This book offers an ecological perspective to understand the opportunities and complexities of spreading and sustaining educational innovations. It explores the imperatives underpinning educational reforms and identifies the role of schools in developing, disseminating, and sustaining changes in Singapore’s educational context. It also includes international case studies that examine the dialectical relationships between structure, people and culture and demonstrate that cultivating ecologies involves leveraging affordances and resources across the education system to create new contexts, synergies and capacities. Further, it argues that educational innovations and reforms also need to consider tacit knowledge and conditions of transfer, which may be ambiguous and challenging. Few books address the nuances and interactions of innovation and change across levels of the education ecology – from the micro (classroom), meso (organisation / school), exo (partners), macro (policy) and chrono (time scales) levels. The ecological perspective adopted in this book explores the dynamic tensions in order to understand the interplays of policy and school-level influences that contextualize school innovations. By presenting multiple voices and views, it allows impediments and affordances of innovation diffusion to be discussed holistically, which is an integral caveat for nurturing a sustainable ecology that enables innovations.

The text explores the concept of innovation, and analyse and compare different dimensions of innovation found in the various case studies; the transfer of innovation and the mechanisms of change; on an innovative online case study database on education innovations that has been designed to be used by education practitioners to support organizational leadership, international collaboration and reflective practice in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) eEducation Leadership initiative; on a project aimed to support the establishment of communities of practice for education practitioners facilitated through an extendable online database that can be used to contribute and share case studies of their own ICT-supported pedagogical innovations. It discusses roles of the teacher and the anticipated changes to the education profession at a system level, in the coming decade on the basis of emerging changes observed in the case studies, and leadership issues at the school level. The book analyses change mechanisms for different kinds of innovation and how different contextual and cultural factors interact to bring about the changes observed.

Measuring innovation in education and understanding how it works is essential to improve the quality of the education sector. Monitoring systematically how pedagogical practices evolve would considerably increase the international education knowledge base. We need to examine whether, and how ...

In recent years teachers have realized that change has become a permanent factor on the educational scene and therefore its operation or mechanism must not just be accepted, or even rejected, but above all understood. This book presents an approach towards some real understanding of educational changes and innovations. A number of mechanisms and processes are discussed and analysed in an attempt to present some sort of overview of the agents involved in change, an analysis of the major characteristics of resisters and innovators, an account of the traits and functions of innovative institutions and a description of three particular models which delineate the way in which change occurs. In the final section of the text attention is given to some contemporary educational innovations, and some suggestions provided for dealing with problems involved in their evaluation.

In this insightful look at school reform, Robert Evans examines the real-life hurdles to implementing innovation and explains how the best-intended efforts can be stalled by educators who too often feel burdened and conflicted by the change process. He provides a new model of leadership along with practical management strategies for building a framework of cooperation between leaders of change and the people they depend upon to implement it.

This book is based on a set of stories from teachers and education professionals in thirteen OECD countries. Twenty-three case studies tell of innovations in practice involving school teachers, inspectors, academics and policy makers.

An inspiring account of teachers in ordinary circumstances doing extraordinary things, showing us how to transform education What School Could Be offers an inspiring vision of what our teachers and students can accomplish if trusted with the challenge of developing the skills and ways of thinking needed to thrive in a world of dizzying technological change. Innovation expert Ted Dintersmith took an unprecedented trip across America, visiting all fifty states in a single school year. He originally set out to raise awareness about the urgent need to reimagine education to prepare students for a world marked by innovation--but America's teachers one-upped him. All across the country, he met teachers in ordinary settings doing extraordinary things, creating innovative classrooms where children learn deeply and joyously as they gain purpose, agency, essential skillsets and mindsets, and real knowledge. Together, these new ways of teaching and learning offer a vision of what school could be—and a model for transforming schools throughout the United States and beyond. Better yet, teachers and parents don't have to wait for the revolution to come from above. They can readily implement small changes that can make a big difference. America's clock is ticking. Our archaic model of education trains our kids for a world that no longer exists, and accelerating advances in technology are eliminating millions of jobs. But the trailblazing of many American educators gives us reasons for hope. Capturing bold ideas from teachers and classrooms across America, What School Could Be provides a realistic and profoundly optimistic roadmap for creating cultures of innovation and real learning in all our schools.