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Innovation for instruction.

August 15, 2024

UD PCS Instructional Design Certificate supports instructional excellence in higher education

Mohsin Siddiqui, University of Delaware associate professor in construction engineering and management, has used technology to create innovative teaching strategies for more than a decade. Now, with the expertise he gained in UD PCS’ Instructional Design Certificate program , he’s working to fine-tune that innovative approach and share it with his fellow professors.

The Instructional Design Certificate gives students the skills needed to create engaging digital learning experiences and comprises three courses offered each year. For Siddiqui, the certificate also allowed him to share his newfound knowledge with receptive faculty in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering .

“Faculty have always consulted with instructional designers and web developers to create online materials,” he said. “I thought ‘Wouldn’t it be great for faculty themselves to be able to do it?’ That would minimize the time and effort needed to develop new courses.

“So, I took material that I needed for a civil engineering course, and over the first two courses in the instructional design program, really quickly, I learned how to create modules that were visually appealing and appropriate for my audience. My work toward the certificate had an immediate impact on the undergraduate courses that I teach.”

A department dedicated to innovative teaching

He quickly shared his lessons with fellow faculty in the department, where innovative teaching ideas were already highly valued.

Associate professor Jennie Saxe sees Siddiqui’s new knowledge of best practices in instructional delivery as a resource for the department. An example is their work on the department’s prep course for a national exam undergraduates must pass to become professional engineers.

“It’s useful to learn from someone who’s done what you’re trying to do,” she explained. “Mohsin shared what he learned with us as we moved our Fundamentals of Engineering exam prep course from a Google Drive to Canvas, UD’s learning management system. In that transition, we created a much more engaging platform for students to access review materials. We know students who are more engaged are more likely to succeed.”

Saxe applied the lessons learned to her own course in Canvas as well. “At first, I was intimidated by the Canvas design tools, but my conversations with Mohsin inspired me to give them a try. Making my Canvas sites more student-friendly was surprisingly easy.”

Siddiqui said that the mindset of constantly improving excellence is part of the department’s DNA.

“UD’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has many faculty members involved in the American Society of Civil Engineers ExCEED [Excellence in Civil Engineering Education] program as fellows and mentors,” he explained. “And we have several UD Excellence in Teaching Award recipients. Our department head, Jack Puleo, who received one of these awards in 2007 and 2019, emphasizes collaboration and support for instructional excellence, so we work together to provide the best instruction possible.”

He continued, “In addition to the work at UD, I am actively involved in curricular development and accreditation through the Applied and Natural Science Accreditation Commission, a part of ABET [Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology]. I serve on the executive committee as a volunteer and I lead training development for team chairs and program evaluator volunteers.”

Siddiqui values the opportunity to share what he learned while earning his certificate. He said, “The Instructional Design Certificate courses took us through an incremental process of understanding learning, from breaking down the subject matter to achievable and measurable goals to using proven instructional techniques and ensuring diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as accessibility, in delivery and content. I can see a useful learning community developing from this experience.”

Department chair Puleo recognized Siddiqui’s efforts to share his expertise. “For years, Mohsin has been a go-to source for faculty regarding Canvas and other IT needs for course delivery. He was especially sought out during the COVID-19 shutdown when we had to switch rapidly to online course instruction. Beyond Canvas, I am confident that with these new skills learned through earning the certificate, he will be able to assist more faculty within and outside the department hone their educational delivery.”

Projects customized for each learner

Like Siddiqui, many participants in the Instructional Design Certificate program say that the project-centered instruction and personalized feedback from the course facilitators make their learning experiences immediately useful.

“We want the learners to leverage the program for their own professional needs and goals,” director Aviva Heyn said. “That’s why we have them choose their own topic and scope for their projects. Throughout the certificate’s three courses, they will build, modify and improve their instructional design, getting personalized feedback from different course facilitators along the way who bring a lot of great know-how and experience to their teaching.”

Angela Greco, who teaches courses in the certificate program along with Tim Danner and Olivia Pollard, agreed. “As a course facilitator and experienced instructional designer, my focus is on offering supportive mentorship and timely, actionable feedback to guide learners in applying their learning and aligning our coursework with their professional goals.”

The UD PCS Instructional Design Certificate program requires the completion of a three-course series that covers foundational knowledge for instructional designers, including learning theory principles, learner needs analysis and authoring tools. The first course in the series, Foundations of Instructional Design, starts Sept. 9. You can learn more about this program on the UD PCS website .

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Navigating the Educational Landscape: The Transformative Power of Smart Classroom Technology

• Published: 02 September 2024

Cite this article

In the rapidly evolving landscape of education, integrating smart classroom technology (SCT) is a transformative force, reshaping traditional paradigms and redefining the dynamics of teaching and learning. The study aims to investigate the transformative impact of SCT on educational practices, focusing on its effectiveness in enhancing student engagement, learning outcomes, and overall educational experience. The study analyzes the implementation of a smart classroom (SMR) system to enhance overall satisfaction and foster positive perceptions among students and faculty concerning the learning environment. The study employed a quantitative methodology and utilized the random sampling technique. The data were collected from 420 college students at different levels from junior level to senior category who received SMR education. The collected data were analyzed by using SPSS software. The findings indicate that incorporation of SCT systems positively impacts student engagement and participation levels in academic activities. The result underscores the role of SCT in fostering a dynamic learning environment that promotes active learning and knowledge retention among students, highlighting its outstanding academic significance in transforming traditional educational practices. The study contributes by examining the transformative potential of SMR systems in education, focusing on enhanced student engagement, collaboration, and digital literacy. Its novelty lies in revealing the positive impact on satisfaction and perceptions, heralding a new era of personalized learning experiences. Practical values of SMR technology include providing data for tailored instruction and enabling personalized learning through interactive whiteboards and digital textbooks. Academically, it enhances understanding and retention with multimedia resources that cater to diverse learning styles.

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A.) Sample of Questionnaire Distributed to College Students

Section 1: demographic information:.

Name (Optional):

18—20 years

21—22 years

23 and above

College Year:

Others (please specify)

College/University:

Nankai University

Yangzhou University

Shihezi University

Nanchang University

Chongqing Technology and Business University

Section 2: SMR Perception:

How familiar are you with the concept of an SMR system?

Very familiar

Somewhat familiar

Somewhat unfamiliar

Very unfamiliar

To what extent do you believe the implementation of an SMR system can positively impact AP?

Strong Disagree

Do you think utilizing advanced technology in classrooms will enhance students’ EP in academic activities?

In your opinion, will the integration of SMR tools lead to improved CC among students and faculty members?

Probably not

Do you believe students exposed to an SMR environment will demonstrate increased proficiency in DLS compared to those in traditional classrooms?

Strongly Believe

Do Not Believe

Strongly Do Not Believe

To what extent do you agree that the adoption of an SMR system will contribute to a more PAL experience for students, catering to diverse learning?

How do you think the implementation of an SMR system will impact overall satisfaction and perceptions among students and faculty regarding the learning environment?

Very positively

Very Negatively

How often do you engage in the SMR learning activity?

Do you think the use of SMR increased your AP?

Strongly disagree

Strongly agree

Do you believe SMR-based learning will help prepare you for future job opportunities?

Does SMR-based learning develop collaboration between students and teachers?

SMR education stimulates students to actively engage and participate in academic activities. Do you agree with this statement?

Is the SMR helpful for collecting worldwide data apart from your curriculum?

Does visualized learning develop your memory retention and develop your classroom discussion?

Does the SMR environment stimulate students to engage in the learning activities effectively?

SMR learning stimulated diverse learning styles among students. Do you agree with this statement?

Does SMR learning bring satisfaction to your learning experiences?

Do you think SMR has the potential to improve the academic outcomes of slow-learning students?

Does SMR develop communication among teachers and students?

Do you believe SMR is useful for accessing various resources for gathering details apart from the textbook content?

Which one would you feel is better for the learning process: traditional classroom or SMR learning?

Traditional class

Smart class

Please provide any additional comments or feedback regarding the implementation of an SMR system or any other factors you think are relevant to this study.

Thank you for participating in this survey! Your input is valuable for this research.

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About this article

Xu, L. Navigating the Educational Landscape: The Transformative Power of Smart Classroom Technology. J Knowl Econ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-024-02233-z

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Published : 02 September 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-024-02233-z

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Innovative teaching methodologies in modern medical education Premium

Medical colleges must prepare the doctors of tomorrow to handle the evolving demands of their profession.

Updated - September 02, 2024 11:10 am IST

Published - September 02, 2024 09:30 am IST

Medical colleges must adapt and integrate new techniques to ensure their graduates are well prepared for the challenges of modern medicine | Photo Credit: Freepik

T he landscape of medical education is evolving rapidly, with innovative teaching methodologies transforming how future healthcare professionals are trained. As the demand for proficient and adaptable physicians grows, medical colleges must adapt and integrate new techniques to ensure their graduates are well prepared for the challenges of modern medicine. Let’s have a look at some of the most innovative teaching methodologies that are shaping the future of medical education.

Simulation-based learning is at the forefront of modern medical education. These close-to-reality scenarios allow students to practise and refine their skills in a controlled environment, bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world application. High-fidelity mannequins, virtual reality and standardised patients provide invaluable hands-on experience. By simulating everything from routine procedures to complex surgeries, students can develop critical thinking, decision-making and procedural skills without the risk of harming actual patients. This approach not only builds confidence but also ensures that graduates are better prepared for the demands of clinical practice. Skill labs, furnished with state-of-the-art simulation technology and virtual patient scenarios help students build their confidence in procedures before undertaking clinical and surgical skills on real patients.

Robotic surgery

Medical students and residents now have the opportunity to learn using advanced robotic systems that offer unparalleled precision and control and allow trainees to practice complex surgical procedures with a level of accuracy that is difficult to achieve with traditional methods. Moreover, the integration of robotic surgery into the medical curriculum helps students become proficient with the technology they will encounter in their professional careers.

Problem-Based Learning

Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a student-centred approach that encourages active learning through the exploration of real-life medical cases. Students work in small groups to solve complex clinical problems, fostering collaboration, critical thinking and self-directed learning. This method shifts the focus from passive absorption of information to active problem-solving, mirroring the dynamic and interdisciplinary nature of medical practice.

Interprofessional Education

Interprofessional Education (IPE) is another innovative approach gaining traction. It involves learning alongside students from other healthcare disciplines, such as nursing, pharmacy and physical therapy. This collaborative approach helps future doctors appreciate the roles and expertise of their colleagues, promoting a team-based approach to patient care. By understanding the perspectives and contributions of other healthcare professionals, medical students can improve communication, coordination and, ultimately, patient outcomes.

E-Resources

E-resources are transforming medical education by enriching the learning experience for students, irrespective of their physical location. They feature a diverse array of digital materials ranging from virtual textbooks to interactive modules and multimedia lectures and provide engaging and immersive learning opportunities that complement traditional lectures and textbooks, offering a more flexible and personalised educational experience.

By embracing these innovative approaches, medical colleges can ensure their graduates are not only knowledgeable but also skilled, adaptable, and ready to provide the highest standard of patient care. It is not just about keeping pace with technological advancements, but about enhancing the quality of healthcare by training professionals who are well-equipped to handle the evolving demands of their profession.

The writer is Dean, Dr. D.Y. Patil Medical College, Hospital and Research Centre, Pimpri, Pune.

Related Topics

education / The Hindu Education Plus / students / careers / higher education / university / universities and colleges / medical colleges / medical education

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A programme of:

Observatory

• Inspiring Experiences

10 innovative programs for learning and teaching

We hear a lot about it. but do we really know what educational innovation is what’s it for how can we innovate in the classroom in this article we list practical experiences featured in the hundred global collection..

It’s become a buzzword and, since the beginning of the century, we’ve used it to apply to everything, including technology, of course, but also economics, fashion and culture and, definitely, education. From the Latin word innovare (the prefix in means in or within and novare is a verbal form of the word novus , meaning new), the term innovate seems to refer to the introduction of something new.

Applied to education, there are multiple definitions, theories and forms of educational innovation. However, in this article we aren’t going to discuss theories or definitions. We’ll go straight to the practice to highlight ten projects which, from a pedagogical standpoint, introduce new and “more effective and efficient” ways of teaching into the classroom. With this post we conclude our series on the 2022 HundrED Global Collection, in which we’ve reviewed some of the projects featured in the report.

RETHINKING SCHOOLS AS NEW LEARNING SPACES

Escuela nueva: a model of education for vulnerable environments.

One of the seven Hundred Hall Of Fame Innovations and the only from Latin America that’s been recognised. Escuela Nueva was created just over 30 years ago to improve the education received by children in rural schools in Colombia. Today it’s become a model of education for vulnerable environments that’s been successfully applied in 21 countries (with institutional support in many of them). How does it work? The students work in groups but each of them has his/her own personalised learning guide. The teacher proposes a topic and the children work on it first individually and then in groups. It’s a completely student-centred and active methodology based on “learning by doing”. The children form part of a self-organising and self-governing group under the supervision of the teacher. Teacher training also plays an important role in the Escuela Nueva model and the teachers are trained using the same methodology as that applied to the students.

Agora: School without lessons

The Netherlands

Agora is a school without lessons, without classrooms and without a curriculum. At Agora everything begins with the students. Their concerns lie at the heart of their own learning. They all decide, in partnership with their tutor, which “challenge” they’ll focus their work on. They begin to prepare it together by asking each other a set of questions: What will I learn? Who can I cooperate with to achieve a great end result? How long will it take me? After this initial preparation, the students prepare an “action plan” in which they decide who’ll be able to help them through each of the steps and where they’ll get the information from. During the implementation phase of the project, the students record all their progress, including where they’ve found the information, what they’ve had difficulties with and why, how they’ve resolved them and so on. At the end of the challenge the students submit their final work. Of course, they can do so in different ways, such as a video, a sculpture, a painting or a field trip, and they’ll show the others what they’ve learnt. The teachers, parents and students can attend the presentation at the student’s invitation. Finally, they’ll have a chat with their tutor to reflect on the whole process.

Community Learning Labs: Building education through dialogue

Community Learning Labs promotes inter-generational dialogue between students, parents and teachers, enabling them to build a kind of education that makes a better future possible together. Starting with a future ideal, the participants examine how it can be achieved through education, what skills will be needed to build it and how it can be taught and learnt. They then structure initiatives to carry it out, dividing themselves into groups to do so. This helps to generate a feeling that change is possible. Everyone then discusses and shares their ideas, encouraging collaboration and dialogue and turning education into a platform for co-creation and cooperation. Since its creation in Russia in 2016, it’s been implemented in 30 cities in eight countries, including Belarus, Latvia and Uzbekistan (for the time being, the working materials are only in Russian, although they’re working on their translation into English).

Dignitas Project: Making school an exciting place

Dignitas seeks to turn schools into exciting places that enable children to develop the skills and character they need to prosper in life. It does so through the educators, by training them and equipping them with the tools required for them to develop instructional leadership skills that enable them to create a classroom culture conducive to learning and participation. Dignitas turns the educators into catalysts of change in vulnerable schools. The programme’s teachers encourage the students to take part in the lessons, ask questions, reason and cooperate with their classmates.

Manzil Mystics: Learning through music

In India, most low-income state schools face the problem of poor levels of attendance, chiefly due to a lack of interest in education. Learning Through Music is a flagship programme of the Manzil Mystics organisation which aims to create safe spaces, bring happiness, instil confidence, foster creativity and activate the true potential of the children that take part in it. They learn to sing, write and compose songs and express their feelings and aspirations through music. It also acts as a magnet to increase school attendance and triggers other essential elements such as self-confidence, leadership and socio-emotional learning.

Defy Project: Design your own education and create it

In the DEFY (Design Education for Yourself) Project the goal is to change the way people think and ignite the spark of passion in each of the students so that they can learn to believe in their ability to educate themselves, others and their communities. In the DEFY Project education is much more than the mere transmission of knowledge, as it’s also a process of self-discovery and understanding of the needs of the local and global environment. Firstly, the community builds a learning space suited to their tastes and needs and then, with a computer and the internet, they begin working on projects in keeping with their preferences and interests. The students thus develop the skills they’re most passionate about and search for the knowledge they’re most interested in. They try, fail and try again, without any fear of judgement. Finally, they develop the confidence they need to embark on their own journey. In essence, they learn “how to learn” and do so within a community of people doing the same thing that supports them.

