Practices that stifle teaching innovation

This was in response to a tweet out of Tim (Assorted Stuff) Stahmer's blog post "Innovation in Name Only" on December 2. In it Tim wrote:

Over the years, I’ve met and worked with many educators I would call “progressive” when it came to using technology in their instruction (although they were certainly in the minority). I’ve also listened to far too many administrators and politicians praising those progressive teachers, saying that we need more of them.

However, those same administrators and politicians then create policies and processes that work very hard to stamp out any real innovation in the classroom.

OK, do administrators and politicians "work hard to stamp out innovation in the classroom"? And if so, how?

In my experience there has always been a constant tension between encouraging innovation and enforcing uniformity/conformity in schools. While we want teachers to try new practices and techniques that help all students perform at higher levels, there also a sense of obligation by administrators to make sure that all teachers use best practices*, teach specific content, and that their students be assessed on norm-referenced tests in order to ensure district, state, nation-wide equity.

So how I resolve this, in my feeble mind, is that we in education have a social mandate to teach to articulated state standards - Common Core, whatever - and our students are, at least in part, evaluated by the state on their proficiency in these standards. But how we teach is a matter of professional perogative. So long as a teacher teaches to the learner outcomes and is willing to be held accountable for their students' success in meeting them, very wide latitude should be given on practices, methodolgy, techniques. And creativity and innovation encouraged.

So, Dan, to answer your question above, politicians and administrators who cannot differentiate between the what and the how of teaching are those who stifle innovation. These folks are ones who demand mandated and uniform:

• Teaching schedules and times
• Textbooks and learning systems
• Teaching methods
• Methods of assessment based on norm-referenced criteria
• Low-level "look-fors" in classroom observations
• Methods of student discipline and student behavior (PBIS?)

I'd add that many schools don't budget for innovation. Our tech plans usually stress "equal" provision of equipment and digital resources to teachers and classrooms without a pot of money that can be used for innovate technology uses. Mea culpa.

So, dear readers, what do find in your school and classroom that may inhibit teachers being from being creative in their instructional approaches?

* If I were applying this to the medical profession, I want my doctor to use only best practices - until they prove to be ineffective and then innovate like hell.

Comments

[Kristen Seeger]

Our district's message is, "FIDELITY, FIDELITY, FIDELITY. Teach your purchased (and very expensive) curriculum with FIDELITY." Things are quite scripted and the art of teaching is dying all around me. Administration is happy with the results on high stakes testing but teachers are overwhelmed by data and crushed by the fact that they are simply teaching standards and not teaching KIDS. It makes me happy to be in my position as a Library Media Specialist because I feel that I have much more teaching 'freedom' than classroom teachers.

[Doug Johnson]

Good example, Kristin. I agree about having more freedom as a media specialist (and usually as a tech integrationists).

Doug

[Ron Smallwood]

Good post & often too true. I've been the tech support guy, program head, & campus principal who has had to deal with teacher innovation so I can sympathize a bit but I would rather see my teachers acting like cats rather than sheep. I'm in post-secondary education so there are less politically imposed standards to deal with, so as long as the teachers have a plan for when the "innovation" goes off the rails, I'm happy.

[Dan McGuire]

Thanks, Doug, for such a thoughtful response to my question. I agree with all of your points. I think that focusing on the innovations of districts, buildings, departments, and teams would be more useful than focusing on individual teachers. Even in a one-room school teaching is a team activity. My dad talks about parents delivering hay for the horses and wood for the stove to their one-room school in Western South Dakota. Students in older grades were expected and benefited from assisting younger schoolmates, and the younger ones gained, too.

Medical innovations get rewarded, if they work. That's the thinking behind the exorbitant prices for patented drugs. I think we can find a way to reward the innovations of groups without going to private education models, though.

BTW, a good number of the students in the county where Dad lived in So.Dak are now getting diplomas via on-line instruction. So, innovation is happening. Dad, who is still living, is in favor of not needing to get the horse to bust through snow drifts to get to school.

[Doug Johnson]

Thanks, Dan. I enjoyed your provocation to write.

Yeah, when I was a little kid, the Internet was too slow for online instruction so I still had to walk through the snow ;-)

Take care,

Doug