Practices that stifle teaching innovation
Thursday, December 10, 2015 at 05:34AM 
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.
