Innovations in Education

From Teachers to Institutions on Innovations in Education

I. Introduction 

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Innovations in education have been gotten attentions as the world is getting more advanced and globalized. Changes of societal trends including ways of living and working have pushed new adaptation and reformations on education over traditional teaching methods and learning objectives. Innovations in education have been studied extensively in accordance with the changes and demands of the society. With these regards, this particular study on innovations in education takes two articles for analysis of similar findings of innovations in education. 

1.1 Article Reviews  

The first article taken for this study is the report from European Expert Network on Economic of Education (EENEE). This report on Innovations in education for better skills and higher employability (Falch & Mang, 2015) explores the aspects of relations between innovations in education and the innovative capacity of the economy.  There are four parts of the focuses of the report, including innovation in teaching and learning, teachers on innovations, the roles of education to equip students with skills that respond to the workforce and its changes and governance for innovation and improvements in education. The key arguments in this report include, first, the introduction of the use of computer and e-learning as an innovative teaching method. As found ITC skills do not “universally increase” student achievement.  Second, teachers are one of the most important actors on the innovation in teaching methods. Third, institutions and policies on education, such as teacher train, decentralization of teacher recruitment and internationalization and engagement of education institution and stakeholders, increase innovation in education. 

Another article is on driving innovations in education of European Schoolnet (Durando, 2017). This article focuses on how far European Schoolnet, which is a network of 31 Ministries of Education from across Europe, leading educational innovation at European level, has provided the services in education and where it is going to promote educational innovation. The three main objectives of European Schoolnet are to give concrete confirmation and information in the innovative education, to help support schools and teachers in teacher training, and to introduce a school system that leads to creative teaching and learning styles. This article is structurally and chronologically organized into what had already been achieved throughout 20 years (1997-2017) of cooperation among the ministries within European Schoolnet, and what need to be achieved in the future. The past twenty-year achievements are described in seven stages, including the Creation of Policy Networking, the Initiation of School Network, the Interoperability, Digital Citizenship, Stem Education, Mainstreaming Education, and FCL - EUN Academy. For future actions, there are ten key education areas which focus on Digital citizenship, Skills and employment, Innovative teacher education, Assessment, Whole school change, School networking, Formal, non-formal and informal learning, Education technology, Pilot and demonstration projects, and Large-scale deployment. Likewise based on the ten above-mentioned key education areas, there are four future priorities which are sequentially identified to help students to be more active in modern society, to strengthen teachers’ ability, to provide a new environment for learning, and to increase innovative scale. 

1.2. Study Scope and Objectives

The two above articles are used abundantly for this study. This study focuses primarily on innovations that have been practiced. Therefore, arguments that are found similar in these two articles are taken for comparisons. The compressions provide insightful ways of critical understanding in innovations in education, what agents contribute to the innovations and how the innovations are linked to economic sectors.   

II. Innovations in Education 

2.1. Understanding Innovations 

The relations between education and economic development are generally viewed to have a strong connection. Education plays an important role in human resource development and it is a key sub-sector contributing to socio-economic development of each nation. The purpose of education is to some extent regarded as one of the most important actors in economic development. For instance, higher education in Cambodia provides students with knowledge and skills that help them contribute fully to national development and labor market needs; employment related-skills; and understanding of and positive attitude towards work and a capacity to manage and work effectively and harmoniously with others, according to Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of Cambodia. 

