Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- one Introduction
- two Curriculum
- three Assessment
- four Pedagogy
- five Advice and guidance
- six Information, communication and learning technologies
- seven School design
- eight Innovation
- nine The teaching profession
- ten Leadership
- eleven Firm foundations
- Sources and suggestions
- Appendix: Participants in the seminars
- Index
eight - Innovation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- one Introduction
- two Curriculum
- three Assessment
- four Pedagogy
- five Advice and guidance
- six Information, communication and learning technologies
- seven School design
- eight Innovation
- nine The teaching profession
- ten Leadership
- eleven Firm foundations
- Sources and suggestions
- Appendix: Participants in the seminars
- Index
Summary
Too many leaders say they want innovation but behave in ways that stifle it. (Rosabeth Moss Kanter)
If we want people's intelligence and support, we must welcome them as cocreators. People only support what they create. (Margaret J. Wheatley)
Innovation, like creativity, is one of the current buzz words in education – by which I mean it is treated as a positive, even exciting, concept among teachers and has recently been taken up by education ministers and the DfES. Conventionally innovation has been defined as:
… the exploitation of a new idea through practical action that adds value to a product, process or service.
This immediately removes two popular misconceptions: that an innovation is simply a new idea, which is the first element in an innovation, but not the innovation itself; and secondly that an innovation must be a product or service, as is often so in industry, when innovation can just as readily be a process, and in particular the process of designing an organisation and its operation. The business guru Peter Drucker offered a definition of innovation as:
… a change that creates a new dimension of performance.
which would appeal to those who think of education as being largely concerned with the performance of teachers. I prefer, for application in education, innovation to be defined as:
doing things differently in order to do them better,
which can mean a modest adjustment to what one has done hitherto or a much more dramatic change in that one does something new to replace previous practice. The emphasis on ‘better’ is important, for we cannot blindly assume that an innovation is inherently a good thing, an advance on what went before. An innovation is not necessarily more effective or efficient than current practice. An innovation can spread in educational circles because it is imposed on the profession or because it becomes the temporary fad or fashion. We ought to test whether or not an innovation really is an improvement, but the test is by no means always undertaken before an innovation is taken up. A corollary of this test is that because it is a real improvement it should displace some previous practice. Educational innovations should not be a net addition to what teachers do.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Learning for LifeThe Foundations for Lifelong Learning, pp. 65 - 74Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2004