Week 2 Task: Exploring challenges to and success factors for innovations in education
Reflection by Liu, Feifei (2011882300)
With reference to Joyce Wycoff’s analysis of innovation in business domain, a reflection of innovation practice in education field is illustrated as below.
Firstly, innovation in education at its designing stage should involve consultation with different stakeholders in the field, which is to make sure that the culture and ownership of education field support the innovation. To be more specific, innovation in education is not just related to education organizations, instead, it is a societal issue which should involve and consider concerns of different stakeholders, such as government, schools, frontline teachers, parents and also students. Hence, before an innovation is designing, it should be made clear that who the innovation is for, where and how the innovation is going to be implemented. The innovation promoted should go in line with the target member’s development stage and objectives to improve its teaching and learning quality.
Additionally, once an educational organization accepts an innovation, they should be supported with sufficient resources and training programmes. As Wycoff (2004) said, “Innovations takes time, energy and money”. Resource is of vital importance in the context of Hong Kong, since for most of the teachers, who are the “doer” of innovation practice, are suffering such a heavy workload that they are lack of time and energy to conduct innovation, even though they have realized the advantages of it. Furthermore, the same as innovation in business, innovation in education “requires new way of thinking and new skills” (Wycoff, 2004). Therefore, before implementing an innovation, the people who are going to implement it should be trained with the ideas and skills needed.
To keep the innovation alive, a communication and management system shout be developed. The innovation actors like teachers and trainers should communicate frequently to evaluate the practice and make improvements accordingly, so as to make the innovation more suitable for a certain organization and students’ needs.
Take task-based learning, a pedagogical innovation as an example. To successfully implement it, the educational organization as a team including administration team and teachers should first understand and support the idea of task-based learning, in order to evaluate and decide whether the innovation is suitable for them or not. During the implementing process, teachers should be first trained by experts to master the skills needed for task-based learning. A continuous reflection meeting needs to be arranged for teachers to communicating their experiences, difficulties and suggestions for task-based learning implementation.
Reference:
Wycoff, J. (2004). The big ten innovation killers and how to keep your innovation system alive and well. Retrieved on 29th September, 2011 http://www.innovationnetwork.biz/library/BigTenInnovationKillers.htm
Hi LIU, Yifei,
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for a nice summary of your thoughts. In this article, you pointed out some important points: consultation with different stages of stakeholders; the objective and place of innovation designing; resources, training and programmes support; frequent communication to achieve improvement; reflection meeting and skills for learning.
I find out that in China, the IT education varies apparently from area to area. Beijing, Shanghai and Canton are the pioneers of ICT reform, and then they are the capital cities of each province, and the late comers are the third-level towns and villages. In general, Beijing, Shanghai and Canton are doing quite well in updating facilities, network cover, basic computer skills and distance learning. The capital cities are paying attention to training more and more qualified teachers and squeezing the distance between the cities and the top three places. But the third-level towns and villages are still poor in basic facilities,qualified teachers, limited resources and little economic status.
From the official website of China Education Reform and Development Department, it indicates that during the 2011 Education Seminar, the government announced that it would play the leading role in education innovation in the developed places, and increasing the economic support, improving the facilities and enhancing preschool education system in the under－developed places. Besides, all the 9-year basic education fees that students need to pay are exempted, by which the children and teenagers in the under-developed places will have an opportunity to study in school. With the updated facilities and better conditions, they will learn more courses such as computer skills, oral English,etc.
Previously, I often saw that the Chinese government announced to improve the scientific innovation of education, humanist-based education, etc. However, these years I still did not see any apparent change of it.
Could you share your experience about your school education innovation in China?
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By Ricky CHAN, Kwoon Kay
Yes I agree that innovation in education in Hong Kong is quite difficult, as people are quite concerned in the returns from the investment. School management may not take innovation into their policies, as innovation are usually money-consuming, but at the same time, not very rewarding in terms of public examination results.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Ricky is right, in the sense that we can raise our concerns when we are looking into the issue by studying more successful cases in different areas, including Mainland China.
By LEUNG Yiu Tong, Eric
Innovation in Hong Kong is quite difficult, and it's more diffcult than Hong Kong in mianland China. Innovaion actions in class have a long way to go in China. The education system in mainland China is the biggest disadvantage.
ReplyDeleteBy Cissy