Strategies of Educational Innovation

This chapter discusses the strategies of educational innovation. The study of the innovative process and factors conducive to innovation is a fairly new undertaking. The term innovation had been taken over by the educators from industrial technology as has the entire conception of research and development as a part of the implementation of innovative change. Sometimes innovation is preached with a fervor as if it represented a value per se. People are oblivious of the self-evident fact that significant innovations and persisting changes in education ought to represent adequate responses to fundamental transformations in culture and society. Therefore, not all innovations in education could be regarded as fitting responses to these transformations. One might ask to what extent a certain lag between the development of society at large and the educational sub-system is unavoidable. Is there any reason to believe as did the Swedish School Commission in an optimistic report that the educational system can act as a propelling and progressive force in our society, a kind of optimism that was aired by many people who represented the “new education” after the Second World War. There are ample reasons to believe that the schools are lagging behind because of the social mechanisms involved and that the problem faced by educational planners is to reduce the lag to a necessary minimum.