What Can Pedagogical Leaders Do to Grease the Wheels of Innovation in Their Schools?

When you hear the innovative what does that mean to you as an educator?

I think for a long time we thought if we superimposed the business model upon schools, analyzing and improving our school’s mission, operations, outcomes, and personnel, we’d produce high-performance metrics and fiscal efficiency. Gains in test scores and budget expectations would be innovation in itself, but as we examine the high-stress that the high-stakes initiatives have created, it’s hard to call this improvement in education. In fact, I think this approach has been demonized rather than lauded, and countries like New Zealand are backing off standards-based approaches and beginning to embrace a competency-based model of student achievement, as personalized learning is beginning to become more of a focus. I know there a quite a few schools that question “What is school?” and are moving away from classrooms into “studios” while other schools would be better off calling themselves “resorts” in which the whole school timetable is collapsed, and children are at complete choice. Yet there are other schools such as these in America, that look at this same question, “What is school?” and has defined it differently, expanding it beyond the school campus, and look at how they can connect more to nature and their local community for an authentic experience of learning. I think several of these schools ask a more interesting question, instead of “What is school?”, “What is worth learning?” 

Let me explain a bit: recently I sat down with a Grade 11 student to explain how gene therapy works for her Personal Project on cancer treatments (Previous to teaching, I aspired to get my Ph.D. in Genetics and conducted gene therapy research). But as I was chatting with her, discussing the biological mechanism of the treatment strategies, I really wanted to pull out some literature on epigenetics, an emerging field that demonstrates that we have more control over our genetics than we think–a paradigm that I know has yet to get written into the textbooks. So when I encountered this quote below, it made me think about all of the things we teach as “facts” that have contradictory evidence which would shift perspectives and approaches to solving problems in our future:

A school’s mission is to prepare children for the future by teaching them skills, knowledge, and values, which it can only do by drawing on the past—that is, by teaching them what we know now. Much of the curriculum is fixed or slow-changing (fractions, the meanings of Hamlet, the causes of the American Revolution), and many schools emphasize their commitment to enduring truths and established traditions. Education is a conservator’s work. Good teaching is always creative, but not perpetually innovative, and while it benefits from regular refreshers and occasional overhauls, it doesn’t demand the kind of continuous updating that, say, law or medicine or high technology do. Continuity is a core value in school life.

–Robert Evans, Why A School Doesn’t Run—or Change—Like A Business

With this in mind, I think as schools begin to grapple with defining innovation for their unique context, they need to look at both of these questions: What is school?, perhaps looking at this as the operational side of it, and What is worth learning?, the outcomes that we’d want to be achieved. I’d also say that we need to consider “How do we learn?” as an important question to add to our conversations, as we consider the role of technology and connecting to communities as a component of our school’s mission.

These questions aren’t answered in a 2-hour meeting, they are inquired into over time, in an institutional self-study, and requires getting teachers voice, choice, and ownership in initiatives. So often lofty goals subtract the perspective of teachers, who are the ones held accountable to many of the suggested changes. Pedagogical leaders choose efficiency over effectiveness, and often side-step the very educators who are laying the foundation of change in their learning institutions. Including teachers in all of these conversations, from the initial inquiry into “What is school?” is not only what is best practice when it comes to leadership, but it is critical to buy-in and sustainable transformation. I can’t help but reiterate this, simply because innovation doesn’t happen in closed-door meetings, it’s a community-driven mission, and it requires all stakeholders. I’ll stop my preaching here, but schools need a collaborative approach to cultivating lasting change that has a true impact on our students.

Needless to say, this is a process of probing a school’s values and traditions and asking if they are truly serving to benefit their students and preparing them for their future. All the research I’ve read suggests that when those foundational questions are asked, then a clear and compelling mission and vision can be the springboard to transforming schools. Once that comes into laser focus, the next layer to innovation, involves reflecting on the following set of questions:

1. How can we create the conditions for a shared vision and a shared instructional language?
2. How can we provide resources for research and development for teachers and the time to go along with deepening their understanding?
3. How can we create conditions for team learning? How can you adopt looking at student work protocols?
4. How can we create conditions for institutional learning?

Common ground and understanding are what creates a culture of community and self-efficacy that is organic and supportive of school goals. These 4 questions develop the glue that keeps the motivation for innovation intact. If I had to pin a job description on pedagogical leadership, it would be to do just that: to keep moving people forward, together, for the better.

I hope these questions give you a pause for reflection and make you start observing your school’s context in a new light, surveying the current values and traditions within your walls of learning. Moreover, I hope it motivates you to start these conversations and start unpacking WHO YOU ARE as a school and start designing WHO YOU CAN BECOME. In my opinion, if more schools had conversations like these, we’d move away from looking at the 1-dimensional performance metrics and expand our awareness and creativity into new territories for education.