, see below) with a significant downturn in take-up between the early adopters and the early mainstream.

In fact, the implementation of most innovations could be charted like this.

Rogers, whose book Diffusion of Innovations is recognised as a seminal work in the field, claims that each member of the social system faces his/her own innovation-decision that follows a five step process:

1. knowledge—the person becomes aware of an innovation and has some idea of how it functions
2. persuasion—the person forms a favourable or unfavourable attitude toward the innovation
3. decision—the person engages in activities that lead to a choice to adopt or reject the innovation
4. implementation—the person puts an innovation into use
5. confirmation—the person evaluates the results of an innovation-decision already made.

It can be argued that learning organisations, as organic systems, also follow this process.

What stifles innovative thought and action?

You would think that too many rules are what dries up the creative juices needed for innovation but in my experience innovators just work around these when they want to. More restrictive is the lack of opportunities and structures for innovation to be recognised, appreciated and supported.

What stifles innovation for teachers and young people is often lack of teamwork; innovators trying (or being expected) to also be ‘embedders’. Or the expectation that the innovator will want to repeat an innovative program/project over and over. This leads to ‘pockets of excellence’ in which an innovator sets up an innovative program or project, runs it a few times to refine and develop it, but then wants to move on. Unfortunately the innovation is often abandoned as no-one else wants to be responsible for it. Some great innovations die because they are diffused through so many filters that the original good idea is lost. Some great innovations wind up because they met a need that no longer exists—they have served their purpose.

In some learning organisations only certain individuals in specific roles are perceived as having the ‘right’ and the authority to innovate. In newer ways of thinking anyone may take up leadership in specific circumstances; leadership is more about the task at hand than the role of the person.

So how do we educate for innovative thinkers and doers?

Marzano and LeMaster in their article ‘Potential in Action’ state that people who accomplish extraordinary things learn how to:

• analyse authentic problems and find novel solutions
• use relevant technologies
• experiment, explore, and test ideas
• collaborate with others
• communicate ideas
• sustain and spread innovation
• find new avenues, such as social entrepreneurship, through which to spread innovation.

We need to audit our curriculum and school structures to see how often we provide these opportunities to our students, then we need to ask the young people how they could provide them for themselves! Learning needs to be more real.

If we need innovation so much, how can we ensure it happens?

We can ensure innovation happens by understanding that schools are organisations of learners and, as such, need to think and plan strategically for learning.

We can support good ideas so that they become an innovation by developing:

• a structure with a rationale for change
• a description of how change will be achieved
• a clear analysis of enabling and disabling factors
• a strategy for promoting ownership of change
• an evaluation plan.

We can resource innovation (as we do other things which we value in schools) with time, money and energy.

And finally, we can create a culture which recognises and celebrates innovation, and protects and nurtures innovators.

References

Learning Innovation and Technology Consortium (2004). Fostering Innovation for Social Change, retrieved 15 September 2006, from http://learninginnovation.org/LITCWhite_Paper_Innovation.pdf

Marzano, R & LeMaster, H (2004). ‘Potential in Action’, Classroom Leadership, retrieved 15 September 2006 from www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/menuitem.ed021bd159f71ce0b17855b3e3108a0c/

Rogers, EM (1995). Diffusion of Innovations, 4th Ed, The Free Press, New York (p. 162).

Rueter, J (1999). ‘A New Metaphor for the Spread of Innovation in Teaching and Learning’, retrieved 17 September 2006, from http://web.pdx.edu/~rueterj/teaching/new_metaphor/

Warner, D (no date). ‘Welcome to the Home of Knowledge Era Schooling’, retrieved 16 September 2006 from http://ec-web.elthamcollege.vic.edu.au/featured/discussions/

Kerri McKenna is the director of Learning Development at Eltham College of Education in Victoria.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au