  Join for Joy: Gamifying School

Join for Joy This programme teaches primary school teachers in the most rural areas of East Africa to implement sporting and recreational activities in the local schools’ curricula, transforming the schools into “gamified” learning spaces. By doing so the children are encouraged to attend school and dropping out is prevented. Through play, the teachers learn how to teach the children to protect themselves against diseases such as AIDS, malaria and COVID-19. Topics that are taboo in many rural areas, such as sexual violence, child marriages and gender inequality, are discussed. The sporting and recreational activities are specifically aimed at developing the children’s life skills, including assertiveness, handling of emotions, empathy, self-confidence and respect. For children with disabilities, one of the most vulnerable groups, sports and games are powerful ways of making them look at their options rather than their limitations. Since 2011 the programme has reached more than 450,000 children and expanded to five countries.

DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The metis fellowship: searching for dreamers to change education.

The aim of Metis is to find local innovators with ideas geared towards reinventing teaching and learning. It makes it easier for them to implement their ideas by helping them to obtain the resources, mentors and community that they require. To date, it’s supported 63 “dreamer” scholars who’ve created high-quality learning experiences with an impact on 1.3 million students in Kenya. It applies a domino effect model that uses the power of the networks, resources and access to like-minded people to inspire change.

Innovamat: Changing the way we learn maths

Traditional maths teaching has proved to be ineffective for many students. To reverse this trend, Innovamat has developed research-based curricular maths resources. With its methods, the children learn maths through manipulative material and highly dynamic lessons focused on problem-solving, communicational skills and critical thinking. Innovamat brings a change in traditional maths instruction and learning and it currently operates at more than 1,200 schools in Spain, Chile, Ecuador and Mexico, reaching 200,000 students and more than 12,000 teachers.

Self-Sustainable School Model

In Paraguay six out of ten children don’t finish secondary school because access to high-quality education is limited and expensive. The Self-Sustainable School Model addresses this problem by providing affordable, high-quality secondary education to low-income and mainly rural communities in Latin America and Africa. This model guarantees the quality and relevance of the programme by providing the students with the opportunity to learn entrepreneurial skills, thus helping to make the school economically viable. The students learn how to run competitive businesses and, while doing so, broaden their horizons with regard to what’s possible and improve their quality of life.

Why this selection? What features do these projects share? On the basis of these features, can we provide some keys to the definition of educational innovation? Let’s see:

•   The student lies at the centre of the system. This is a recurrent feature in the history of pedagogical innovation and one which appears to have ceased to play a “secondary role” during this decade to become the key pillar of educational systems (at least at the theoretical level of educational policies). In contrast to the traditional teaching system, in which the students are mere passive recipients of information, in these educational proposals the students are placed at the centre of the whole process, focusing on their characteristics, abilities, context and educational needs as the basis upon which their learning is designed. The students become involved and play active roles in their own education. They decide on what, how and when.
• The teachers become mediators and designers of experiences. In all the innovations featured above the teachers have a key role to play, but it’s a very different role from that of the traditional learning concept. The teachers become mediators between knowledge and the students: they guide and help the students to take ownership of the learning and they also design, develop and propose activities that help the students to carry out their self-learning process.
• Technology complements and helps but doesn’t replace. The new technologies are conceived as a valuable and fundamental support, but never as a substitute for the teachers’ role in the classroom. Moreover, the teachers’ role becomes even more important, given that, on the one hand, they have to “hybridise” their pedagogical and didactic performance with technology so as to increase its effectiveness, and, on the other, they guide their students through the proper use of these new technologies.
• Collaboration. Whether it’s among students or teachers and students or it includes the families and communities, cooperation and collaboration in their numerous forms are particularly relevant in educational innovation projects. It’s evident that current-day society requires (and will require) increasing collaboration between everyone to overcome the major challenges. Moreover, teamwork isn’t just an ability to be learnt in itself, as it also contributes to the development of other important skills, such as responsibility, empathy, interdependence and critical thinking.
• New contents/new competences: There appears to be a generalised consensus that a comprehensive kind of education at this stage of the century must necessarily include the development of a range of skills that can help learners to live in a complex and changing society. Mere academic knowledge is no longer enough. The need to teach these skills is an educational innovation in itself. But there are also new skills, contents and capacities that require new teaching methods and processes. Can anyone imagine how to teach something like empathy or perseverance with a traditional model in which the teacher speaks without looking and the students listen without paying attention or understanding?
• The importance of the context: the socio-cultural and local context in which the teaching unfolds is also of fundamental importance in all educational innovation projects. And so it should be; the environment in which a person lives and develops should form part of his/her education and learning process. This relationship with the context can (and should) take place in a number of ways, in order to design a kind of learning that’s suitable for the context of each student, to use this context as the object of study and to involve the community and families in the students’ education.

All the projects featured above propose new ways of teaching and learning that advocate a shift towards a model more in keeping with the needs of today’s world and its agents, the protagonists of the future, the students. They provide important hints and lessons that we shouldn’t lose sight of. Let’s capitalise on the experience and wisdom of those who’ve been there before. Let’s lead by example.

*This article forms part of a series in which we analyse the initiatives and programmes featured in the HundrED report. In the first post of this series we explain the selection criteria and how the HundrED report is drawn up. In the second we explain and analyse some of the digital initiatives and programmes for socio-educational intervention in vulnerable contexts . In the third we analyse initiatives devoted to teaching and learning the skills for 2030 or the so-called 21st-century skills . In the fourth we focus on programmes that develop citizenship and digital skills.

You may also be interested in…

Observatory 21st Century Skills

Observatory Approaches

Collaborative for Innovation in Teacher Education

Our long-term vision is to become a local, national and international trendsetter in next-generation teacher education that develops a synergy between initial teacher education, induction into teaching, and in-service teacher education and blends theory, practice and policy.

Core Values

• Reciprocal Relationships
• Collaborations
• Transparency

Our mission is to address the grand challenges of teaching and teacher education in Texas. These challenges emerge in the many sites where teaching and teacher education take place. Separations between and among content, pedagogy and clinical practice have fractionalized teaching and teacher education. An urgent need for convergence exists . At points of contact, the Collaborative for Innovation in Teacher Education will seam together previously fractured pieces and rigorously examine them from an interdisciplinary perspective. New unions and novel approaches to known problems are anticipated outcomes.

Our overall purpose is to pool our efforts and address the needs of the new-normal 21st century learners in our university classrooms and in the public schools where our preservice interns will eventually be teachers and will work alongside teachers who have their own set of needs in their particular contexts.

With this purpose, our goals address three areas of high priority.

• Practice: As we define teacher education as the education of teachers along the continuum, we aim to improve teacher recruitment, preparation and induction into the teaching profession and focus on their retention and sustenance throughout their careers.
• Scholarship: We seek contributing to evidence-based and translational teacher education research. As bidirectional (theory ↔ practice) and tri-directional (theory ↔ practice ↔ policy), our research will not simply produce findings; those findings will be made meaningful and action-worthy in practice and policy making settings.
• Support: The Collaborative for Innovation in Teacher Education will act as a clearinghouse for promising teacher/teacher education practices and a source for professional development. We will build important college and state capacity and be a catalyst for change in teacher education, teaching and school contexts. It will mend theory-practice-policy gaps by taking up a research agenda specific to teaching and teacher education

Advisory Committee

Founding Director: Cheryl Craig, Ph.D.

Dr. Cheryl J. Craig is a Professor, Chair of Technology & Teacher Education, and the Houston Endowment Endowed Chair of Urban Education in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture at Texas A&M University.

Financial Officer: Shaun Hutchins, Ph.D.

Dr. Shaun Hutchins is a clinical associate professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture at Texas A&M University .

Advisory Faculty: Robin Rackley, Ph.D.

Dr. Robin Rackley is a clinical professor and the assistant lead of Technology &Teacher Education in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture at Texas A&M University.

Advisory Faculty: Robin Rackley , Ph.D.

Advisory Faculty: Radhika Viruru , Ph.D.

Advisory Faculty: Radhika Viruru, Ph.D.

Dr. Radhika Viruru is a clinical professor and the director of Online Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture at Texas A&M University.

Advisory Faculty: Jemimah Young, Ph.D.

Jemimah Young serves as the Assistant Vice President for Faculty Affairs, Associate Professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture, and Presidential Impact Fellow at Texas A&M University.

Advisory Faculty: Jemimah Young , Ph.D.

Advisory Faculty: Michelle Kwok , Ph.D.

Advisory Faculty: Michelle Kwok, Ph.D.

Dr. Michelle Kwok is an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture at Texas A&M University.

Advisory Faculty: Trina Davis, Ph.D.

Dr. Trina Davis is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture at Texas A&M University.

Advisory Faculty: Trina Davis , Ph.D.

Advisory Faculty: Sharon Matthews , Ph.D.

Advisory Faculty: Sharon Matthews, Ph.D.

Dr. Sharon Matthews is a clinical associate professor and the program coordinator of the Online Master of Education in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture at Texas A&M University.

Special Advisor: ArCasia James-Gallaway, Ph.D.

Dr. ArCasia James-Gallaway is an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture at Texas A&M University.

Advisory Faculty: ArCasia James-Gallaway , Ph.D.

Special Advisor: Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Ph.D.

A teacher education scholar and practitioner for more than 40 years,  Dr. Cochran-Smith  is widely known for her work on teacher education research, practice and policy, and for her commitment to teacher education for social justice. Dr. Cochran-Smith is the Cawthorne Professor of Teacher Education for Urban at the Lynch College of Education, Boston College and the Chair of Norway’s International Advisory Panel on Teacher Education. She has written ten books, seven of which have won national awards, and more than 200 articles, chapters, and editorials about teacher education, teaching, and teacher learning through inquiry over the professional lifespan.

As we define teacher education as the education of teachers along the continuum, which is consistent with the CEHD’s 2020-2025 vision statement, we explore ways to support teachers remaining in their classrooms as opposed to fleeing the field. Also, we provide suggestions concerning how teacher attrition (including ways that pernicious school settings “waste” successful teacher preparation) may be ameliorated. Therefore, we seek to improve teacher recruitment, preparation and induction into the teaching profession and focus on their retention and sustenance throughout their careers.

Priority Initiatives for Practice

House practice grants coming from local, national and international agencies.

• Project TEACH (Completed)

This successful study of classroom interactions and a novel approach to classroom management has been completed. This work could be replicated successfully in other school district sites.

• WITS Collaboration (Completed)

A successful project with the Writers in the School non-profit, which was funded by the Houston Endowment, has been successfully completed. Currently, a few schools in Humble ISD may replicate the program but need supplemental money to bring the Collaborative on as a third partner. This project would work well with the “Big 13” and other districts as well.

• 4+1 Project

The five year Master’s degree allows students to complete a Master’s of Education (M.Ed.) degree approximately one year after completion of their Bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. Eligible students are extended an invitation during the semester prior to their senior year. These students take graduate course work during the last two semesters of their undergraduate experience. The five-year Master’s program follows a cohort model in which students take all classes with the same peers in the same order. The first cohort (n=5) started course work in the fall of 2014. 18 cohorts have since been admitted with the 19th cohort currently being recruited. In the fall of 2022, 45 students were accepted into the program. To date 280 students have graduated with a Master’s degree from this program and 185 students are currently enrolled in the program.

Students begin graduate course work during the last year of their undergraduate program The first semester students enroll in a three-hour graduate course concurrent with their senior field-based courses. During the student teaching semester these students also enroll concurrently in a three-hour graduate level course on mentoring. The objectives of the course work for this degree is designed to prepare these graduate students to observe, evaluate, and reflect upon teaching, mentoring, communication, and supervision skills that support the novice or pre-service teacher with tools necessary to be successful. Students are taught the use of reflective practice to establish and be able to communicate their strengths and weaknesses so that they are better able to communicate their needs and abilities to the mentor teachers. Through guided analysis students are encouraged to examine self-beliefs that have an impact on personal teaching, mentoring and leadership style These courses help students to define and identify effective teaching behaviors and the mentoring roles based on evidence.

from experience and research. Students identify and utilize different operational systems for developing a cycle of assistance and mentoring that meets the developmental needs of the pre-service and/or novice teacher. The development of a repertoire of communication skills that support the role of the mentor/supervisor is essential in this endeavor. While these students are still considered novice teachers, they are equipped with the skills necessary to establish a strong mentoring relationship necessary for effective teaching.

Overall, this program has been successful in keeping teachers in the field of education and providing them with a deeper understanding and appreciation of their craft. The majority of these graduates remain classroom teachers however we have several that are currently in doctoral programs. We have curriculum developers, school administrators, students working in educational technology roles, and a student serving as a university undergraduate advisor.

Sponsor a practice journal in conjunction with University of Houston, Clear Lake

• BRIDGE Journal (BRIDGE: Bringing Research In Direct Grasp of Educators)

“BRIDGE: Bringing Research In Direct Grasp of Educators is a semi-annual practitioner journal focused on summarizing educational research of all content areas and specializations for Pre-K-12 grade teachers’ accessibility and practical application in classroom instruction and management. The purpose of the journal is to forward information to the fingertips of teachers that is focused on classroom practice strategies which enhance pedagogy.”

To access the journal, please go to tx.ag/JournalBRIDGE .

Scholarship

Priority initiatives for scholarship, support the journal of teacher education, journal of teacher education.

Vision of JTE

The Journal of Teacher Education, which is also the flagship journal of AACTE, examines pre- and in-service education practice, policy, and research through a future-ready forum that is able to:

1) Attend to diverse perspectives (methodological, epistemological, ontological, and axiological) which address contemporary issues in and interconnected global society.

2) Curate spaces for transdisciplinary research to impact broader audiences. Linking research and practice remains central to the aim of the journal.

Editorial Board

Co-Editor in Chief: Dr. Cheryl J. Craig

Professor texas a&m university.

Co-Editor in Chief: Dr. Valerie Hill-Jackson

Associate professor texas a&m university, lead and support international study association on teachers and teaching [isatt].

Founded in October 1983 at a Symposium for Research on Teacher Thinking at Tilburg University, The Netherlands, ISATT aims to increase insights into the identity, role, contexts and work of teachers, and the process of teaching. The key goals of ISATT are to enhance the quality of teaching at all levels of education and to act as a forum to promote, present, discuss and disseminate research findings which contribute to knowledge and the formation of theory in this field. Dr. Cheryl J. Craig is the Chair, co-edits two ISATT book series and helps to organize regional and international conferences for the ISATT organization.

Serve as a research home for several high impact journals

Frontiers of Teacher Education

Frontiers of Teacher Education is an open access journal that has recently began. Cheryl J. Craig serves as an Associate Editor of this publication.

Reflective Practice

Reflective Practice is a long-standing, interdisciplinary journal having to do with reflection in the professions, including the medical professors, the sports professions, the science professions as well as teaching.

Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice

Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice is the third-ranked teaching and teacher education journal, which is closely catching up with Teaching and Teacher Education. Dr. Cheryl J. Craig is an Executive Editor with this journal.

Research Agendas

The Collaborative will create its own database having to do with the following six research thrusts and their related research topics having to do with preservice and in-service teachers.

Priority Initiatives for Support

• TEA Teacher Professional Development Courses (Go to Register) The Collaborative offers teacher professional development courses of which 1 hour of time is counted as 1 TEA credit. The professional development course model is designed based on five core themes: Strong School Leadership and Planning; Effective, Well-Supported Teachers; Positive School Culture; High Quality Curriculum; and Effective Instruction.
• Annual Collaborative-Sponsored Lecture Series The Collaborative sponsors two lectures per academic year: one in the Fall; one in the Spring. The purpose of this Lecture Series is to engender lively practical, professional dialogue in teaching and teacher education. Invited speakers will address issues of cutting-edge research, innovative practice for 21 st teaching and learning, weaving theory-practice-policy threads, and issues related to racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity and education.
• Symposium Series The Collaborative organizes a regular research symposium series. This will serve as a platform where in-service/pre-service teachers, school administrative leaders, college faculty, staff, and graduate/undergraduate students learn together about their own practice by connecting research to teaching and share knowledge of evidence-based, practice-oriented strategies and technologies that support innovative teaching and learning across settings and disciplines. Through this symposium series, previously unacknowledged and unacted-upon linkages and connections will be made visible and actionable.

InFo-TED is an international forum working to Promote professional development of teacher educators. In conjunction with the InFo-TED, the Collaborative contributes to translate the knowledge bases into an international professional development programme, develop and implement supportive guidelines for induction and professional learning programmes, and explore how an enduring international supportive structure can be implemented for professional development activities.

Report, Presentations & Publications

Newsletter (january 2023).

2021-2022 Annual Report

2022-2023 Annual Report

Publications

Craig, C. J., Evans, P. K., Stokes, D. W., House, H., & Lane, W. (Eds.). (2021).  Preparing Teachers to Teach the STEM Disciplines in America’s Urban Schools . Emerald Publishing Limited.