According to the article we review, the role of education is to generate skills to equip with students who can correspond to the workforce (Falch & Mang, 2015). The article continues to explain that therefore educational sector should respond to the demands for different types of skills changes accordingly. It is suggested that innovations must be there for such responsibility. Innovation in this sense refers to the creation of new and improved products and new methods that make greater efficiency that is for economic growth. Innovation in education is the use of the new technology in education as well as the invention to improve learning, equity and system and to solve a real problem precisely (UNICEF, 2017). The concept and practices of innovation have been widely studied. The importance of innovations includes new emergence of ideas and the implementation of the ideas into practice. Serdyukov (2017) introduces three main phases of innovation which include an idea, its implementation and the outcomes. Innovations in education include many aspects including but not limit to teaching technique, institutional tools, learning process and institutional structure. “Since we live in an age of innovation, a practical education must prepare a man for work that does not yet exist and cannot yet be clearly defined,” said Drucker (cite in Cunningham, 2017). Obviously, through innovations, education can provide many productive paths and opportunities for its followers.  Therefore, innovations play a constructive role in pushing education to reach its effectiveness, for it brings about creativities and possibilities to improve not only learners and educators but also the institutions themselves as well as the society as the whole. Likewise, Koa (n.d), an author and advisor of innovation and organizational transformation, defines the word innovation as a set of abilities that enable the continuous realization of a desired future.  Therefore, innovations are forms of introductions of teaching methods, including the introduction of technologies and internet, and arrangement of curriculum that all of these aim to make best outcomes for teaching and learning that will produce skills for the workforce and for the responses to the changes in the innovative society.  

2.2. Innovations in Practices

2.2.1. Technology as the Innovations in Education

The first similarity which is found in the two above-mentioned picked-up articles is about technology as innovations in education. Through experiments, the first article shows how technologies create the new teaching methods. Being compared to the traditional teaching environment, the existence of computer as well as the internet in the classroom is seen as the most beneficial innovation for teaching and learning development. (The Economist, 2013). Particularly, internet and computer enables teachers and students to share knowledge effectively and efficiently through e-learning. Besides its negative impacts which will be described in the next following part, e-learning seems to be a new potential method in teaching and learning, for it gives opportunity for students to learn by their own pace and for teachers to interact with their pupils more easily. For instance, everyone can participate freely in one popular online course named Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in which students and teachers can communicate with each other. Computer and software also make students and teacher lives more convenient; for example, teachers can prepare and finish student tasks in the adjustable speed without any burdens, and based on Krueger and Rouse (2004) (Falch & Mang, 2015), students in US can improve their computer-based test through one software named “Fast ForWord”. Similarly, using the technology as pedagogical use in strengthening teaching and learning is the central purpose of European Schoolnet in the second article. In 2002, this network of education tends to establish the school networking activities through technological advancement for exchanging knowledge and learning resource. This network offers Future classroom Lab and MOOCs in order to link the technology and pedagogy closely and effectively. Doing this, it believes that every educator can interact and cooperate with one another easily in improving the productive process in education. 

2.2.2. Teachers on Innovations 

Teachers play a crucial role in innovations in classrooms. Teachers initiate new teaching methods and test in the classrooms. The two articles mention how important teachers are to innovate new teaching methods. Teachers are responsible for developing new pedagogical approach to support their teaching and student learning. The report by EENEE (Falch & Mang, 2015) mentions that teachers are responsible for learning environment in class. Teachers can initiate productive innovations inside classroom by coming up with ideas and then make experiment to test to see how it works. Teacher quality contributes to productive innovations as well. It is mentioned that teachers who graduate from a famous university and who get high scores on teacher license examinations, in additions to other factors, are more likely to introduce new innovations. High-quality teachers innovate concepts and test them and get the result to see how such innovations work, whether failure or succeed. “It is plausible that it is high quality teachers who are most judge what will be smart experimenting, and also able to bring the best knowledge and the most relevant evidence from experiences in other schools and other environments into the classroom,” (Falch & Mang, 2015). Innovations in teaching methods are important for productive learning outcome and require teachers to able to innovate.  

