How innovation shapes great teaching
Cambridge University Press & Assessment English
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When people think of innovation, what they often think of is better described as disruption, or ‘disruptive innovation’. There are several examples of this that are often wheeled out as models of innovation to be emulated. Netflix is held up as a model of innovation that disrupted television and people’s viewing habits, and made DVDs redundant. Similarly, the iPhone is considered an innovation that led to disruption – not of mobile phones, but of laptops and desktop computers, which were replaced by smartphones as people’s main gateway to the internet. This is a vision of innovation that is invariably linked to technology.
The same idea prevails in education as well, where there are often cries for similar kinds of disruption. Those who want to ‘disrupt’ education say that classrooms haven’t changed for centuries, despite the countless societal, technological and political changes during that time. Therefore, the argument goes, they need to be changed radically to be fit for purpose. The proposed solution is very often some form of new technology, sold by the would-be disrupters. It’s no surprise that such calls invariably come from people who have never worked as teachers.
Innovation for education
In fact, education is full of innovation. To understand why, it’s essential to recognise that what inspires innovation isn’t technology, but the desire to do better.
In a recent talk for Cambridge, Olympic rowing gold medallist Steve Trapmore describes how preparation for the Olympics was a process of continually looking for ways to improve results. The mantra that led him and his team mates to success was, “will it make the boat go faster?”
The same process is what drives effective teachers to keep improving. In From Teacher to Trainer – shortlisted for this year’s British Council ELTons – we explain how the best teachers are also expert innovators. They have a growth mindset, believing that they can always get betterdevelop and improve, and they seek to do just that. That means they are engaged in a continuous cycle of:
All teachers, from novices to experts, can benefit from this process. As Professor of Education Dylan Wiliam has said, “all educators should be looking to improve, not because they aren’t doing a good job, but because they can do better.” So, to help you or your colleagues innovate and improve outcomes in your classrooms, here are three tips.
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Tip #1: Decide where to innovate
All forms of learning need a goal. If you’re looking to improve your teaching practice, it’s important to select an area of development that will be the focus for your innovation.For a teacher deciding to improve their practice, it’s important to select an area of development which will be the focus on improvement through innovation. You might decide, for example, to develop the ways in which you give feedback to learners, or techniques and activities for reviewing vocabulary.
Keep in mind that improvement means better learning outcomes: learners will have a view on which areas they can do better in, so it makes sense to ask them which aspects of your teaching they feel are most important to their success.
Besides learners, other educators are rich sources of inspiration. Teaching colleagues can provide some guidance, especially if they are able to visit your classroom. A trainer or mentor may have shared an idea that you want to experiment with. Finally, academic managers may be able to provide an institutional perspective on which teaching skills are most valuable and which should therefore be the focus of innovation.
Tip #2: Evaluate results and keep innovating
It can be easy to forget that innovation is not an end in itself. To innovate in the classroom means creating and trying new ways of doing things, but the reality is that many of those experiments won’t end in success. They may need to be re-attempted, adapted, or perhaps rejected entirely. So it’s essential to combine innovation with evaluation and reflection, always considering whether the ultimate goal of bettering student outcomes has been helped or hindered by the innovation you tried out.
Tip #3: Keep it simple
The notion of innovation as a ‘big idea’ that disrupts existing ways of working is misleading and can put teachers off innovating in small but significant ways in their own work. So it’s useful to remember that some of the most successful innovations come from a simple combination of old and new.
To give a classroom example, a well-researched innovation is ‘wait time’. This is time during which teachers pause after asking the class a question. While most teachers pause for less than a second, pausing instead for a count of ten allows learners to think, which means the responses they then offer are likely to be much better indicators of their understanding. For a classroom observer, this might not appear to be much of a change at all. But for learners in the class, there may be very significant differences in their ability to follow and engage with the lesson.
This form of innovation – combining old and new – is also reflected in From Teacher to Trainer. The book contains a wealth of practical advice for teacher trainers, but it’s not the first book to do that. What makes it innovative are the elements we introduced alongside that advice, to extend and enhance it. These include a methodological framework to enable better trainer decision making, reflective tasks to enable new trainers to leverage their teaching experience in the most effective way possible, case studies from training contexts around the world, and embedded video to bring the book to life.
Innovation is at the heart of teacher development. So try to keep making small changes to your teaching practice, keep what works and reject what doesn’t. Ask yourself, “does it make the learning go faster?”
From Teacher to Trainer by Matthew Ellman and Peter Lucantoni is a finalist in the Innovation in Teacher Resources category at the ELTons Awards 2024. Find out more about the book here