Bridging a gap in the literature by offering a comprehensive look at how STEM teacher education programs evolve over time, this book explores teachHOUSTON, a designer teacher education program created to respond to the lack of adequately prepared STEM teachers in Houston and the emerging urban school districts that surround it.

Ratnam, T. & Craig, C. J. (Eds.). (2021). Understanding Excessive Teacher and Faculty Entitlement . Emerald Publishing Limited.

This book develops a significant body of professional knowledge by providing a deeper and sympathetic understanding of what manifests itself as ‘excessive entitlement’. The volume presents a theoretical framework within which one can investigate and articulate issues and helps those concerned with education and teacher education internationally to get a sense of the complexities surrounding teachers’ work.

Craig, C. J. (2020).  Curriculum Making, Reciprocal Learning, and the Best-Loved Self . Springer International Publishing.

Revolving around curriculum making, reciprocal learning, and the best-loved self, this book It draws on extensive school-based studies conducted with teachers in the United States, China, and Canada, and weaves in experiences from other cross-national projects, keynote addresses, archival research, and editorial work.

Craig, C. J., Turchi, L., & McDonald, D. M. (Eds.). (2020). Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education . Palgrave Macmillan.

  This book focuses on the impact of sustained and evolving collaborations, showcasing research and scholarship in a faculty group—consisting of 28 professors from five regional universities—meeting and supporting each other since 2002.

Craig, C. J., Curtis, G. A., Kelley, M., Martindell, P. T., & Pérez, M. M. (2020).  Knowledge communities in teacher education: Sustaining collaborative work . Springer Nature.

  This book traces the origins and activities of the longest-standing collaborative teacher group in education, the Portfolio Group. Each chapter documents, historically and conceptually, the main intellectual moments in the evolution of the idea of knowledge communities.

Asadi, L. & Craig, C. (Eds.). (2020). Truth and knowledge in curriculum making . Information Age Publishing.

  This book arises from a serial interpretation of five published narrative inquiries that pinpointed complexities lived in a teacher knowledge community and addresses issues in curriculum and instruction, such as the lack of Black teachers, minority representation, and mentorship.

Craig, C. J., & Orland-Barak, L. (Eds.). (2014).  International teacher education: Promising pedagogies series . Emerald Group Publishing.

  This focuses on the practical(t) (Schwab, 1969), matters that have been locally deliberated and enacted. Pedagogies are named, origins (cultural/practical/theoretical/policy roots) are traced and a live example of the pedagogy unfurling in the local setting is presented from an insider-view.

Presentations

Learning to educate all students: post-pandemic pedagogy.

Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, a fellow of the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study at Texas A&M University, shares her insight on post-pandemic pedagogy in a lecture on March 28, 2023.

The “Problem” of Teacher Education: Tensions and Trends

Dr. Marilyn Cochran-Smith shares her research and perspective on the issues affecting teacher education in a “Dean’s Distinguished Lecture” on March 29, 2023.

Dialogues in Transforming Education: Drs. Gloria Ladson-Billings and Marilyn Cochran-Smith

Renowned experts in teacher education, Drs. Gloria Ladson-Billings and Marilyn Cochran-Smith, discuss navigating through K-12 teaching in a conversation moderated by CEHD professor, Dr. Cheryl Craig on March 29, 2023.

Turning Points in Research and Life: The Peripeteia of Our Times

Keynote Address at 7th International Forum on Teacher Education “Teacher Education: New Challenges and Goals” May 26, 2021

Writing Research Articles & Getting Published

Presentation at 7th International Forum on Teacher Education “Teacher Education: New Challenges and Goals” May 26-28, 2021

First generation college students who became professors of education: Experiential insights for championing inclusiveness, equity and excellence in marginalized learners

American Association of College for Teacher Education (AACTE) Virtual Conference, February 24-26, 2021

Publishing in JTE: Meet the New Editorial Team

Lost or Found in Translation? Translating Educational Research into Practice: Challenges and Promises 

• Speaker: Lily Orland-Barak, Ph.D., University of Haifa
• Citation:  Orland-Barak, L. (2022, November 8).   Lost  or  found  in  translation ? Translating educational research into practice: Challenges and promises  [Lecture recording]. Collaborative for Innovation in Teacher Education Lecture Series 2022, Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States.

Creating Liberatory Literacy Spaces with BIPOC Students 

• Speaker: Kimberly N. Parker, Ph.D., Director of the Crimson Summer Academy, Harvard University
• Citation: Parker, K. (2023, January 25).  Creating liberatory literacy spaces with BIPOC students  [Lecture recording]. Collaborative for Innovation in Teacher Education Lecture Series 2023, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States.

• Craig, C. J., et al. (2023, February 16). Learning, Learning and the Best-Loved Self in Teaching and Teacher Education  [Book launch recording]. Collaborative for Innovation in Teacher Education Book Launch Series 2023, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States.

• Craig, C. J. (2023, February 9).  The Parts and the Whole: Preparing Manuscripts for Publication [Workshop recording]. Paths to Publications 2023, CRDLLA, ELRC Education Outreach, and Graduate Student Advisory Council,  Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States.

News and Media

SHED Catapult 2023 Seed Grant Awardees

Honors and Awards to TTE Female Faculty

Photo Gallery

On December 9, the Technology and Teacher Education (TTE) program area led by Dr. Cheryl Craig, had a very productive retreat at Dr. Patrick Slattery’s home in Hempstead, TX.  The TTE group focused on the EC-Grade 3 certification plan, preparations for the Spring semester and developing the proposal for the forthcoming Collaborative for Innovation in Teacher Education. Dr. Michael De Miranda joined the TTE program area for lunch.

On August 6, Dr. Craig and her research team had a luncheon to celebrate the publication of Truth and Knowledge in Curriculum Making.

HyeSeung Lee

Professor  Founding Director, Collaborative for Innovation in Teacher Education (CITE) Houston Endowment Endowed Chair of Urban Education

Address: Harrington Education Center Office Tower, Suite 402, 540 Ross Street, College Station, TX 77843

Email: [email protected]

Personal Webpage: https://cheryljcraig.weebly.com/

Can't find what you are looking for?

Key takeaways from the 2021 Policy Dialogue Forum, including those related to innovations in teaching and learning, teacher education and policy.

Unforeseen crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and violent conflict remind us that teachers and education systems need to be able to adapt rapidly to changing circumstances to meet the learning needs of children and youth. Capacity for innovation is one of the keys to building resilient education systems.

Capitalizing on the many education innovations prompted by the pandemic, the Teacher Task Force chose “Innovation in teacher policy and practice for educational recovery” as the theme of its 13 th Policy Dialogue Forum, which took place in Kigali, Rwanda, and online, 2-3 December 2021.

Some of the main insights documented during the Forum are presented below, including those related to innovations in teaching and learning, teacher education and policy. These have been compiled in the Forum’s Final Report , released today.

Teacher autonomy is essential for meaningful innovation in teaching and learning

Teachers are best placed to assess the conditions of their own classrooms. Based on these, they innovate and adapt their practice, but their innovations often go unrecognized. The Forum highlighted the need to promote teacher autonomy and agency – that is, the capacity to act in an autonomous manner – to generate meaningful pedagogical innovation.

However, they need training, sufficient resources, good working conditions and support to develop the autonomy and agency needed to initiate, implement and evaluate new ways to teach that will improve student learning and wellbeing.

Emphasizing how teaching and learning is based on relationships, Forum participants shared innovative examples of how teachers collaborated with peers and parents during the pandemic.

For instance, in response to school closures, Kenya’s Teachers’ Service Commission provided educators with guidance on how to support other teachers and offer psychosocial support to families and learners.

By providing teachers with opportunities to discuss their teaching practices and exchange resources with each other and with students’ families, key lessons learned now inform Kenya’s policies to support online learning and teacher professional development.

Innovations involving digital technologies must be adapted to each context

The role of digital technologies in innovation was also explored during the Forum, emphasizing tailored and context-sensitive use of technologies rather than one-size-fits-all solutions.

While the pandemic hastened the need for technology-assisted innovations, mechanisms to assess, scale-up and refine are also necessary to ensure these innovations meet the needs for equitable, quality and inclusive education.

However, it is important that digital technologies do not reproduce top-down, rote learning resulting in excessive standardization, but rather are designed and implemented using a range of approaches to help foster student-centered pedagogies and facilitate education transformation.

Teacher education must be part of purposeful career paths

Teacher professional development should be embedded in teacher career paths and be aligned to teacher standards and accountability systems.

Forum participants explored how countries need to avoid innovating in a fragmented fashion that does not follow commonly agreed principles. This requires alignment across levels of education and between initial teacher education and continuing professional development.

It also requires better alignment between existing curricula, teacher professional development and student assessment to strengthen student outcomes.

Based on lessons learned during the pandemic, teacher education should also include peer learning and mentoring programs. In particular, teacher education needs to integrate inquiry and research skills which prepare teachers to be lifelong-learners, able to adapt their practice to changing conditions and meet their students’ evolving needs.

Teacher training and educational research institutions have an important role to support this kind of continuous exchange, particularly to address challenges brought on by rapid transformations.

Innovation in policy making must be inclusive and collaborative

Teachers need to be part of decision- and policy-making processes. One example presented was the development of the Comprehensive National Teacher Policy (CNTP) in Ghana. This process was coordinated by the Ghana Teacher Task Force (GTTF) with contributions from the Ghana Education Service, development partners and other actors.

This collaborative process established a framework for social dialogue with teachers and their representatives at the local, district and national levels.

Policy also needs to be informed by data which reflect realities on the ground. Grassroot level innovation can be enhanced by teacher participation in data collection and analysis.

With proper training, teachers and school leaders can use data to assess their own practices and address challenges in their own schools.

An example of innovation in data use came from The Gambia, where schools develop their own indicators and targets through a process of consultation that involves teachers, parents, students and their communities.

Policies must balance clear frameworks with flexibility to respond to local conditions

Innovations in teacher policy presented during the Forum included establishing new forms of partnerships with civil society organizations and funding agencies. For instance, an innovative workshop organized by UNESCO and the TTF brought together policymakers from various countries to inform the development of St Kitts and Nevis’ National Teaching Council.

Rather than imposing a ‘one size fits all’ approach, this process allowed policymakers to explore different types of national structures and the roles played amongst a number of high- and low-income countries before establishing their own National Teachers’ Council.

Teachers are essential to the innovation necessary to ‘build back better’ in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, their professionalism needs to be recognized and supported, and experimentation and adaptation must take place within clear policy frameworks.

Governments, teacher training institutions and other actors must balance structure and flexibility to foster both bottom-up (grassroots) and top-down (system-wide) innovations, so that they can contribute to ensure equitable, inclusive and quality education for all.

The Final Report from the Policy Dialogue Forum is available for download on the Teacher Task Force Knowledge Platform.

Related blogs

August 07, 2024 Madagascar: Training teachers to build students’ foundational skills Read how Madagascar is training teachers to strengthen students' foundational skills, especially in regions where education has been disrupted by drought.

April 26, 2024 A teacher inspires confidence in young learners in Sierra Leone Read how GPE is working with the Ministry of Education of Sierra Leone and its partners to increase access to preschool and the quality of early education.

March 21, 2024 Democratic Republic of Congo's pathway to education system transformation The Democratic Republic of Congo is building on progress and lessons learned to transform its education system and improve learning for more children.

I am not a teacher. But around 25 years back while guiding my children in their studies found the Pedagogy in Nepal unsuitable(rather wrong) for "capacity development" in children instead pushed them to rote learning. I think UNESCO should have general basic level teaching guide line(s).

Problem in school education should be identified before deciding to follow Bottom-up or Top-bottom system. I think Bottom-up should be emphasized rather than Top-bottom as problem lies at basic level Pedagogy. The goal should be " pushing students toward "Correct learning Habit" i.e. Learning from the book. A good book is a good teacher.Teacher's help should be provided wherever difficulties are faced on learning process. This is my personal opinion & I'm not an education expert. If needed I can prove my points.

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Innovative practices in teacher education

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Approaches to pedagogical innovation and why they matter

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, david istance david istance former nonresident senior fellow, center for universal education.

January 23, 2019

Across the world there is the outstanding challenge of innovating schools that too often are rigid and old-fashioned. The world is changing rapidly. Far too many students are disengaged and achieve well below their potential. At the same time, global expectations for education systems are growing ever more ambitious. For all these reasons, schools and systems must be ready to move beyond the comfort zone of the traditional and familiar. Innovation is essential.

Major shifts in curriculum policy in turn argue for pedagogical innovation. Curriculum policy strategies in many countries promote the development of competences, as well as knowledge, including those often called “21st century skills.” Competences such as collaboration, persistence, creativity, and innovation are not so much taught as intrinsic to different forms of teaching and learning through pedagogy. If the 21st century competences are to be systematically developed, rather than left to emerge by accident, then pedagogies must deliberately foster them.

Innovation is fundamental, therefore, and it must reach right into the pedagogies practiced in schools and classrooms around the world. Pedagogical expertise is at the core of teacher professionalism, and so promotion of such expertise is fundamental. Patterns of pedagogical practice are extremely hard to grasp at a system level (never mind internationally), however, given the lack of agreed definitions and the sheer number and dynamism of the relationships involved. Yet, it is so important that it cannot be left as a “black box” hidden behind classroom doors.

My former Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) colleague Alejandro Paniagua and I recently addressed these complex issues in a report from the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI): “ Teachers as Designers of Learning Environments: The Importance of Innovative Pedagogies .”

A key aim of this work has been to identify concrete clusters or families of innovative pedagogical approaches, while not getting lost in the myriad of diverse teaching methods. The report outlines six approaches, which lie in the middle of the theoretical spectrum between broad principles, such as inclusiveness or cultural relevance, on the one hand, and specific teaching methods, on the other. This permits a more concrete and practice-oriented focus than considering all approaches together as if they were the same; it also focuses squarely on the pedagogies themselves rather than getting snagged on questions of whether they are necessarily innovative (which will vary widely depending on context).

The six clusters of pedagogical approaches

Blended learning rethinks established routines and sequencing of student work and teaching to enhance understanding and relies heavily on digital resources. This approach aims to be engaging and coherent for learners, as well as to optimize access to teacher expertise by reducing routine tasks. The report discusses three main forms of blending: the inverted flipped classroom, lab-based models, and “in-class” blending.

Gamification exploits how games can capture student interest while having serious purpose, such as fostering self-regulation and the abilities to handle complexity and the unfamiliar. These pedagogies explicitly build on features of games such as rapid feedback, badges and goals, participation, and progressive challenge, as well as on the human elements of narratives and identities, collaboration, and competition. The OECD report elaborates on an example of using the “Game of Thrones” series for teaching history.

Computational thinking develops problem-solving by looking at challenges as computers would and then uses technology to resolve them. Its basic elements include logical reasoning, decomposition, algorithms, abstraction, and pattern identification—using techniques such as approximate solutions, parallel processing, model checking, debugging, and search strategies. Computational thinking envisions programming and coding as new forms of literacy.

Experiential learning occurs through active experience, inquiry, and reflection. Its four main components are concrete experience that potentially extends existing understanding, reflective observation, conceptualization, and active experimentation. Guidance and scaffolding play pivotal roles. Pedagogies in this cluster include inquiry-based learning, education for sustainable development, outdoor learning, and service learning.

Embodied learning looks beyond the purely cognitive and content acquisition to connect to the physical, artistic, emotional, and social . Embodied pedagogies promote knowledge acquisition through the natural tendencies of the young toward creativity and expression,  and encourage the development of curiosity, sensitivity, risk-taking, and thinking in metaphors and multiple perspectives. The report identified three main forms: school-based physical culture, arts-integrated learning, and the construction of tools and artefacts. The OECD report illustrates this approach through an example of teaching geometry through dance.

Multiliteracies and discussion-based teaching aims to develop cultural distance and critical capacities. Critical literacies situate knowledge in its different political, cultural, and authorial contexts and deconstruct narratives. Class discussion, always valuable, becomes central in questioning ideas and dominant language. This pedagogical approach uses students’ life experiences to create meaningful classroom activities, constructive critique to create distance from received knowledge, and encouragement of students to extend their horizons. This approach also depends on active teacher scaffolding.

These clusters are not stand-alone approaches, and they can be combined in different ways. Indeed, in our OECD report we discuss the importance of combining pedagogies that work well together as well as of understanding what teachers should do to practice powerful, effective versions of the pedagogy.

