How to create a culture of innovation in your school?

Would you like to work in an educational environment where innovation is at the heart of the culture and the functioning of the establishment? Here are some ideas!

Currently, the term innovation is used in all sauces. Even the city of Montreal has the " IQ ”, Which is its“ innovation district ”. We could summarize innovation as the meeting between knowledge and creativity. In a school, it is important to make room for teachers to explore and experiment with new approaches. Technological integration is an opportunity to innovate and try new things.

Tom Okay and Justin reich are the co-founders ofEdTechTeacher, a firm specializing in professional development related to technological integration. They are two very reflective people. Here is a summary of the article they wrote about the culture of innovation in schools, Failure Is Mandatory: Creating A Culture Of Innovation. Here are 4 strategies that they believe should help managers implement this culture in a school.

1) Eliminate the fear of failure

Failure is very instructive and sometimes necessary on the path to learning. Students make mistakes and the teacher helps them in this process. However, the teacher should also have the right to make mistakes and take risks. It is important to leave room for error and it is above all important to support them in this process.

2) Create experimentation groups

Another way to stimulate innovation is to set up one or more experimentation groups. We therefore speak of an “incubator”, where all ideas are possible. It can be as simple as a dinner meeting to act as a springboard for new ideas to emerge.

3) Promote success

A manager who makes a public recognition of an innovation by a teacher stimulates experimentation and encourages others to dive in. Another way to do this is to organize small sessions where some teachers present their innovations to others, while avoiding that it is always the same “techno teacher”. It is important to allow less tech-savvy teachers to showcase their successes as well.

4) Align the technical team and the pedagogy

To support teachers, it is important that the school's technical team is aligned with pedagogy and with this culture of innovation. I have already written an article on the skills of a 21st century technology leader. This article sums up the idea behind this combination of technical team and teaching team.
In short, a culture of innovation must be established in a collaborative way by the school administration, by the technical team and by the teachers. There has to be cohesion for it to work. Is this the case in your establishment? What are your success factors?