Educational Innovations and Contemporary Technologies

Enhancing Teaching and Learning

P. Redmond, J. Lock, P. Danaher, P. Redmond, J. Lock, P. Danaher

• Editore: Palgrave Macmillan
• Anno: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137468611
• Argomento: Education
• Categoria: Teacher Training

For the education system to remain responsive to the needs and demands of its multiple stakeholders it must embrace the innovation and research produced by contemporary technology. This book traverses a wide range of conceptual, disciplinary, methodological, national and sectoral boundaries to explore the challenge presented.

1

Interrogating Contemporary Research in Educational Innovation

Petrea Redmond, Jennifer Lock and Patrick Alan Danaher

Introduction

Contemporary educational issues are abundant and diverse. These issues include claims and counter-claims, debates and questions about matters ranging from national curricula (Oates, 2011; Tani, 2011) and standardised assessment of students’ learning (Au, 2009; Richards, Vining, & Weimer, 2010) to parental involvement in school governance (Addi-Raccah & Ronit, 2009; Blackmore & Hutchison, 2010) and government funding of public education (Tandberg, 2010; White & Friendly, 2012) to the empowerment of so-called marginalised communities (Chilisa & Ntseane, 2010; Morton & Montgomery, 2012) and the ethics and politics of education research (Sikes & Piper, 2010; Basit, 2013).

As this and the subsequent chapters in this book elaborate, one productive means of engaging with these and other contemporary educational issues is to mobilise the insights to be gained by focusing on educational innovations with technology. This is on the twin presumptions that, despite well-documented barriers, innovations constitute potentially new and sustainable solutions to longstanding concerns, and that such innovations are crucial for the longer-term viability of educational strategies and systems (see, e.g., Bakkenes, Vermunt, & Wubbels, 2010).

Yet approaches to conceptualising and contextualising educational innovations with technology are as abundant and diverse as the issues that they are enlisted to illuminate. Thus, while each chapter in this book explores the nexus between educational innovations and issues, the forms taken by that exploration vary significantly across chapters, and the understandings of such innovations and issues are equally varied and potentially contradictory. We see this as being healthy and productive, as well as reflecting the complexity and diversity associated with contemporary education constructed as a set of wicked problems that are ill-structured and for which there are no ready-made solutions (Trowler, 2012; Southgate, Reynolds, & Howley, 2013).

The purpose of this chapter is to locate the book through the introduction of a broader field of scholarship to which the subsequent chapters are also intended to contribute. This chapter is divided into the following three sections:

•Conceptualising and contextualising contemporary educational innovations.

•Issues about educational innovations with technology.

•The rationale and structure of the book.

Conceptualising and contextualising contemporary educational innovations

Contemporary scholarship exhibits a range of conceptualisations of educational innovations, which also reflect the issues that give rise to them, as well as the contexts in which they are grounded. This section of the chapter takes up some of those conceptions and contexts, with a view to eliciting some recurring concepts and principles and to foregrounding the subsequent chapters in the book.

Education exists in an increasingly changing political, financial, global and social world. Educators of the past (and the future) have explored (and will explore) innovative practices to overcome the challenges of creating the next generation of learning. In recent times, new technologies have had a significant influence over the evolution of education. The introduction of e-learning, massive online open courses, open educational resources, and mobile and smart devices now enables learners at all levels to engage with learning in a more flexible manner. Given such changes, educators are playing catch-up, seeking sustainable approaches to teaching and learning that best utilise these new technologies in innovative ways.

Rogers (2003) defined innovation ‘as an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new to an individual’ (p. 12). Innovation by its nature is a creative endeavour; however, the new idea must be translated into action. According to Denning (2004), ‘an innovation is a transformation of practice in a community’ and is not necessarily the same as ‘the invention of a new idea or object’ (p. 1). Furthermore, ‘a transformation of practice in a community won’t happen unless the new practice generates more value to the members than the old’ (p. 2). This distinction between invention and transformation is a timely reminder of the need to consider the intended purposes and the likely effects of specific innovations. To add an example, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (2008b) defined process innovation as involving ‘a new or significantly improved production or delivery method. This includes significant changes in techniques, equipment and/or software. In education, this can for example be a new or significantly improved pedagogy’ (p. 2).

From an explicitly educational perspective, Hargreaves (2004) wrote that in education innovation needs 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’ (p. 65). He asserted that innovation cannot be assumed to be ‘inherently a good thing’ because ‘[a]n innovation is not necessarily more effective or efficient than current practice’ (p. 65). He recommended that the innovation needs to be tested to determine if it ‘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’ (p. 66).