In sum, innovation in teaching and learning is increasingly essential for education in the 21st century, and this needs to reach right into the pedagogies practiced in schools and classrooms. Understanding pedagogical innovation presents formidable challenges but represents a black box that must be prised open for advances to happen.

K-12 Education

Global Economy and Development

Center for Universal Education

Lydia Wilbard

August 29, 2024

Zachary Billot, Annie Vong, Nicole Dias Del Valle, Emily Markovich Morris

August 26, 2024

Brian A. Jacob, Cristina Stanojevich

Innovation in education: what works, what doesn’t, and what to do about it?

Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning

ISSN : 2397-7604

Article publication date: 3 April 2017

The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical review of the educational innovation field in the USA. It outlines classification of innovations, discusses the hurdles to innovation, and offers ways to increase the scale and rate of innovation-based transformations in the education system.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is based on a literature survey and author research.

US education badly needs effective innovations of scale that can help produce the needed high-quality learning outcomes across the system. The primary focus of educational innovations should be on teaching and learning theory and practice, as well as on the learner, parents, community, society, and its culture. Technology applications need a solid theoretical foundation based on purposeful, systemic research, and a sound pedagogy. One of the critical areas of research and innovation can be cost and time efficiency of the learning.

Practical implications

Several practical recommendations stem out of this paper: how to create a base for large-scale innovations and their implementation; how to increase effectiveness of technology innovations in education, particularly online learning; how to raise time and cost efficiency of education.

Social implications

Innovations in education are regarded, along with the education system, within the context of a societal supersystem demonstrating their interrelations and interdependencies at all levels. Raising the quality and scale of innovations in education will positively affect education itself and benefit the whole society.

Originality/value

Originality is in the systemic approach to education and educational innovations, in offering a comprehensive classification of innovations; in exposing the hurdles to innovations, in new arguments about effectiveness of technology applications, and in time efficiency of education.

• Implementation
• Educational technology
• Time efficiency

Serdyukov, P. (2017), "Innovation in education: what works, what doesn’t, and what to do about it?", Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning , Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 4-33. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIT-10-2016-0007

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Peter Serdyukov

Published in the Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning . This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Necessity is the mother of invention (Plato).

Introduction

Education, being a social institution serving the needs of society, is indispensable for society to survive and thrive. It should be not only comprehensive, sustainable, and superb, but must continuously evolve to meet the challenges of the fast-changing and unpredictable globalized world. This evolution must be systemic, consistent, and scalable; therefore, school teachers, college professors, administrators, researchers, and policy makers are expected to innovate the theory and practice of teaching and learning, as well as all other aspects of this complex organization to ensure quality preparation of all students to life and work.

Here we present a systemic discussion of educational innovations, identify the barriers to innovation, and outline potential directions for effective innovations. We discuss the current status of innovations in US education, what educational innovation is, how innovations are being integrated in schools and colleges, why innovations do not always produce the desired effect, and what should be done to increase the scale and rate of innovation-based transformations in our education system. We then offer recommendations for the growth of educational innovations. As examples of innovations in education, we will highlight online learning and time efficiency of learning using accelerated and intensive approaches.

Innovations in US education

For an individual, a nation, and humankind to survive and progress, innovation and evolution are essential. Innovations in education are of particular importance because education plays a crucial role in creating a sustainable future. “Innovation resembles mutation, the biological process that keeps species evolving so they can better compete for survival” ( Hoffman and Holzhuter, 2012 , p. 3). Innovation, therefore, is to be regarded as an instrument of necessary and positive change. Any human activity (e.g. industrial, business, or educational) needs constant innovation to remain sustainable.

The need for educational innovations has become acute. “It is widely believed that countries’ social and economic well-being will depend to an ever greater extent on the quality of their citizens’ education: the emergence of the so-called ‘knowledge society’, the transformation of information and the media, and increasing specialization on the part of organizations all call for high skill profiles and levels of knowledge. Today’s education systems are required to be both effective and efficient, or in other words, to reach the goals set for them while making the best use of available resources” ( Cornali, 2012 , p. 255). According to an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report, “the pressure to increase equity and improve educational outcomes for students is growing around the world” ( Vieluf et al. , 2012 , p. 3). In the USA, underlying pressure to innovate comes from political, economic, demographic, and technological forces from both inside and outside the nation.

Many in the USA seem to recognize that education at all levels critically needs renewal: “Higher education has to change. It needs more innovation” ( Wildavsky et al. , 2012 , p. 1). This message, however, is not new – in the foreword to the 1964 book entitled Innovation in Education, Arthur Foshay, Executive Officer of The Horace Mann-Lincoln Institute of School Experimentation, wrote, “It has become platitudinous to speak of the winds of change in education, to remind those interested in the educational enterprise that a revolution is in progress. Trite or not, however, it is true to say that changes appear wherever one turns in education” ( Matthew, 1964 , p. v).

Yet, more than 50 years later, we realize that the actual pace of educational innovations and their implementation is too slow as shown by the learning outcomes of both school and college graduates, which are far from what is needed in today’s world. Jim Shelton, Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Innovation and Improvement in the US Department of Education, writes, “Whether for reasons of economic growth, competitiveness, social justice or return on tax-payer investment, there is little rational argument over the need for significant improvement in US educational outcomes. Further, it is irrefutable that the country has made limited improvement on most educational outcomes over the last several decades, especially when considered in the context of the increased investment over the same period. In fact, the total cost of producing each successful high school and college graduate has increased substantially over time instead of decreasing – creating what some argue is an inverted learning curve […].”

“Education not only needs new ideas and inventions that shatter the performance expectations of today’s status quo; to make a meaningful impact, these new solutions must also “scale,” that is grow large enough, to serve millions of students and teachers or large portions of specific underserved populations” ( Shelton, 2011 ). Yet, something does not work here.

Lack of innovation can have profound economic and social repercussions. America’s last competitive advantage, warns Harvard Innovation Education Fellow Tony Wagner, its ability to innovate, is at risk as a result of the country’s lackluster education system ( Creating innovators, 2012 ). Derek Bok, a former Harvard University President, writes, “[…] neither American students nor our universities, nor the nation itself, can afford to take for granted the quality of higher education and the teaching and learning it provides” ( Bok, 2007 , p. 6). Hence it is central for us to make US education consistently innovative and focus educational innovations on raising the quality of learning at all levels. Yet, though there is a good deal of ongoing educational research and innovation, we have not actually seen discernable improvements in either school students’ or college graduates’ achievements to this day. Suffice it to mention a few facts. Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) evaluations keep revealing disappointing results for our middle school ( Pew Research Center, 2015 ); a large number of high school graduates are not ready for college ( College preparedness, 2012 ); and employers, in turn, are often dissatisfied with college graduates ( Thomson, 2015 ; Jaschik, 2015 ). No one, be they students, parents, academia, business, or society as a whole, are pleased with these outcomes. Could it be that our education system is not sufficiently innovative?

Danny Crichton, an entrepreneur, in his blog The Next Wave of Education Innovation writes expressly, “Few areas have been as hopeful and as disappointing as innovation in education. Education is probably the single most important function in our society today, yet it remains one of the least understood, despite incredible levels of investment from venture capitalists and governments. Why do students continue to show up in a classroom or start an online course? How do we guide students to the right knowledge just as they need to learn it? We may have an empirical inkling and some hunches, but we still lack any fundamental insights. That is truly disappointing. With the rise of the internet, it seemed like education was on the cusp of a complete revolution. Today, though, you would be excused for not seeing much of a difference between the way we learn and how we did so twenty years ago” ( Crichton, 2015 ).

Editors of the book Reinventing Higher Education: The Promise of Innovation , Ben Wildavsky, Andrew Kelly, and Kevin Carey write, “The higher education system also betrays an innovation deficit in another way: a steady decline in productivity driven by a combination of static or declining output paired with skyrocketing prices ( Wildavsky et al. , 2012 , p. 3). This despairing mood is echoed by Groom and Lamb’s statement in EDUCAUSE Review, “Today, innovation is increasingly conflated with hype, disruption for disruption’s sake, and outsourcing laced with a dose of austerity-driven downsizing” ( Groom and Lamb, 2014 ).

USA success has always been driven by innovation and has a unique capacity for growth ( Zeihan, 2014 ). Nevertheless, it is indeed a paradox: while the USA produces more research, including in education, than any other country ( Science Watch, 2009 ), we do not see much improvement in the way our students are prepared for life and work. The USA can be proud of great scholars, such as John Dewey, B.F. Skinner, Abraham Maslow, Albert Bandura, Howard Gardner, Jerome Bruner, and many others who have contributed a great deal to the theory of education. Yet, has this theory yielded any innovative approaches for the teaching and learning practice that have increased learning productivity and improved the quality of the output?

The USA is the home of the computer and the internet, but has the information revolution helped to improve the quality of learning outcomes? Where and how, then, are all these educational innovations applied? It seems, write Spangehl and Hoffman, that “American education has taken little advantage of important innovations that would increase instructional capacity, effectiveness, and productivity” (2012 , p. 21). “The new ‘job factory’ role American universities have awkwardly stuffed themselves into may be killing the modern college student’s spirit and search for meaning” ( Mercurio, 2016 ).

What is interesting here is that while we are still undecided as to what to do with our struggling schools and universities and how to integrate into them our advanced inventions, other nations are already benefiting from our innovations and have in a short time successfully built world-class education systems. It is ironic that an admirable Finnish success was derived heavily from US educational research. Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish educator and author of a bestselling book, The Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change In Finland , said in an interview to the Huffington Post, “American scholars and their writings, like Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, have been influential in building the much-admired school system in Finland” ( Rubin, 2015 ); so wrote other authors ( Strauss, 2014 ). Singapore, South Korea, China, and other forward-looking countries also learned from great US educational ideas.

We cannot say that US educators and society are oblivious to the problems in education: on the contrary, a number of educational movements have taken place in recent US history (e.g. numerous educational reforms since 1957 to this day, including recent NCLB, Race to the Top, and the Common Core). Universities and research organizations opened centers and laboratories of innovation (Harvard Innovation Lab, Presidential Innovation Laboratory convened by American Council on Education, Center for Innovation in Education at the University of Kentucky, NASA STEM Innovation Lab, and recently created National University Center for Innovation in Learning). Some institutions introduced programs focusing on innovation (Master’s Program in Technology, Innovation, and Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education; Master of Arts in Education and Innovation at the Webster University). New organizations have been set up (The International Centre for Innovation in Education, Innovative Schools Network, Center for Education Reform). Regular conferences on the topic are convened (AERA, ASU-GSV Summit, National Conference on Educational Innovation, The Nueva School for the Innovative Learning Conference). Excellent books have been written by outstanding innovators such as Andy Hargreaves (2003) , Hargreaves and Shirley (2009) , Hargreaves et al. (2010) , Michael Fullan (2007, 2010) , Yong Zhao (2012) , Pasi Sahlberg (2011) , Tony Wagner (2012) , Mihaliy Csikszentmihalyi (2013) , and Ken Robinson (2015) . There is even an Office of Innovation and Improvement in the US Department of Education, which is intended to “[…] drive education innovation by both seeding new strategies, and bringing proven approaches to scale” ( Office of Innovation and Improvement, 2016 ). And still, innovations do not take hold in American classrooms on a wide scale, which may leave the nation behind in global competition.

Society’s failure to anticipate the problems and their outcomes may have unpredictable consequences, as Pulitzer Prize winner and Professor Jared Diamond, University of California, Los Angeles, writes in his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed ( Diamond, 2005 ). Yong Zhao interpreted Diamond’s findings as “[…] society’s inability to perceive or unwillingness to accept large and distant changes – and thus work to come up with the right response – is among one of the chief reasons that societies fail. This inability also leads human beings to look for short-term outcomes and seek immediate gratification” ( Zhao, 2012 , p. 162). It looks like the issue of educational innovation goes beyond the field itself and requires a strong societal response.

Three big questions arise from this discussion: why, having so many innovators and organizations concerned with innovations, does our education system not benefit from them? What interferes with creating and, especially, implementing transformative, life-changing, and much-needed innovations across schools and colleges in this country? How can we grow, support, and disseminate worthy innovations effectively so that our students succeed in both school and university and achieve the best learning outcomes that will adequately prepare them for life and work? Let us first take a look at what is an educational innovation.

What is educational innovation?

Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things (Theodore Levitt).

To innovate is to look beyond what we are currently doing and develop a novel idea that helps us to do our job in a new way. The purpose of any invention, therefore, is to create something different from what we have been doing, be it in quality or quantity or both. To produce a considerable, transformative effect, the innovation must be put to work, which requires prompt diffusion and large-scale implementation.

Innovation is generally understood as “[…] the successful introduction of a new thing or method” ( Brewer and Tierney, 2012 , p. 15). In essence, “[…] innovation seems to have two subcomponents. First, there is the idea or item which is novel to a particular individual or group and, second, there is the change which results from the adoption of the object or idea” ( Evans, 1970 , p. 16). Thus, innovation requires three major steps: an idea, its implementation, and the outcome that results from the execution of the idea and produces a change. In education, innovation can appear as a new pedagogic theory, methodological approach, teaching technique, instructional tool, learning process, or institutional structure that, when implemented, produces a significant change in teaching and learning, which leads to better student learning. So, innovations in education are intended to raise productivity and efficiency of learning and/or improve learning quality. For example, Khan’s Academy and MOOCs have opened new, practically unlimited opportunities for massive, more efficient learning.

Efficiency is generally determined by the amount of time, money, and resources that are necessary to obtain certain results. In education, efficiency of learning is determined mainly by the invested time and cost. Learning is more efficient if we achieve the same results in less time and with less expense. Productivity is determined by estimating the outcomes obtained vs the invested effort in order to achieve the result. Thus, if we can achieve more with less effort, productivity increases. Hence, innovations in education should increase both productivity of learning and learning efficiency.

Educational innovations emerge in various areas and in many forms. According to the US Office of Education, “There are innovations in the way education systems are organized and managed, exemplified by charter schools or school accountability systems. There are innovations in instructional techniques or delivery systems, such as the use of new technologies in the classroom. There are innovations in the way teachers are recruited, and prepared, and compensated. The list goes on and on” ( US Department of Education, 2004 ).

Innovation can be directed toward progress in one, several, or all aspects of the educational system: theory and practice, curriculum, teaching and learning, policy, technology, institutions and administration, institutional culture, and teacher education. It can be applied in any aspect of education that can make a positive impact on learning and learners.

In a similar way, educational innovation concerns all stakeholders: the learner, parents, teacher, educational administrators, researchers, and policy makers and requires their active involvement and support. When considering the learners, we think of studying cognitive processes taking place in the the brain during learning – identifying and developing abilities, skills, and competencies. These include improving attitudes, dispositions, behaviors, motivation, self-assessment, self-efficacy, autonomy, as well as communication, collaboration, engagement, and learning productivity.

To raise the quality of teaching, we want to enhance teacher education, professional development, and life-long learning to include attitudes, dispositions, teaching style, motivation, skills, competencies, self-assessment, self-efficacy, creativity, responsibility, autonomy to teach, capacity to innovate, freedom from administrative pressure, best conditions of work, and public sustenance. As such, we expect educational institutions to provide an optimal academic environment, as well as materials and conditions for achieving excellence of the learning outcomes for every student (program content, course format, institutional culture, research, funding, resources, infrastructure, administration, and support).

Education is nourished by society and, in turn, nourishes society. The national educational system relies on the dedication and responsibility of all society for its effective functioning, thus parental involvement, together with strong community and society backing, are crucial for success.

political (NCLB (No Child Left Behind Act), Race to the Top);

social (Equal Opportunities Act, affirmative action policy, Indivuals with Disabilities Education Act);

philosophical (constructivism, objectivism);

cultural (moral education, multiculturalism, bilingual education);

pedagogical (competence-based education, STEM (curriculum choices in school: Science, Technology, English, and Mathematics);

psychological (cognitive science, multiple intelligencies theory, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, learning style theory); and

technological (computer-based learning, networked learning, e-learning).

Though these innovations left a significant mark on education, which of them helped improve productivity and quality of learning? Under NCLB, we placed too much focus on accountability and assessment and lost sight of many other critical aspects of education. In drawing too much attention to technology innovations, we may neglect teachers and learners in the process. Stressing the importance of STEM at the expense of music, arts and physical culture ignores young people’s personal, social, emotional, and moral development. Reforming higher education without reforming secondary education is futile. Trying to change education while leaving disfunctional societal and cultural mechanisms intact is doomed. It is crucial, therefore, when innovating to ask, “What is this innovation for?” “How will it work?” and “What effect will it produce?”

