I have been reading extensively on the subject of 21st century teaching and learning, with a specific focus on fostering innovation within education and pedagogy. I have also been reading about leadership and change-management. Below is a summary list of the some of the discoveries I have made on the subject of fostering innovation in education.
*I am defining innovation as an idea that is “new, executable and adds value.”
** A “culture of innovation” is one where all constituents are engaged in creative and design thinking; the social, emotional and intellectual environment along with the institutional infrastructure all support and nurture imagination, creativity and design thinking, which includes empathy, versatility, creativity, adaptability, risk-taking, openness to failure.
- Fostering innovation* needs to be about creating a “culture of innovation”** rather than about specific technology or specific pedagogy; technology and pedagogy come and go, but the underlying creative culture should persist.
- Fostering innovation requires an understanding of how technology works and how it changes things.
- Fostering innovation requires changes in both curriculum and pedagogy.
- Fostering innovation requires system-wide changes (e.g., schedules, timetabling, allocation of resources and human capital, etc.)
- Fostering innovation requires time; time for students and teachers to ponder, play and practice as well as experiment with ideas and execute innovations.
- Fostering innovation grows out of design thinking, which is built on skills like empathy, versatility, creativity, adaptability, risk-taking, and an openness to failure.
- Fostering innovation requires a cross disciplinary approach to teaching and learning; students need to learn how to use multiple disciplines (both content and skills) to solve problems—new and old—as well as emerging problems.
- Fostering innovation requires collaboration—we (students and teachers) need to learn how to appreciate the skills, abilities and aptitudes of our collaborators; we need to learn to capitalise of each other’s personalities and contributions in order to create synergy.
- Fostering innovation opposes monocultures and autocracy; all stakeholders need to build the culture and contribute to solution-making and problem identification.
- Fostering innovation requires critical feedback—we (students and teachers) need to learn how to give and receive critical feedback.
- Fostering innovation requires discernment and valuation of ideas.
- Fostering innovation requires parameters and purpose.
- Fostering innovation requires optimism and perseverance.
- Fostering innovation requires experimentation, risk-taking, adaptability and openness to error.
- Fostering innovation requires empathy.
- Fostering innovation requires content knowledge; new creations occur when “one” knowledge is synthesised with “another” knowledge, thus creating something new.
- Fostering innovation requires knowledge and understandings to build on, the “shoulders of giants” to stand on.
- Fostering innovation requires competition and authentic applications.
- Fostering innovation requires a move from superficial ideas to deeper, more complex ones.
- Fostering innovation requires teachers and students to contextualise the content, developing an understanding of where and how things “fit” and why.
- Fostering innovation requires a view of the present, a view of the past and a view forward; the past and present matter, as does the future.
*I am defining innovation as an idea that is “new, executable and adds value.”
** A “culture of innovation” is one where all constituents are engaged in creative and design thinking; the social, emotional and intellectual environment along with the institutional infrastructure all support and nurture imagination, creativity and design thinking, which includes empathy, versatility, creativity, adaptability, risk-taking, openness to failure.
RSS Feed
