What Exactly Is Innovation?

The term "Innovation" is a hot one in education right now.  These buzzwords occur frequently, and often change just as frequently.  However, this is one term that we feel has the potential to have a huge impact on where we go as educators.  We are hopeful that this becomes the word that people in years to come look back on as the start of an educational revolution.

So what exactly is innovation?  I did an internet search of the phrase "innovation in education", and the search engine came back with 205,000,000 hits.  "innovation" by itself had 122,000,00, and "innovation in business" had 120,000,000.  I believe that there is a reason that adding the term "in education" almost doubles the results;  teachers across the globe are recognizing the need for this in some fashion, in our classrooms.

According to Merriam-Webster online, the definition of innovation is something created for the first time through the use of the imagination.  The US Department of Education has an article "What Do We Mean By "Innovation'" (http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oii/about/definition.html) that relates this term to education.  They classify innovation into a variety of categories such as curriculum, teacher recruiting, and overall school organization.  These are things that change the way we do the business of education.  They are improvements based on the creativity and passion of a group or individual.  The Flipped Classroom is one innovation that has become popular over recent years, allowing more one-on-one time with students by having at least some lectures viewed at home via PODcasts.  The huge downside of innovation is that it is not a tried-and-true method.  There is usually little to no experiential data to support it.  Districts that require evidence-based teaching are not going to embrace innovation easily.  This lack of history makes sense, as innovation by it's very nature is new.  Another form of innovation could be extending the school day beyond what is required, or changing the curriculum a class or site uses compared to the rest of the district.  So it seems that innovation can apply to a large variety of ideas, depending on who is defining it.

So how are Niki, Kristi and I personally labeling innovation?  To us, the innovation we are looking at is under the heading of curriculum.  We are looking at how we are educating our students and what we are teaching them about science specifically.  As we began truly reflecting on the feelings of dissatisfaction that had crept into our teaching, it became apparent that we were not unhappy with the actual teaching, but rather the WAY we were teaching.  Presenting science as compartmentalized, with seemingly unrelated topics was not lining up with our ideals.  While fundamentals and foundations are important for every discipline, we felt that we had become mired in them.  We were missing out on current events and issues, which in science, are huge.  How can we teach students the relevance of science in their lives when they never get a chance to use it?

This feeling of "missing the bar" is what has led us on this journey, this adventure to find out how our ideal classroom looks and figure out how to get there.  For us, it is all about removing the barriers between science and non-science disciplines so that students can begin to see that learning is not compartmentalized, but overlapping.  We want to show students that what they are studying is relevant to their lives.  That without these foundational pieces of knowledge, their future would be a dimly lit candle compared to the brightly shining light it could be.  How many of our bright but unmotivated students could we reach if they only saw how what they are learning impacts them, and if we then gave them the chance to apply their knowledge in a meaningful way?  This is our vision of innovation in the classroom.