Many of us educators naively believe grand reforms or powerful technologies will transform our education system. Did we not expect NCLB to change our schools for the better? Did we not hope that new information technologies would make education more effective and relieve teachers from tedious labor? However, again and again we realize that neither loud reforms nor wondrous technology will do the hard work demanded of teachers and learners.

Innovations can be categorized as evolutionary or revolutionary ( Osolind, 2012 ), sustaining or disruptive ( Christensen and Overdorf, 2000 ; Yu and Hang, 2010 ). Evolutionary innovations lead to incremental improvement but require continuity; revolutionary innovations bring about a complete change, totally overhauling and/or replacing the old with the new, often in a short time period. Sustaining innovation perpetuates the current dimensions of performance (e.g. continuous improvement of the curriculum), while disrupting innovation, such as a national reform, radically changes the whole field. Innovations can also be tangible (e.g. technology tools) and intangible (e.g. methods, strategies, and techniques). Evolutionary and revolutionary innovations seem to have the same connotation as sustaining and disruptive innovations, respectively.

When various innovations are being introduced in the conventional course of study, for instance Universal Design of Learning ( Meyer et al. , 2014 ); or more expressive presentation of new material using multimedia; or more effective teaching methods; or new mnemonic techniques, students’ learning productivity may rise to some extent. This is an evolutionary change. It partially improves the existing instructional approach to result in better learning. Such learning methods as inquiry based, problem based, case study, and collaborative and small group are evolutionary innovations because they change the way students learn. Applying educational technology (ET) in a conventional classroom using an overhead projector, video, or iPad, are evolutionary, sustaining innovations because they change only certain aspects of learning. National educational reforms, however, are always intended to be revolutionary innovations as they are aimed at complete system renovation. This is also true for online learning because it produces a systemic change that drastically transforms the structure, format, and methods of teaching and learning. Some innovative approaches, like “extreme learning” ( Extreme Learning, 2012 ), which use technology for learning purposes in novel, unusual, or nontraditional ways, may potentially produce a disruptive, revolutionary effect.

Adjustment or upgrading of the process: innovation can occur in daily performance and be seen as a way to make our job easier, more effective, more appealing, or less stressful. This kind of innovation, however, should be considered an improvement rather than innovation because it does not produce a new method or tool. The term innovative, in keeping with the dictionary definition, applies only to something new and different, not just better, and it must be useful ( Okpara, 2007 ). Educators, incidentally, commonly apply the term “innovative” to almost any improvement in classroom practices; yet, to be consistent, not any improvement can be termed in this way. The distinction between innovation and improvement is in novelty and originality, as well as in the significance of impact and scale of change.

Modification of the process: innovation that significantly alters the process, performance, or quality of an existing product (e.g. accelerated learning (AL), charter school, home schooling, blended learning).

Transformation of the system: dramatic conversion (e.g. Bologna process; Common Core; fully automated educational systems; autonomous or self-directed learning; online, networked, and mobile learning).

First-level innovations (with a small i ) make reasonable improvements and are important ingredients of everyday life and work. They should be unequivocally enhanced, supported, and used. Second-level innovations either lead to a system’s evolutionary change or are a part of that change and, thus, can make a considerable contribution to educational quality. But we are more concerned with innovations of the third level (with a capital I), which are both breakthrough and disruptive and can potentially make a revolutionary, systemic change.

qualitative: better knowledge, more effective skills, important competencies, character development, values, dispositions, effective job placement, and job performance; and

quantitative: improved learning parameters such as test results, volume of information learned, amount of skills or competencies developed, college enrollment numbers, measured student performance, retention, attrition, graduation rate, number of students in class, cost, and time efficiency.

Innovation can be assessed by its novely, originality, and potential effect. As inventing is typically a time-consuming and cost-demanding experience, it is critical to calculate short-term and long-term expenses and consequences of an invention. They must demonstrate significant qualitative and/or quantitative benefits. As a psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi writes, “human well-being hinges on two factors: the ability to increase creativity and the ability to develop ways to evaluate the impact of new creative ideas” (Csikszentmihalyi, 2013, p. 322).

In education, we can estimate the effect of innovation via learning outcomes or exam results, teacher formative and summative, formal and informal assessments, and student self-assessment. Innovation can also be computed using such factors as productivity (more learning outcomes in a given time), time efficiency (shorter time on studying the same material), or cost efficiency (less expense per student) data. Other evaluations can include the school academic data, college admissions and employment rate of school graduates, their work productivity and career growth.

singular/local/limited;

multiple/spread/significant; and

system-wide/total.

This gradation correlates with the three levels of innovation described above: adjustment, modification, and transformation. To make a marked difference, educational innovation must be scalable and spread across the system or wide territory. Prominent examples include Khan Academy in the USA, GEEKI Labs in Brazil (GEEKI), and BRIDGE International Academies in Kenya (BRIDGE). Along with scale, the speed of adoption or diffusion, and cost are critical for maximizing the effect of innovation.

Innovations are nowadays measured and compared internationally. According to the 2011 OECD report ( OECD, 2014 ), the USA was in 24th place in educational innovativeness in the world. This report singled out the use of student assessments for monitoring progress over time as the top organizational innovation, and the requirement that students were to explain and elaborate on their answers during science lessons as the top pedagogic innovation in the USA. Overall, the list of innovations selected by OECD was disappointingly unimpressive.

Innovations usually originate either from the bottom of the society (individual inventors or small teams) – bottom-up or grass root approach, or from the top (business or government) – top-down or administrative approach. Sometimes, innovations coming from the top get stalled on their way to the bottom if they do not accomplish their goal and are not appreciated or supported by the public. Should they rise from the bottom, they may get stuck on the road to the top if they are misunderstood or found impractical or unpopular. They can also stop in the middle if there is no public, political, or administrative or financial backing. Thus, innovations that start at the bottom, however good they are, may suffer too many roadblocks to be able to spread and be adopted on a large scale. Consequently, it is up to politicians, administrators, and society to drive or stifle the change. Education reforms have always been top-down and, as they near the bottom, typically become diverted, diluted, lose strength, or get rejected as ineffective or erroneous. As Michael Fullan writes in the Foreword to an exciting book, Good to Great to Innovate: Recalculating the Route to Career Readiness, K012+ , “[…] there is a good deal of reform going on in the education world, but much of it misses the point, or approaches it superficially” ( Sharratt and Harild, 2015 , p. xiii).

Innovations enriching education can be homegrown (come from within the system) or be imported (originate from outside education). Examples of imported innovations that result from revolution, trend, or new idea include the information technology revolution, social media, medical developments (MRI), and cognitive psychology. Innovations can also be borrowed from superior international theories and practices (see Globalization of Education chapter). National reform may also be a route to innovation, for instance when a government decides to completely revamp the system via a national reform, or when an entire society embarks on a new road, as has happened recently in Singapore, South Korea, and Finland.

Innovations may come as a result of inspiration, continuous creative mental activity, or “supply pushed” through the availability of new technological possibilities in production, or “demand led” based on market or societal needs ( Brewer and Tierney, 2012 , p. 15). In the first case, we can have a wide variety of ideas flowing around; in the second, we observe a ubiquitous spread of educational technologies across educational system at all levels; in the third, we witness a growth of non-public institutions, such as private and charter schools and private universities.

Innovation in any area or aspect can make a change in education in a variety of ways. Ultimately, however, innovations are about quality and productivity of learning (this does not mean we can forget about moral development, which prepares young people for life, work, and citizenship) ( Camins, 2015 ). Every innovation must be tested for its potential efficiency. The roots of learning efficiency lie, however, not only in innovative technologies or teaching alone but even more in uncovering potential capacities for learning in our students, their intellectual, emotional, and psychological spheres. Yet, while innovations in economics, business, technology, and engineering are always connected to the output of the process, innovation in education does not necessarily lead to improving the output (i.e. students’ readiness for future life and employment). Test results, degrees, and diplomas do not signify that a student is fully prepared for his or her career. Educational research is often disconnected from learning productivity and efficiency, school effectiveness, and quality output. Innovations in educational theories, textbooks, instructional tools, and teaching techniques do not always produce a desired change in the quality of teaching and learning. What, then, is the problem with our innovations? Why do not we get more concerned with learning productivity and efficiency? As an example, let us look at technology applications in teaching and learning.

Effects of technology innovations in education

A tool is just an opportunity with a handle (Kevin Kelly).

When analyzing innovations of our time, we cannot fail to see that an overwhelming majority of them are tangible, being either technology tools (laptops, iPads, smart phones) or technology-based learning systems and materials, e.g., learning management system (LMS), educational software, and web-based resources. Technology has always served as both a driving force and instrument of innovation in any area of human activity. It is then natural for us to expect that innovations based on ET applications can improve teaching and learning. Though technology is a great asset, nonetheless, is it the single or main source of today’s innovations, and is it wise to rely solely on technology?

The rich history of ET innovations is filled with optimism. Just remember when tape recorders, video recorders, TV, educational films, linguaphone classes, overhead projectors, and multimedia first appeared in school. They brought so much excitement and hope into our classrooms! New presentation formats catered to various learning styles. Visuals brought reality and liveliness into the classrooms. Information and computer technology (ICT) offered more ways to retrieve information and develop skills. With captivating communication tools (iPhones, iPads, Skype, FaceTime), we can communicate with anybody around the world in real time, visually, and on the go. Today we are excited about online learning, mobile learning, social networking learning, MOOCs, virtual reality, virtual and remote laboratories, 3D and 4D printing, and gamification. But can we say all this is helping to produce better learning? Are we actually using ET’s potential to make a difference in education and increase learning output?

Larry Cuban, an ET researcher and writer, penned the following: “Since 2010, laptops, tablets, interactive whiteboards, smart phones, and a cornucopia of software have become ubiquitous. We spent billions of dollars on computers. Yet has academic achievement improved as a consequence? Has teaching and learning changed? Has use of devices in schools led to better jobs? These are the basic questions that school boards, policy makers, and administrators ask. The answers to these questions are ‘no,’ ‘no,’ and ‘probably not.’” ( Cuban, 2015 ). This cautionary statement should make us all think hard about whether more technology means better learning.

Technology is used in manufacturing, business, and research primarily to increase labor productivity. Because integrating technology into education is in many ways like integrating technology into any business, it makes sense to evaluate technological applications by changes in learning productivity and quality. William Massy and Robert Zemsky wrote in their paper, “Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity,” that “[…] technology should be used to boost academic productivity” ( Massy and Zemsky, 1995 ). National Educational Technology Standards also addressed this issue by introducing a special rubric: “Apply technology to increase productivity” ( National Educational Technology Standards, 2004 ). Why then has technology not contributed much to the productivity of learning? It may be due to a so-called “productivity paradox” ( Brynjolfsson, 1993 ), which refers to the apparent contradiction between the remarkable advances in computer power and the relatively slow growth of productivity at the level of the whole economy, individual firms, and many specific applications. Evidently, this paradox relates to technology applications in education.

A conflict between public expectations of ET effectiveness and actual applications in teaching and learning can be rooted in educators’ attitudes toward technology. What some educational researchers write about technology in education helps to reveal the inherent issue. The pillars and building blocks of twenty-first century learning, according to Linda Baer and James McCormick (2012 , p. 168), are tools, programs, services, and policies such as web-enabled information storage and retrieval systems, digital resources, games, and simulations, eAdvising and eTutoring, online revenue sharing, which are all exclusively technological innovations. They are intended to integrate customized learning experiences, assessment-based learning outcomes, wikis, blogs, social networking, and mobile learning. The foundation of all this work, as these authors write, is built on the resources, infrastructure, quality standards, best practices, and innovation.

These are all useful, tangible things, but where are the intangible innovations, such as theoretical foundation, particularly pedagogy, psychology, and instructional methodology that are a true underpinning of teaching and learning? The emphasis on tools seems to be an effect of materialistic culture, which covets tangible, material assets or results. Similarly, today’s students worry more about grades, certificates, degrees, and diplomas (tangible assets) than about gaining knowledge, an intangible asset ( Business Dictionary, 2016 ). We may come to recognize that modern learning is driven more by technological tools than by sound theory, which is misleading.

According to the UNESCO Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research project conducted in several countries, “ICT has great potential for supporting innovative pedagogies, but it is not a magic ingredient.” The findings suggest that “[…] when considering ICT it is important to focus not on flash but on the student learning and 21st century skills that ICT can enable” ( UNESCO, 2013 ). As Zhao and Frank (2003) argue in their ecological model of technology integration in school, we should be interested in not only how much computers are used but also how computers are used. Evidently, before starting to use technology we have to ask first, “What technology tools will help our students to learn math, sciences, literature and languages better, and how to use them efficiently to improve the learning outcomes?”

Thus, the problem of ET innovations is twofold: any integration of technology in teaching and learning has to demonstrate an increased productivity of teaching and learning, but it can be achieved only when ET applications are based on an effective pedagogic theory. Technology innovation will eventually drive pedagogic innovations, without a doubt, however, this path is slower, more complicated, and leads to an enormous waste of financial, technical and human resources.

Technocentric syndrome

More disquieting than even the lack of pedagogical foundation for technology-enhanced education is the sincere belief of many educators that technology will fix all the problems they encounter in the classroom, be they live or virtual. Consequently, fewer university professors nowadays perceive the need for pedagogic mastery in online teaching in addition to content-area expertise as they reason technology will solve all instructional difficulties anyway. This belief is called “technocentrism” ( Pappert, 1990 ), which, according to Nickols (2011) , is common in higher education and e-learning discussions. It is probably common in secondary school as well. Unfortunately, educators often forget that the computer is only an extension of human abilities, not a replacement or substitute. We, as educators, must realize that for technology innovation to produce a positive effect in learning it must be preceded by pedagogic leadership, research, and sound theory; however, the reality is typically the reverse. We are excited to grab the new gadget and try to fit it into the classroom without preliminary assessment of its implementation challenges and potential effects, solid research, or laying out a theoretical foundation based on advanced pedagogic theory which will ensure its effective use. Former Kodak Chairman George Fisher described it this way, “Even good people get locked into processes that may be totally inappropriate to deal with a new technology attacking from underneath (Christensen and Eyring, 2011, p. 16).

Technology (as an entity) contains an inherent pedagogical value ( Accuosti, 2014 , p. 5). It pushes the limits of what educators can do but is not a magic wand; it is only a means, an instrument, a tool for an innovative teacher and learner. That we overestimate technology’s power in education has its roots in human anticipation of a miracle, or a hope of finding a quick fix. But “[…] we can’t just buy iPads (or any device), add water, and hope that strategy will usher schools to the leading edge of 21st century education. Technology, by itself, isn’t curative. Human agency shapes the path” ( Levasseur, 2012 ). We are all excited by the technology and information revolution and believe in its potential but “[…] perhaps the next important revolution isn’t technological, even as technology marches forward unabated. Perhaps the revolution that we need, the one we should aspire to, is societal. Indeed, the next revolution should be one of education, empathy, and a broader understanding of the world, and of its people and culture” ( Jiang, 2015 ).

One of my students wrote in a recent online class, “Students learn from their teachers, not from electronic gadgets.” Do we understand how students learn in a technology-based environment, one-on-one with the laptop or mobile phone? Can we estimate possible changes in the students’ cognition, learning style, behavior, attitudes, values, and social relationships under the influence of electronic devices? It is certainly true that live interaction between students and their teachers offers worthy examples and enlightening experiences for students and gratifying moments for teachers. Overestimating the power of technology, regrettably, leads to the deterioration of the “human element” ( Serdiukov, 2001 ) in technology-based and, particularly, online teaching and learning. It further underestimates the need for sound pedagogy and quality teacher preparation. It may also have a devastating impact on our ability to socialize, collaborate, and survive. George Friedman argues that computers have had “profoundly disruptive consequences on cultural live throughout the world” ( Friedman, 2012 , p. 25), which could not have left education unperturbed.

Neil Postman addressed another concern of overemphasizing the role of technology in education, cautioning against “[…] surrendering education to technology” ( Postman, 1993 ), which may have far-reaching social and cultural consequences ( Serdyukov, 2015b ). According to Sousa (2014) , the widespread use of technology is having both positive and negative effects on students’ attention and memory systems. A strong warning about the negative effects of the Web comes from Maurer et al. (2013) , who caution that modern media, particularly networked computers, are endangering our capacity to think, to remember clearly, and to read and write with concentration; they also imperil creativity. “New technologies, whether or not they succeed in solving the problem that they were designed to solve, regularly create unanticipated new problems” ( Diamond, 2005 , p. 505). There are numerous social, cultural and psychological side effects of technology-enhanced or technology-based education, among them placing unrealistic hopes on technology, which leads to weakening a student’s and teacher’s effort and eventually takes the teachers out of the equation. This in turn makes the outcomes of online learning overly dependent on the LMS platform, washing away human interaction and communication by industrializing and formalizing learning.