Educational innovations should not be a net addition to what teachers do. For teachers innovations have sometimes become synonymous with centre-led, top–down initiatives, which have indeed often been an addition to what teachers do rather than a replacement, and this explains in part why some of them have been resisted and treated as a burden. (Hargreaves, 2004, p. 66; emphasis in original)

To add to this discussion of what is innovation, Washor (2009) claimed that ‘innovation means first different, then better’ (para. 4). In his explanation, ‘innovating is a fundamentally different way of doing things that result in considerably better, and perhaps different, outcomes. Both the “different” and the “better” must be significant and substantial’. Applying these notions in the context of education, Washor (2009) argued that:

Educators need to think of innovating as those actions that significantly challenge key assumptions about schools and the way they operate. Therefore, to innovate is to question the ‘box’ in which we operate and to innovate outside of it as well as within [it].

It is not a matter of creating or doing differently. Rather, it is about working with the current structures (e.g., the box) and outside them to do things that are significantly different and substantially better. The challenge is how we measure these two factors.

In an educational context, to meet the needs of the profession and to improve the quality of contemporary learning require innovation and leadership from within the profession at all levels. Heppell (2010) commented that we cannot use the thinking and solutions that we used over the last decades to solve educational problems with which we are faced today. To move beyond a good idea to the development, implementation and sustainability of the idea requires creativity and leadership. Leadership to facilitate innovation in education should include a positive vision for the future, a supported culture of risk-taking, and the development of new and emerging pedagogies and approaches to learning that result in enhanced outcomes (Fraser, 2007).

Although the term innovation has a positive valence, it is not necessarily constructed unanimously in that light by all participants and stakeholders. Moreover, educational innovations are situated in contentious and politicised terrains, with perceived winners and losers. Likewise, the educational issues that innovations are developed to address are often complex and diffuse, with sometimes widely divergent effects on different individuals and groups.

Some conceptualisations of educational innovations appear to derive from a technicist paradigm and reflect, with varying degrees of explicitness, the assumption of a seemingly direct and linear relationship among innovation development, adoption and use, even when challenges confronting that relationship are acknowledged (Minocha, Schroeder, & Schneider, 2011). A broadly similar position evidently underlies a view of innovation as exhibiting ‘a predictable, evolutionary life span of creativity and experimentation, overreaching and entropy, and survival and continuity’ (Giles & Hargreaves, 2006, p. 125). The emphasis on linearity and predictability might facilitate research and analysis, but it does not necessarily align with the complexity and messiness of contemporary social life and educational provision.

A different approach to conceptualising educational innovations is to eschew deficit views of learners and educators and instead to see them as agential and creative shapers of new educational alternatives and futures. While this approach generates useful insights (see, e.g., Craft, 2013), it runs the risk of potentially idealising students and teachers. It also downplays the structural and systemic barriers to envisioning and enacting innovations that engage effectively with educational issues.

Issues about educational innovations with technology

We live in a time of profound technological change where wireless networks, mobile devices and digital media are interwoven in the fabric of today’s educational landscape. The K-12 and higher education learning environments have been greatly influenced through the integration of information and communication technology that is allowing access to a wealth of information accessible anywhere and at any time.

Thomas and Brown (2011) asked the question, ‘What happens to learning when we move from the stable infrastructure of the twentieth century to the fluid infrastructure of the twenty-first century, where technology is constantly creating and responding to change?’ (p. 17).

Digital and social technologies have changed how people of all ages learn, collaborate, play, socialize, access resources and services, and connect. A participatory classroom is one in which students make choices about what they learn and negotiate how they learn. In a digitally connected environment, they seek out, choose, and play with rich online resources, build ideas, work on projects, and design solutions with local and global peers, and publish creations in local and online spaces. (Jacobsen, Lock, & Friesen, 2013, p. 16)

With the introduction of any educational innovation with technology, how does it influence learning? How do we know the impact that innovation has on learning and education? Further, what role and influence does policy have in and on the innovation and its impact? These types of questions begin to identify some of the issues that are associated with how we view and understand educational innovation.

Kostoff (2003) proposed that ‘innovation reflects the metamorphosis from present practice to some new, hopefully, “better” practice’ (p. 388). Increasingly innovative practices have been used to solve educational issues. However, no common conceptual framework exists to guide practitioners in innovative development. The World Bank created a conceptual framework for the promotion of innovation in developing countries (Aubert, 2005). Aubert (2005) reminded us that one size doesn’t fit all when comparing developed and developing countries. The same could be said for differing educational contexts where the imposition of a common model across different educational contexts is not likely to be successful. Innovative practices tend to build on the current capabilities and resources within individual contexts; this results in a broad range of innovative practices, even when the stakeholders in the respective context are trying to solve the same issue.

A simple Internet search of ‘innovation in education’ revealed over two million scholarly papers available through Google Scholar dating back to the 1960s. Interestingly the most cited works are those from the 1960s. This section of the chapter explores the major issues surrounding educational innovations with technology from the literature that examines the following four areas: policy and innovation; measuring innovation; sustaining innovation; and diffusing innovation (see Figure 1.1).

Policy and innova...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Interrogating Contemporary Research in Educational Innovation
• Part I  Educational Innovations and Specialised Contemporary Technologies
• Part II  Educational Innovations and Technologies and Particular Groups of Learners
• Part III  Educational Innovations and Technologies and Teacher Education
• Index