2.2.3. Innovations and Stakeholders 

Both articles reveal another important point in common, which is the relation between stakeholders and innovations. According to the report by EENEE, those who are considered as the stakeholders of innovative education are government, employers, and parents. Because of being carefully and endlessly observed by the government in term of quality of performance, each school needs to be alerted all the time about their teacher methods and student learning achievements. This can be a pressure for schools, but it is worthwhile for society and its people since students consequently leave schools with better qualitative skills to contribute to the workforce. Employers are also vital stakeholders for innovative education.  Due to changes the nature of workforce, students should have better skills to works in accordance with the changes. This might be a burden for schools in shaping and equipping their students with well-appreciated innovative tools and capacity. This requires school to innovate new innovations to deal with these requirements. Another necessary agent of stakeholders is parents. Parents contribute much in their children education. According to Jeynes’ surveys (2012) (cited in Falch & Mang, 2015), there is a noticeable positive relationship between students’ performance and parents’ involvements. Parents play a very important role in assisting their children at home. Schools conduct programs that can give advice to parents about how to help their children as well as receive parents. Not much different from the previous article, the second one also expresses that education has many stakeholders such as policy-makers, researchers, schools, teachers, students, industry opportunities. All of these are the causes that push education to produce innovative elements for adapting with every need.

2.2.4. Education and Employability 

Last but not least, the two articles share the same point of view regarding the relation between innovative education and the employability. It is stated in the first article that competition is functioning as the root of innovation, and innovation is catalyze of the economic growth. In education field, it also implies that when schools encounter the challenges, they come up with more efficient drives of innovation. As the result, students will be capable enough to compete with the social barriers and have a better skill which can lead to a well-appreciated employment. Likewise, the second article focuses on the connection between STEM and its related careers, which that is also found in the first article. European Schoolnet aims to promote STEM education in all schools in Europe, which is one of the strategic initiatives because it is believed that this innovative subject can provide students with a variety of careers in society. Occupations within the STEM field are mostly digital skills and paid with the high salary, which can push the economy to thrive dramatically and consequently improve the living standard of citizens. Beside encouraging students to be interested in STEM studies, schools also need to provide a service of sharing the information and guidance on job opportunity, which is considered as the new effective method in strengthening the link between skills and employment.

III. Conclusion

To sum up, innovations in educations are critically important to drive the development. Innovations are needed to adopt to the changes and/or to make changes in society. The two above articles have four major findings in common, including the technology as the innovation in education, the relations between teachers and innovations, the importance of stakeholders and innovative education and the linkage between innovations and employments. 

Having been through these similarities, this study eventually provides the worthwhile knowledge and insightful ways to view on the innovations. Policy-makers schools, teachers, and other stakeholders are among important actors who are responsible for innovations. The study also find out that the purposes of innovations in education are critically important in this contemporary education system. While traditional education remains important, reformation of the traditional way of education and adaptation to new innovations are an utmost importance. Another important aspect of implication is that innovations take time since it involves experiments and results can be either positive or negative. It requires patience for stakeholders to hold in order to make innovations which are useful for productive outcomes. Throughout the study, teachers have an important position making innovations for teaching methods that is to increase learning outcomes and to respond to the workforce. 

Authors: 

Uk Dararath  and Som Kuthea

References
Cunningham, J., (2017). The Wisest Philosopher in Business: Peter Drucker. https://thunderbird.asu.edu/Knowledge-network/the-wisest-philosopher-in-business

Durando, M., (2017). Driving Innovation in Education. How far we have come and where we are going. European Schoolnet, Brussels.  www.eun.org/documents/411753/817341/Driving_Innovation.pdf/ 

Falc, T. and Mang, C., (2015). Innovations in education for better skills and higher employability. www.svt.ntnu.no/iso/Torberg.Falch/Articles/EENEE_AR23.pdf 

Koa, J., (n.d). Education in The Age of Innovation. http://johnkao.com/education-in-the-age-of-innovation/

Serdyukov, P., (2017) "Innovation in education: what works, what doesn’t, and what to do about it?", Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning, https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIT-10-2016-0007 

UNICEF, (2017). Innovation in education. https://www.unicef.org/education/bege_73537.html