Christensen and Eyring (2011) , who wrote about disruptive innovations that force universities to change, predict that teaching in the future will be disruptable as technology improves and shifts the competitive focus from a teacher’s credentials or an institution’s prestige to what students actually learn. Their observations support the findings of other studies that indicate learning occurs best when it involves a blend of online and face-to-face learning, with the latter providing essential intangibles best obtained on a traditional college campus. From this statement, one can extrapolate that technology alone cannot ensure productive and enriched learning and, especially, personal and social development as students still need a human element in a technology-enhanced environment. Additionally, when planning to apply a new technology to education, we have to consider its potential pedagogic and psychological effects. Finally, we need a solid, innovative, theoretical foundation for online learning. This foundation would help teachers do a better job in both classroom and online environments than simply integrating computers and other gadgets into learning. It would help enrich students’ otherwise almost entirely independent online experiences using only LMS navigation as a GPS in the world of knowledge with inspiring interaction with a live instructor, peers, and real life.

As technology-based education is unquestionably going to grow, we need to make it pedagogically, psychologically, and socially meaningful and effective. At the same time, we want to minimize its negative short- and long-term consequences, which reaffirms the need for a comprehensive theory of technology-based education and serious research.

Online learning concerns

Demand for online learning is largely driven by working adult students (WALs) willing to have broad access to education and, at the same time, to accommodate learning to their busy lives, rather than by its effectiveness as a cognitive tool, which is determined by its most attractive feature – convenience ( Christensen and Eyring, 2011 ; Song et al. , 2004 ). In studies of student satisfaction, students commonly rate their online experiences as satisfactory, with convenience being the most cited reason ( Cole et al. , 2014 ). We observe students’ preference for convenience as a consumer strategy, and regrettably, not only in online higher education but across the whole educational system ( Kerby et al. , 2014 ). Convenience, along with comfort, helps reduce workload and complexity of learning, as well as the strain of face-to-face interaction with the class and instructor. It produces a sense of privacy and self-satisfaction. It also generates a false perception that online learning is easier than learning in the classroom ( Aaron, 2007 ; Westra, 2016 ), and often leads to online cheating ( Spalding, 2012 ). The convenience, like the happiness factor, however, means a less demanding and less rigorous school experience ( Zhao, 2012 , p. 137). Convenience can be a blessing for creative people, liberating them from the need to waste time and energy on trifles; however, it may also develop self-gratification and laziness instead of struggling with obstacles and doing the hard job of digging in the knowledge mine.

So, accessibility and, especially, convenience, enhanced by flexibility of the study schedule and comfortable learning environment of one’s office or bedroom are evidently the key factors of its popularity among students. The motto of online education, “Any time, any place, any pace” is extremely seductive. Yet, despite a number of studies showing that online learning is on a par with traditional, campus-based learning ( Ni, 2013 ; Wrenn, 2016 ), it is going to take more time and effort to really make online learning deliver outcomes comparable to the traditional classroom-based, face-to-face education. Mattan Griffel, Founder of “One Month,” an online education startup, rethinks online education in the aftermath of the MOOC explosion writing, “[Online education] has kind of overstepped its current effectiveness, and everyone is saying what is possible by painting this picture, but the tools haven’t reached that point yet” ( Crichton, 2015 ). We know very well online education suffers from restricted interaction among students and with the instructor, is deficient of live collaboration, and lacks opportunities for relationships that take form in a study group. These collective relationships are crucial for individual success. Productive online learning also depends on well-developed learning, technology, critical thinking, research, and even reading and writing skills, as well as strong intrinsic motivation, perseverance, and self-efficacy, which many students do not possess. Finally, substituting real-life objects and processes with virtual reality is not helpful in developing practical skills, which makes real-world laboratory and experimental work less effective in virtual online environments.

Still, the question remains whether online education has helped improve teaching and learning. With the popularity of online education and enormous investment, do online college programs now prepare better specialists? Have we achieved the result we had expected, besides widening access to education for working adult learners, formerly marginalized groups, such as disabled students and minorities, and people geographically separated from the learning centers, thus reaching multi-million enrollment in online programs by 2016 and making sure that students enjoy convenience in their studies?

Innovative technology may bring performance enhancement in some ways but does not necessarily produce a direct benefit to education expressed by increased learning productivity. Are the secondary benefits, like convenience or fun with technology, worthy of heavy investment? What, then, is needed to raise the quality of education? The real question here is, as always, do we control technology, or do we let ourselves be controlled by it and those who have created it? “Choose the former,” writes an innovative author Douglas Rushkoff, “and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make” ( Rushkoff, 2010 ). The raw powers of technology should be harnessed by sound pedagogy.

Pedagogy of online education is just being developed, after two decades of titanic effort ( Serdyukov, 2015a ). Online learning is a big business ( Stokes, 2012 ), which should be turned into a serious academic endeavor. When improving online learning, we should not narrow our innovative focus down to only technical solutions in all educational issues. We need to develop a broader look at all aspects of teaching and learning rather than trying to resolve problems and overcome barriers with technology alone.

Barriers to innovation

There are reasons for the discrepancy between the drive for educational innovation that we observe in some areas, great educational innovations of recent times, and the daily reality of the education system.

First of all, if we look at the education holistically, as a complete system in charge of sustaining the nation’s need for educating society members and building their knowledge and expertise throughout their active lifetime, we have to acknowledge that all educational levels are interrelated and interdependent. Moreover, education being a system itself is a component of a larger social supersystem, to which it links in many intricate and complicated ways. As a social institution, education reflects all the values, laws, principles, and traditions of the society to which it belongs. Therefore, we need to regard education as a vital, complete, social entity and address its problems, taking into account these relations and dependencies both within the educational system and society.

In turn, if the society supports innovations in education, then its educational system will continuously and effectively evolve and progress. If it does not, education will stagnate and produce mediocre outcomes. An example of negative socio-cultural impact on education is mercantilism, which is destroying the ultimate purpose of education, and consumerism which is degrading institutions of higher education ( Feeman and Thomas, 2005 ; Ng and Forbes, 2009 ; Abeyta, 2013 ). Other harmful social and cultural trends exert a powerful influence. These include monetization of education, entitlement, instant gratification, and egotism, which destroy education in general and the development of creativity and innovative spirit of students in particular ( Kerby et al. , 2014 ). Such grave societal issues must be dealt with forcefully.

Second, it is well known that higher education has been historically slow to adopt innovations for various reasons ( Hoffman and Holzhuter, 2012 ; Marcus, 2012 ; Evans, 1970 ). Because it is complex (due to cohesion and contuinuity of science) and labor intensive, higher education is particularly difficult to make more productive ( Brewer and Tierney, 2012 ). Secondary school is even more conservative than universities because they cater more and more to students’ well-being and safety than to their preparation for real life and work ( Gibbons and Silva, 2011 ). Both secondary and higher education function as two separate and rather closed systems in their own rights. They are not only loosely connected to the wider world but also suffer from a wide disconnect between high school output measured in graduate learning outcomes and college entrance student expectations. It seems that “[…] the systems and values of industrial education were not designed with innovation and digital tools in mind. Innovation, whether it is with technology, assessment or instruction, requires time and space for experimentation and a high tolerance for uncertainty. Disruption of established patterns is the modus operandi of innovation. We like the fruits of innovation, but few of us have the mettle to run the gauntlet of innovation” ( Levasseur, 2012 ). It is paramount, nonetheless, to accept that “innovation is linked to creativity, risk taking, and experimentation” ( Brewer and Tierney, 2012 , p. 15), which must be a part of the education system.

Innovation is difficult to spread across school and academia because it disrupts the established routine and pushes implementers out of their comfort zone. Terry Heick writes that “[…] many K-12 schools give lip-service to the concept of innovation in mission statements, on websites, in PDs (professional development), and during committee, council, and board meetings, but lose their nerve when it’s time to make it happen. Supporting something seen as secondary (innovation) in the face of pressure, far-reaching programs, external standards ranging from Common Core to Literacy, Technology, and Career Readiness becomes a matter of priority and job security. While education begs for innovation, arguments against it often turn to tempting, straw man attacks” ( Heick, 2016 ). In many instances, innovation in educational institutions does not take priority over pressing routine issues – really, abiding by the state standards is more urgent.

Teachers and school administrators are commonly cautious about a threatening change and have little tolerance for the uncertainty that any major innovation causes. Of course there are schools and even districts that are unafraid to innovate and experiment but their success depends on individual leaders and communities of educators who are able to create an innovative professional culture. Pockets of innovation give hope but we need a total, massive support for innovations across society.

Third, one of the reasons for the slow pace of improvements in education is a sharp conflict between society’s welfare and political and business interests, as vividly illustrated when the NCLB took US education on the path of rigid accountability. It was used by standardized testing companies to reap huge profits (or, may be, vice versa, these companies influenced NCBL). The trend stifled true education and produced unsatisfactory learning outcomes that changed the nature of teaching, narrowing the curriculum and limiting student learning. ( National Council of Teachers of English, 2014 ; The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, 2012 ).

Fourth, even when an innovation comes to life, it is of little worth without implementation (Csikszentmihalyi, 2013). Innovation is not about talking the talk but walking the walk. Moreover, an innovation can make a significant difference only when it is used on a wide scale. To create innovations is not enough, they need to be spread and used across schools and universities, a more difficult task. For the innovation to make a sizable effect, we need an army of implementers together with favorable conditions for the invention to spread and produce a result. Implementers in turn have to be creative and motivated to do their job; they must also have freedom to innovate in the implementation, security on the job to take risks, and control of what they are doing. Ultimately, they need be trusted (as are teachers in Finland) to do their job right. In short, there must be an “innovation-receiving system” ( Evans, 1970 ), or a “change zone” ( Polka and Kardash, 2013 ). Is this where one of the main problems of innovating lies?

A growing trend in higher education is a market approach wherein the main goal is set for “meeting the demands of the student population that is learning – a life-long population of learners” ( Afshar, 2016 ). Universities today are busy innovating how to increase students’ satisfaction and create “exceptional,” “premier,” or “extraordinary” learning experiences rather than caring about their true knowledge and quality achievements. This is clearly an extension of the adaptive or differentiated approach to teaching and learning, thereby leading to customization of education ( Schuwer and Kusters, 2014 ). But this view raises a question: are students’ demands and satisfaction the proper indicators of quality learning? When we began to be more concerned about how students feel in the classroom, what bothers them, and how best to accommodate them to make their learning experiences superior and anxiety-free, we began to set aside the quality outcomes of the learning process.

Every cloud has a silver lining, fortunately. When market approach is applied to higher education, as it is in the current national and global competitive environment, the contest for enrollments increases and forces colleges to decrease attrition in all ways possible. This requires innovative approaches. The institutions that depend on enrollment for their revenue appear more willing to innovate than traditional, public universities that enjoy government support. “Hence, innovation is likely to vary by several characteristics, including type of institution, institution size, market niche, and resources” ( Brewer and Tierney, 2012 , p. 22). Clearly, private institutions are more adept at innovating than public ones. The market is a powerful factor, however, the changes it may bring have to be tackled cautiously.

The hurdles to technology integration are described by Peggy Ertmer (1999) as external (first-order) and internal (second-order) barriers. The first-order barriers are purely operational (technological), while the second-order barriers are applicational (pedagogical). The difference in approaches to applying technology to teaching and learning (overcoming technological vs pedagogical barriers) might explain why huge investments in ET have brought little if any effect to the quality of learning outcomes.

Last but not least, innovations grow in a favorable environment, which is cultivated by an educational system that promotes innovation at all levels and produces creative, critical thinking, self-sufficient, life-long learners, problem solvers, and workers. This system enjoys a stimulating research climate, encourages uplifting cultural attitudes toward education, and rallies massive societal support.

The ultimate question is, what innovations do we really need, and what innovations might we not need?

standardization of curriculum enforced by frequent external tests;

narrowing of the curriculum to basic skills in reading and mathematics;

reduced use of innovative teaching strategies;

adoption of educational ideas from external sources, rather than development of local internal capacity for innovation and problem-solving; and

adoption of high-stakes accountability policies, featuring rewards and sanctions for students, teachers, and schools ( Sahlberg, 2010 , p. 10).

Instead, the Finns went their own, the Finnish Way, so profoundly described by Pasi Sahlberg in his bestselling book ( Sahlberg, 2011 ). So would it be innovative not to adopt some reforms? A big question now arises, what is then the American way to build innovative education? And what would be the global way?

What to do? Possible solutions

To create innovations, we need innovators, and many of them. But though innovation is often a spark originated in the mind of a bright person, it needs an environment that can nourish the fire. This environment is formed and fed by educational institutions, societal culture, and advanced economy. Csikszentmihalyi underlines the importance of creating a stimulating macroenvironment, which integrates the social, cultural, and institutional context, and also microenvironment, the immediate setting in which a person works. “Successful environment […] provide(s) freedom of action and stimulation of ideas, coupled with a respectful and nurturant attitude toward potential geniuses” (2013, p. 140). Control over such an environment, he reasons, is in the educators’ hands.

Then, when the invention is created, it must fall into a fertile ground like a seed and be cultivated to grow and bring fruit. Csikszentmihalyi writes, “Creative ideas vanish unless there is a receptive audience to record and implement them […]. Edison’s or Einstein’s discoveries would be inconceivable without the prior knowledge, without the intellectual and social network that stimulated their thinking and without the social mechanisms that recognized and spread their innovations (2013, p. 6)”. The audience is not only the educators but also students, parents, policy makers, and all other members of society who act either as implementers or consumers of the innovation.

Coherent systemic support is essential for growing innovations. As the ITL Research project states, “Important school-level supports tend to be present in schools with higher concentrations of innovative teaching. Based on survey data, in schools where teachers reported higher average levels of innovative teaching practices, they also tended to report […] a professional culture aligned to support innovation, reflection, and meaningful discourse about new teaching practices” ( UNESCO, 2013 ). The OECD report on teaching practices and pedagogical innovation also argues that “Teaching practices […] are factors affecting student learning that are more readily modifiable. Moreover, additional professional practices have received attention, especially those that help transform the school into a professional learning community” ( Vieluf et al. , 2012 , p. 3).

Technology integration in education can be successful only when the human element is taken into consideration. This then integrates innovators, implementers, educational leadership, professional community and, certainly, the learners. Walter Polka and Joseph Kardash argue that the effectiveness of a computer innovation project they developed “[…] was facilitated by the school district leadership because of their focus on the ‘human side’ of change” ( Polka and Kardash, 2013 , p. 324). They found correlation between the implementation process employed in the district and the concepts associated with the three general need categories of innovation implementers: organizational needs, professional needs, and personal needs, which contributed to the innovation’s success. Long-lasting changes require “[…] a mixture of cultural and institutional changes, commitment from those within the program, and active and engaged leadership,” writes Leticia De Leόn, addressing technological innovations in higher education ( De Leόn, 2013 , p. 347).

When we try to innovate education, we often leave students out of the equation. We do not innovate in students’ learning, their mind, attitudes, behaviors, character, metacognition, and work ethics enough. Yet, we try everything we can to improve teaching (delivery), while what we actually need is to improve learning. In education, nothing works if the students do not. According to the famous Bulgarian scholar Georgi Lozanov (1988) , learning is a matter of attitude, not aptitude. This is where the greatest potential for improving education lies. As a renowned cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham writes, “[…] education makes better minds, and knowledge of the mind can make better education” ( Willingham, 2010 , p. 165). The most important goal, thus, should be not so much to learn STEM but to cultivate innovative people in K-12, grow their autonomy, self-efficiency, and foster an entrepreneurial mindset or “a critical mix of success-oriented attitudes of initiative, intelligent risk taking, collaboration and opportunity recognition” ( Zhao, 2012 , p. 5). To help develop new survival skills, effective communication and critical thinking skills, and nurture curious, creative, critical thinking, independent and self-directed entrepreneurs, we must disrupt the ways of our school system and the ways our teachers are prepared. It may be worthwhile to extend the commonly used term “career readiness” to “life readiness.”

Research of exemplary educational systems across the world vividly demonstrates that teacher quality is the fundamental element of educational success: “It is especially teachers who shape students’ learning environments and help them reach their intellectual potential”: ( Vieluf et al. , 2012 , p. 113). Teacher education and professional development are definitely one of the primary areas that call for innovative approaches: teachers must be taught to teach well ( Marcus, 2012 ). The “how” of the teaching (instructional methodology) is as important as the “what” (content) ( Morais et al. , 2004 ). A great resource for effective education is the instructional design and methodology used by teachers, as shown by the ITL Research project: “Across countries and classrooms, the characteristics of assigned classroom activities strongly predicted the 21st century skills that students exhibited in their work. Students are much more likely to learn to solve real-world problems and collaborate productively with their peers, for example, if their learning activities are carefully designed to offer opportunities for them to do these things. This finding suggests that professional development for innovative teaching might begin with lesson design” ( UNESCO, 2013 ).

Teacher social status is one of the determining factors of the teacher quality. Teachers’ status in the most advanced countries like Finland, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan is very high. It reflects the quality of teaching and learning and also the level of pedagogic innovations. In our drive to enhance educational innovation, empowering school teachers and college instructors may be the most important task. Mattan Griffel writes, “We need to change the role of teachers. What kind of people do we consider teachers? How do we elevate teachers in society?” ( Crichton, 2015 ). He believes we have to make them “rock stars” and bring new perspectives into the profession.

Eventually, the most recognized pathway to education innovation, writes Shelton, is “[…] basic and applied research […] with more and better leveraged resources, more focus, and more discipline, this pathway can accelerate our understanding of teaching and learning and production of performance enhancing practices and tools” ( Shelton, 2011 ). Research focusing on raising productivity and efficiency and improving the quality of learning has to increase in all critical areas of education. One crucial indicator of educational effectiveness is measuring the quality of learning that remains imperfect. “The lack of good measures has severely limited the degree to which market forces can discipline the provision of educational quality” ( Massy, 2012 ). Developing clear and effective measures of educational quality is an important venue for future innovative research.

Societal support for innovative education and building up a new culture of educational preeminence both inside the education system and around it is paramount for its success. Brunner (1996) suggests viewing education in a broader context of what society intends to accomplish through its educational investment in the young. The best way to achieve superior education is to shape a new educational culture. As Pasi Sahlberg explains, “We are creating a new culture of education, and there is no way back” (Sahlberg, 2011, p. 2).

Innovation can be presented as a model in the context of its effects on the quality of teaching and learning within an educational environment, which is permeated by professional and societal cultures ( Figure 1 ).

Americans’ love affair with the car extends to computers, iPhones, and the internet. Therefore, innovations in education focus primarily on technology and technology applications. Technocentrists want to see education more automated, more technology-enhanced, and more technology-controlled in the hope of making education more effective. The way of doing so would be through more sophisticated LMS’s, automated analytics, customization, or individualization of learning and developing the student as an avid consumer of digital information. While we realize there is no stopping the technological revolution, we educators must do all we can to preserve the primary mission of education, which is reflected in a humanistic approach that caters to the whole person wherein efforts are made to develop a free, independent, critical thinking, active, and effective thinker, doer, citizen, and worker. Educational innovations embrace both views, interacting and enriching each other for society’s common good.

Globalization in education

Along with developing our own innovations and creating a broad base for implementation, it might be useful to look outside the box. As the world becomes more and more globalized, national education systems are shedding their uniqueness and gaining a more universal, homogeneous look (e.g. the Bologna process, which has brought 50 national higher education systems to a common denominator in Europe and beyond) ( Bologna process, 2016 ). Scholars indicate there is “[…] the need for US universities to keep up with the rest of the world in today’s highly competitive educational marketplace” ( Wildavsky et al. , 2012 , p. 1). It is also economically and culturally beneficial to learn from each other in the spirit of global cooperation and share one’s achievements with others. While in the context of globalization it may be convenient to have a common education system across the world, however, to satisfy the needs and expectations of the nation-state it is necessary to continue innovating within one’s own system. The rich international educational palette offers unique solutions to many issues facing US schools and universities.

What attractive innovative approaches exist in the world that could be applied to the US education system? To mention just a few, the Confucian culture of appreciating education in China, Japan, South Korea, and other South-East Asian nations which brings students’ and parents’ positive and respectful societal attitudes toward education and educators; cultural transformation in education and quality teacher preparation in Finland, Singapore, and Shanghai; organizational innovations in schools of Ontario, Canada. In Finland, a new ecosystem for learning was created ( Niemi et al. , 2014 ). Singapore, for one, has become one of the top-scoring countries on the PISA tests by cultivating strong school leadership, committing to ongoing professional development, and exploring innovative models, like its tech-infused Future Schools ( EDUTOPIA, 2012b ). In Shanghai, China, every low-performing school is assigned a team of master teachers and administrators to provide weekly guidance and mentorship on everything from lesson plans to school culture ( EDITOPIA, 2012a ). The list of international innovations to cogitate is, fortunately, extensive. Is this what our educational innovators could do something about?

Daniel Willingham demonstrates a very interesting angle in international education that substantially differs from ours: “In China, Japan and other Eastern countries, intelligence is more often viewed as malleable. If students fail a test or don’t understand a concept, it’s not that they are stupid – they just haven’t worked hard enough yet. This attribution is helpful to students because it tells them that intelligence is under their control. If they are performing poorly, they can do something about it […] Children do differ in intelligence, but intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work” ( Willingham, 2010 , p. 131).

There are numerous exciting foreign examples for the US educators to learn from and innovate, implementing and adapting them to US schools.

Many US educators certainly learn from advanced nations’ educational experiences ( Darling-Hammond, 2010 ; Stewart, 2012 ), but these innovations find a hard way into the school system. A right step in this direction is to integrate global education ideas into teacher preparation programs. A worthy case of opening up a wide world of global education to US teachers and developing outside-the-box thinking is a new specialization in the Master of Arts in Teaching program, “U.S. Education in Global Context” which has been offered at National University since 2014. The principal focus of this specialization is on advanced, innovative, and effective international approaches, ideas, and strategies in teaching and learning that address the needs of the nation and create contemporary school environments to accommodate diverse student populations. Specialization’s goals and objectives are designed to help students develop the knowledge, competencies, skills, and dispositions required of a globally competent citizen and world-class educator. Focusing on the universal need for continuous improvement in teaching and learning, this specialization provides students with a balance of philosophy and theory, practice and application through collaborative research projects and field-based activities. The ultimate outcome of the four-course specialization is an innovative, practical implementation project to apply in the candidates’ schools.

The Finns, Singaporeans, South Koreans, Hong Kongers, and citizens of other nations consider education the best way to improve their country’s economy, and it has worked. An even more remarkable consequence has been a change to their national cultures. This provides a worthy example for other nations, including ours. To sum up, we need to create favorable conditions for growing our own innovations, while taking advantage of the best international theories and practices.

Learning faster, learning better, and at a lower cost?

You don’t have the time, you make the time (Thorin Klosowski).

Among many points for educational innovations time definitely deserves close attention. Time is a significant factor in education. Attempts to save time on learning and raise its productivity are well known to each of us. To increase learning efficiency using so-called accelerated and intensive approaches is a promising path for innovation. These two approaches demonstrate the difference between evolutionary and revolutionary disruptive approaches.

Innovation, as we know, can be called to life by social, political, or professional factors but the strongest is definitely economic. A flat world ( Friedman, 2005 ) means global competition, faster production cycles, and more to keep up with. Time is speeding up. Requirements for workers are rapidly mounting in industry and business due to swiftly changing technologies and fierce international competition. It is impractical to spend a third of one’s active lifetime attending secondary school and college learning in advance what may not be useful on the job in the next 10 to 15 years because manufacturing, technology, and business will completely change.

Additionally, the cost of a college education is rising faster than inflation, though the outcomes are disproportionate to this rise: “[…] tuition has increased faster than inflation, without a comparable increase in the quality or results” ( Brewer and Tierney, 2012 , p. 13). If you ask students what worries them most, it is the cost of the next course and its value for their future job. Education has become more expensive and less affordable for many people. This also creates a heavy burden on the state’s budget. Therefore, educators need to find ways to make education more time and cost efficient ( Hjeltnes and Hansson, 2005 ).

We can identify two possible roads to take. The first is to increase revenue, and this is what the majority of colleges and universities are doing. Raising tuition, however, has its limits; government support is drying out. Cutting costs, on the other hand, may undermine some essential aspects of higher education. The second road is to increase learning productivity defined as the output (learning outcomes measured in certain units) per dollar or per time unit (academic year, semester, month, week, day, or hour). The former can be used to compute cost efficiency, while the latter will help to define time efficiency. Time efficiency and cost efficiency of education are evidently interrelated. The most obvious source of enhancing educational productivity is integration of ICT; however, there are other ways.

Time is the most precious of commodities, especially for WALs. Our own survey of National University students who take accelerated programs, which allow them to graduate sooner than in conventional programs, shows that time is paramount when selecting their learning program ( Serdyukov et al. , 2003 ). When asked what is more important for them, the cost of the program or the time spent learning, 88 percent of surveyed WALs stated that time was more important, and they were willing to pay more for a shorter program of the same quality. So accelerated programs are often more competitive than the conventional extended ones. Serdyukov and Serdyukova (2012) posit that time efficiency of the learning process is a decisive factor in assessing a program or a course. In their opinion, colleges and universities, which are now evaluated based upon the quality of their education, will soon be selected and valued based on the time needed for the learning to take place.

In the same way, programs that cost less will be more competitive than those that cost more. With education budgets decreasing and numbers of learners taking part in education increasing, time and cost efficiency will play an increasing role in determining a program’s, and thus an institution’s, value.

When considering time investment, instructional activities are basically concerned with either learning more in the same time (i.e. growth in learning outcomes without increasing learning time) or learning the same amount of information in less time (decreasing learning time or compressing the course). As Serdyukov and Serdyukova (2006) write: “Can we, the educators, teach more effectively; can students learn more, better and in less time?” (p. 255). The answer to this question can have profound social, economic and personal significance as it may affect a learner’s career and lifestyle, societal attitude toward education, the rate of investment in education, and eventually the nation’s well-being ( Barbera et al. , 2015 ).

Consideration of time investment in learning coupled with recent innovations in cognitive psychology and ET is what brought to life accelerated and intensive programs. Various approaches and methodologies for providing faster and shorter education without compromising academic quality have been described in the literature ( Scott and Conrad, 1992 ; Rose and Nicholl, 1997 ; Bowling et al. , 2002 ; Serdyukov, 2008 ). They are grounded in the newest brain research in the cognitive and emotional potential of learners ( Lozanov, 1978, 1988 ; Kitaigorodskaya, 1995 ), innovative approaches to teaching and learning that use nontraditional organizational forms, techniques and processes ( Boyes et al. , 2004 ; Serdyukov et al. , 2003 ), ET applications, and even fancy programs of learning during sleep ( Ostrander and Schroeder, 2000 ). The most popular approaches are accelerated learning (AL) programs, which use a compressed, short-term course format, and intensive learning (IL) programs, which employ specially organized course structure, visuals, music, and suggestive techniques to open up students’ intellectual and sensitive capacities, thereby contributing to more effective learning.

Accelerated and intensive programs can significantly shorten the duration of the learning measured in class hours, days, weeks, or semesters. In some cases, they can also increase learning outcomes measured in the volume of knowledge constructed or skill sets learned in a given time. ( Serdyukov, 2008 ).

A conventional semester model of college education may not suit a new generation of WALs who take school part-time and need to speed up learning to obtain employable competencies and skills. The AL model delivers a semester program in a shorter period of time than the conventional program model but with the comparable results. National University, for example, offers undergraduate and graduate-level programs using a nontraditional, accelerated 1×1 model of instruction (one month long, one course at a time) for adult learners ( Serdyukov et al. , 2003 ). Onsite classes usually meet two evening sessions per week for four-and-a-half hour each; in some cases, there are two additional Saturday morning sessions of the same duration. Thus, each course runs for eight evenings with one Saturday morning final session for graduate programs (totaling 40.5 hours) or two Saturday sessions for undergraduate programs (totaling 45 hours). Similar models are used by such schools as Cornell College, Colorado College, DeVry University, Northeast University, Grand Canyon University, Tusculum University, and Colorado State University Global.

Online courses also run for four weeks but instead of face-to-face classroom sessions students participate in threaded discussions (one or two per week), view live videoconferencing sessions (one per week), carry out weekly written assignments, develop projects, and in some courses complete mandatory field activities (e.g. teacher preparation programs require school visits for observing and teaching lessons).

The sequential approach when students take one course after another allows for more accumulated and integrated learning experiences. Besides, according to the student survey ( Serdyukov et al. , 2003 ), this 1×1 format helps to unshackle students’ minds and focus their attention and energy on a single subject. It can also make it easier to adapt to the same teaching/learning style in this instructional model. The advantages observed for the sequential model appear to occur because the more intense, consecutive instruction reduces the number of distractions in the students’ lives, thus allowing for more focused attention and ultimately creating a more effective learning environment. Csikszentmihalyi’s (1982) research suggests that “deep concentration,” “immersion” in an activity, and “undivided intentionality” lead to increasingly rewarding “optimal experiences” which nourish and strengthen the self. He also comments that “optimal experience stands out against this background of humdrum everyday life by excluding the noise that interferes with it in normal existence” (p. 22). This becomes evident when we consider the working adult’s hectic life and complicated everyday experiences. Scott and Conrad (1992) state that “concentrated study may cultivate skills and understandings which will remain untapped and undeveloped under the traditional system” (p. 417). Therefore, learning only one content area at a time has become one of the crucial factors of AL.

The intensive approach, a superior level of AL, has been used in many countries primarily for foreign language education, probably the most time-consuming didactic endeavor. One indicator of how efficiently a student has learned a foreign language is the number of words learned, retained, and correctly used in communication, both in oral and written speech (reading and writing). According to research ( Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 2007 ), a person needs to know and be able to use two to three thousand words in a foreign language for basic communication. These so-called communicative skills can be assessed by the ability of the learner to accomplish a communication task in certain communicative situations. Duration of the study course at this level in a conventional institution can reach 200-300 hours. At a rate of two hours a week, the course duration may extend to 100 or more weeks (two years).

When an innovative, intensive instructional methodology, such as suggestopedia ( Lozanov, 1978 ; Kitaigorodskaya, 1995 ; Rose and Nicholl, 1997 ), is used to teach a foreign language, the learning efficiency significantly rises, and the course duration with the same outcomes can be reduced by approximately 50 percent, as compared to a conventional college course. For instance, an initial intensive course can take up to 100 to 150 hours. The course is usually taught with higher frequency and longer lessons (usually four to five hours, two to three or more times a week). Thus, a complete course of study may be completed only in ten weeks (2.5 months). So time efficiency ( Et ) of an intensive foreign language course in the number of hours ( t ) is of the order of 2 (200 hours of a conventional course ( c ) divided by 100 hours of an intensive course ( i )): E t = t c t i ;

Time efficiency of the same intensive course in the number of weeks is of the order of 10: duration of a conventional course ( dc ) (100 weeks) divided by the duration of an intensive course ( di ) (ten weeks): E t = d c d i .

This is a case of disruptive, revolutionary innovation that produces a radical transformation in foreign language learning where learners achieve course goals and objectives in half the study hours and one-tenth of a typical course duration. This approach, which was extremely popular in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Soviet Union) in the 1980s and 1990s, was to a larger extent inspired by the rise of the Iron Curtain and prospective emigration to the west. Some variations or similar approaches emerged later in Germany, England, Japan, and the USA ( Rose and Nicholl, 1997 ). Why it was not recognized and did not spread throughout US schools and colleges may be partially due to a lack of need (English is spoken worldwide). In addition, it is labor intensive and demands high-level teacher qualifications (special preparation, dedication, excellent dispositions, inventiveness, and very hard work in the class). In addition, it must be taught in specially designed and equipped classrooms. Finally, it depends on students’ elevated intrinsic motivation, work ethic, trust and respect for the teacher, and perseverance, though for a limited time.

Both accelerated and intensive short-term courses demand highly efficient planning, organization, and management of the instructional process. Furthermore, to ensure efficient course delivery, innovative methods and technologies are required for effective presentation, processing, skill development, and real-life applications. Many accomplishments in AL and IL methodologies, incidentally, can be used to teach other than foreign language programs.

learner-centered approach;

specific structure and organization of the course and its content for consistent, “whole” student experience;

effective content presentation in various formats and modalities;

immediate application of new knowledge in authentic situations in the class and real life, and gaining practical outcomes of the course;

iterative process of knowledge construction and skill development ( Serdyukov and Ryan, 2008 );

situated learning ( Lave and Wenger, 1991 ) that uses real-life situations as the basis of learning activities and, especially, in developing professional competence;

continuous active communication, collaboration, and cooperation among students in various small- and big-group activities;

high level of intrinsic motivation developed and constantly supported through emotional involvement of each student in team work and learning process;

instructor’s suggestive, supportive, and efficient teaching style incorporating incessant involvement with the class; immediate, objective, and stimulating feedback; continuous student support;

systemic use of ET in classroom and homework both for content acquisition and skill development, for communication and collaboration, and for maintaining students’ high level of cognitive, physical, and emotional state;

application of suggestive techniques, such as relaxation, ritual structure of classroom activities, positive environment, emotional involvement, and music; and

combination of intensive work and total relaxation.

This approach is rooted in consistent, systemic application of all these principles.

The formula for IL is as follows: The more organized and efficient the instructional system, the more focused the student, the more effort is produced, the better the effect of learning, the faster the rate of learning, and the shorter the process duration ( Serdyukov and Serdyukova, 2006 ). This is why all accelerated and intensive courses are always short (two weeks to 1-2 months long). If no significant effort is applied to learning, then there is no effect, no increase in productivity, and consequently, no opportunity to shorten the duration of the course.

So, accelerated programs that speed up learning by compressing the course duration, while requiring the same number of hours for the same learning outcomes, are an evolutionary innovation. Intensive programs that provide better outcomes in a considerably shorter time are a revolutionary innovation. We can state now that when an innovation ensures significantly better outcomes and saves on cost or time by at least an order of 2 (100 percent) or more, we can call it a revolutionary innovation.

Measuring time in learning can be instrumental for increasing its productivity. Learning to manage time productively is especially acute for independent learners and online students for whom effective time management is a well-known issue. Therefore, teachers need be taught to use time effectively. In teacher preparation programs, for instance, we recommend that teachers use time estimates when planning lessons ( Serdyukov and Ryan, 2008 ; FEA, 2016 ). Thus, making learning more time and cost efficient offers a promising venue for further innovations.

US education desperately needs effective innovations of scale that can help produce high quality learning outcomes across the system and for all students. We can start by intensifying our integration of successful international learning models and creating conditions in our schools and colleges that foster and support innovators and educational entrepreneurs, or edupreneurs ( Tait and Faulkner, 2016 ). Moreover, these transformations should be varied, yet systematic, targeting different vital aspects of education. Deep, multifaceted, and comprehensive innovations, both tangible and intangible, have the capacity to quickly generate scalable effects.

Radically improving the efficiency and quality of teaching and learning theory and practice, as well as the roles of the learner, teacher, parents, community, society, and society’s culture should be the primary focus of these changes. Other promising approaches should seek to improve students’ work ethic and attitudes toward learning, their development of various learning skills, as well as making learning more productive. We also have to bring all grades, from preschool to higher and postgraduate levels, into one cohesive system.

As the price of education, especially at colleges and universities, continues to rise, cost and time efficiency of learning, effective instructional approaches, and methods and tools capable of fulfilling the primary mission of education all will become critical areas of research and inventive solutions. Colleges and universities must concentrate on expanding the value of education, maximizing the productivity of learning, correlating investments with projected outcomes, and improving cost and time efficiency.

Whatever technologies we devise for education, however much technology we integrate into learning, the human element, particularly the learner and teacher, remains problematic. So, while taking advantage of effective educational technologies, we must situate those modern tools within a wider context of human education in order to preserve its humanistic, developmental purpose and, thus, make more effective use of them.

Computers for schools are ready, but are we ready? Our understanding of how students learn and how teachers teach and craft their methodology in technology-based environments remains lacking. Questions to ask are whether current methods help increase learning productivity, and as a result, time and cost efficiency. All technology applications require a solid theoretical foundation based on purposeful, systemic research and sound pedagogy to increase efficiency and decrease possible side issues. When integrating novel technologies in teaching and learning, we must first consider their potential applicability, anticipated costs and benefits, and then develop successful educational practices.

Therefore, the key to a prosperous, inventive society is a multidimensional approach to revitalizing the educational system (structures, tools, and stake holders) so that it breeds learners’ autonomy, self-efficacy, critical thinking, creativity, and advances a common culture that supports innovative education. In order to succeed, innovative education must become a collective matter for all society for which we must generate universal public responsibility. Otherwise, all our efforts to build an effective educational system will fail.

Model of educational innovation

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EDITORIAL article

Editorial: strengthening the quality of teacher education programs.

• 1 Institute of Science Innovation and Culture (ISIC), Rajamangala University of Technology Krungthep, Rajamangala, Thailand
• 2 English Language Education Study Program, Faculty of Psychology and Education, Universitas Muhammadiyah Sidoarjo, Sidoarjo, Indonesia
• 3 English Language Education Study Program, Faculty of Education and Humanities, Universitas Muhammadiyah Semarang, Semarang, Indonesia

Editorial on the Research Topic Strengthening the quality of teacher education programs

Introduction

Teacher education programs play a crucial role in promoting the quality of future teacher education by equipping teachers with the competencies and skills necessary to foster innovative teaching in diverse classroom settings. They are also considered as the cornerstone of preparing future teachers to meet the complex and diverse needs of 21 st -century learners. Over the last decade, there has been a growing effort to sustainably strengthen the quality of teacher education programs to meet the evolving demands of contemporary education ( Megawati et al., 2021 ). This growing effort has led to increased attention from educational researchers to identify innovative strategies that enhance the quality of teacher education programs ( Mulyadi et al., 2020 ; Arifani et al., 2022 ). The articles published in this Research Topic explore the current understanding on the subject of strengthening the quality of teacher education programs, emphasizing key themes and research areas that have been raised as critical precursors for enhancing these programs.

Review of pedagogical reform

Conceptual outlook.

The articles in this volume document three types of pedagogical innovations for strengthening the quality of teacher education programs. The article by Ling et al. highlights the need to meet a contemporary model of teacher education for middle school classrooms through optimizing the role of teacher distributive leadership to stimulate interaction, engagement, motivation, autonomy, and critical thinking. Moreover, Jang introduces his book review on Singapore's approach to teacher education. Teacher education program policy in Singapore is quite unique compared to other major countries such as the United States and China because Singapore prioritizes unilateral collaborative systems, like other countries, through the equal tripartite partnership between the Ministry of Education (MOE), National Institute of Education (NIE), and schools to equip their students with 21 st -century skills, critical thinking, and creativity. Next, Dahl et al. introduce an innovative approach to teacher professional development using the ECHO model, which presents the best practices for sharing (e.g., case presentations, problem-solving, mentorship) using teleconferencing technology. This adapted model intentionally focuses on creating a community of practice (CoP) or professional learning networks with the overarching objective of promoting ongoing relationships and dialogue across geographical and cultural boundaries to improve teacher professional development.

Research findings

As part of the effort to enhance the quality of teacher education programs, two articles give positive contributions toward the body of knowledge through pedagogical reforms in the context of Chinese and Korean teacher education programs. First, in the Chinese pre-service teacher education program setting, Cheng and Zhao express the findings of the impact of the workshop for English teaching competition (WETC) as a professional learning community (PLC) on pre-service teachers' professional commitment. The findings reveal that the WETC program had significant and positive effects on pre-service teachers' professional commitment and collaboration, shared vision, and reflective dialogue, which effected their professional commitment by heightening their interest in professional development, commitment to teaching as a career, and personal time investment.

In addition, Kim et al. report the importance of international teaching practicum (ITP) experience for South Korean pre-service teachers' teaching attitudes, ways of thinking, and perceptions of classroom teaching. The study explains in what ways the participants' TPACK has been promoted and optimized. The findings illustrate that the ITP could trigger pre-service teachers' experience in terms of their teaching achievement and teacher agency, and among the elements of TPACK, the categories of CK, PK, PCK, and TK are very dominant during ITP activities.

The next two articles explore the psychological factors of teacher education during the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to the pedagogical and technological barriers ( Megawati et al., 2021 ). These articles examine the challenges faced by teachers during the COVID-19 situation, in which they did not have sufficient mental and physical preparation to teach. The first article, by Moosa and Ramnarin , identifies teachers' beliefs and attitudes and measures the impact of their beliefs and attitudes on their behavioral intentions to integrate ICTs into their science classes during the pandemic situation in South Africa. The findings from this case study indicate that the empowerment evaluation approach positively impacted the teacher's beliefs and attitudes.

Furthermore, Adams et al. attempt to explore whether field experience becomes one of the key predictors of PST's instructional knowledge and community engagement. In their case study involving eight pre-service teachers and 33 pupils from culturally and socioeconomically marginalized communities, the researchers discover that training in the clinical experience of PST education plays a crucial role in the development of pre-service teaching, specifically for teaching students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. These two articles suggest further research to provide more TPACK training for pre-service teachers so that they are ready to face unpredictable situations, such as that of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The last article by Meutstege et al. uses differentiated instruction (DI), which is a part of TPD. Providing differentiated instruction (DI) in secondary education requires teachers to engage in four phases: preparing a lesson series, preparing a lesson, teaching during the lesson, and evaluating the lesson. The significance of psychological factors in teacher education programs is also promoted in a study by Spittle et al. . The study explores the confidence and motivation of pre-service teachers specializing in primary school physical education in Australia. The findings reveal that pre-service teachers generally have higher confidence in implementation and higher motivation in practice and performance.

From the conceptual dimension, the articles explore different models of teacher education programs, from the tripartite model of Singapore to the ECHO community of practices model of the United States and the teachers' distributive leadership of Australia. These three conceptual articles agree that synergy among policymakers, teacher education institutions, and practitioners is the key to the success of teacher education programs in their countries. Finally, the empirical evidence demonstrates that a unique community of practices, such as the international teaching practicum (ITP), differentiated instruction (DI), workshop for English teaching competition (WETC), and training in physical education, can significantly enhance teacher attitudes, performance, and TPACK.

Author contributions

YA: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. FM: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. DM: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Arifani, Y., Mindari, R., Hidayat, N., and Wicaksono, A. S. (2022). Basic psychological needs of in-service EFL teachers in blended professional training: voices of teachers and learners. Inter. Learn. Environ. 31, 1–14. doi: 10.1080/10494820.2021.1943691

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Megawati, F., Mukminatien, N., El Khoiri, N., and Anugerahwati, M. (2021). Barriers to emergency remote teaching and learning during the COVID-19 outbreak: pre-service teachers' view. Proc. Int. Seminar Lang. Educ. Cult. 612, 113–118. doi: 10.2991/assehr.k.211212.021

Mulyadi, D., Arifani, Y., Wijayantingsih, T. D., and Budiastuti, R. E. (2020). Blended learning in English for specific purposes (ESP) instruction: lecturers' perspectives. Comput. Assist. Lang. Learn. Electr. J. 21, 204–219. doi: 10.24815/siele.v10i3.27910

Keywords: teacher education, strategies, teacher, field experience, pre-service teacher

Citation: Arifani Y, Megawati F and Mulyadi D (2024) Editorial: Strengthening the quality of teacher education programs. Front. Educ. 8:1338688. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2023.1338688

Received: 15 November 2023; Accepted: 18 December 2023; Published: 05 January 2024.

Edited and reviewed by: Stefinee Pinnegar , Brigham Young University, United States

Copyright © 2024 Arifani, Megawati and Mulyadi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Fika Megawati, fikamegawati@umsida.ac.id

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

• Our Mission

Innovations in Teacher Prep Programs

During the past couple years, teacher preparation programs have been taking a lot of heat. Everyone from the Secretary of Education to the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) is concerned about the performance of colleges of education, calling for teacher education to be "turned upside down" in this country. And the National Council on Teacher Quality and U.S. News and World Report recently announced an ambitious new project to rate the teacher education offerings in all 1,400 of America's schools of education, one might assume in response to concerns about their quality.

The vast, vast majority of new teachers come through colleges of education. And to be honest, I am sure that some of those programs are not so hot. But there are others that have developed innovative strategies to prepare their students to teach in 21st century classrooms -- and we should take care not to lump all programs together in conversations about the state of teacher preparation in this country.

University/District Partnerships in Florida

A recent Blue Ribbon Panel on teacher preparation stressed the importance of grounding the pre-service teacher experience in clinical practice . The University of Florida's College of Education does just that. For over ten years they have worked in partnership with the communities they serve, developing clinical programs that meet community needs while helping their own students gain important experience. For example, in the first field experience the university offers, pre-service teachers work one-on-one with children who live in public housing communities, generally in a recreation facility or center in a public housing neighborhood.

The program was developed with the executive director of the local public housing authority and a captain from the police department as a result of their concerns for children in those neighborhoods, and as a result of feedback from university graduates who felt they lacked preparation in working with children and families from backgrounds different from their own.

The college is also working with school districts to strengthen its ESOL program. All its students graduate with ESOL endorsement from the state of Florida, with ESOL competencies woven throughout the program. But in the area where they are located, there is not a large population of students who speak English as a second language. So the college has partnered with other districts throughout the state -- districts serving a larger population of ESOL students -- to give their students more experience with the unique challenges and opportunities of educating this population so that as teachers, graduates will be better equipped to serve them.

Co-(Student) Teaching in Minnesota

Another innovative approach to teacher education comes from Minnesota's St. Cloud State University . The University's "co-teaching" model of student teaching prepares new teachers for the challenges of the job while keeping master teachers in the classroom. The rationale is two-fold. Research shows the importance of mentoring new teachers, so why not push that mentoring down into the student teaching experience? And also, why do student teaching programs take effective, experienced teachers out of the classroom while novice teachers are learning? They should always be available to work with kids.

In these co-taught classrooms, a student teacher works with a cooperating teacher. The student teacher is actively engaged with children from the first day, assisting the cooperating teacher. As the experience progresses, the roles reverse -- the cooperating teacher becomes the assistant.

The benefits are huge. Not only do student teachers have support in the classroom, but the expertise of master teachers is not "lost" for a semester while a novice teacher takes over. Plus, student teachers learn how to effectively utilize adult resources, helping them maximize the impact of a paraprofessional or parent volunteer in the classroom, for example. And they graduate knowing how to collaborate with other professionals -- a skill that is increasingly valued in educators.

The best part of this model? It benefits children. Four years of research show that students in these co-taught classrooms outperform students in classrooms using other models of student teaching. They even outperform students taught by a single experienced teacher.

The Bottom Line

Given all the negative attention that colleges of education have received over the past several months, it would be easy to write them off -- to dedicate our teacher preparation resources towards alternative (and unproven) preparation programs, rather than university-based programs. But we shouldn't do that. Again, colleges of teacher education prepare the vast majority of our new teachers -- and they are constantly developing innovative new ways to ensure these teachers are ready to be effective in the classroom.

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An Evaluation of Innovative Approaches to Teacher Training on the Teach First Programme: Final Report to the Training And

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This paper will present findings from original research for a PhD which seeks to identify approaches to measuring and monitoring the quality of training provided to trainee teachers in school-based settings. The context of the research is the Teach First ITT programme. Teach First places trainee teachers in selected schools which meet various criteria for social deprivation and educational underachievement. Teacher quality has been identified as a key factor in educational achievement; provision of a high-quality teaching workforce exerts significant influence on policy-makers. This influence was shown in the recent Schools White Paper 2010 which proposes an increasing role and responsibility for schools in ITT, with an expansion of SCITT and GRTP routes. School-based mentors have been identified as a significant factor in ITT outcomes (Hobson et al., 2009). However studies have indicated that mentoring can be the most variable element in the quality of ITT programmes (Hutchings et al., 2006). Mentoring is here defined as a practice operating within both cognitivist and situated learning theory (Ertmer & Newby, 1993; Lave & Wenger, 1991). This research arises from an initiative to develop the quality and consistency of school-based training provided to Teach First trainees; this is the first stage of this initiative, exploring possible approaches to defining and monitoring ‘quality’ in school-based training provision. A literature review suggested factors for consideration when monitoring quality in school-based provision. From this, questionnaires were developed and deployed among the groups directly involved in school-based training – trainees, HEI tutors, and mentors themselves. Following Weber’s interpretivist philosophy, questions explored respondents’ ‘inside’ perceptions of the mentoring process and their own role within it. Results were used to structure subsequent focus group discussions with representative groups. Quantitative and qualitative results from both questionnaires and discussions were subject to analysis, allowing refinement of the hypothesis suggested by the literature. The research engages with the following issues and frameworks: the principles of andragogy (Knowles et al., 1998); the nature of professional knowledge (Eraut, 1994); the influence of architectural factors upon professional practice (Cunningham, 2007); and issues of professional identity and self-image (e.g. Beijaard et al., 2004). Possible outcomes include suggestions for defining and monitoring school-based ITT provision through a holistic examination of the structures and practices of the programme; and approaches to demonstrate change over time within an ITT programme. This research will provide important recommendations for improvement to this and other teacher education courses in the UK.

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