A while back I signed into Zintro (link to the success stories). One day I would love to be more involved in ‘education thinking’ but recognise that I still have a lot to learn from working at the coal face, plus I love being a teacher, just a touch more than being an education leader, and a touch even more than ‘education thinking.’ Zintro occasionally posts interesting opportunities and although I have not pursued any with any verve, the question below formed part of a conversation I had with a school vistor yesterday. I had planned to blog about it, so here it is.
Why Teach What You Can’t Test
QUESTION: How are students k-12 being taught innovation? What can teachers, school systems, and parents do to ensure that students get the education they need to innovate?
How are students k-12 being taught innovation?
Innovation, creativity, entrepreneurial and leadership skills, are all highly valued capabilities but by their very nature they are as difficult to define as they are to hone and foster. The cynical may manipulate this viewpoint toward the much maligned retort that if it cannot be assessed, tested or measured, than why shouldl it find a foot hold in education? This is not a view I adhere to, though I recognise this is a challenge, an inhibitor to educations adoption or teaching innovation. It is this lack of definition that discourages educations forth right pursuit of teaching innovation. But not all is lost…. cooperation, honesty and respect are values championed by education and not assessed? Nor do I know of a education that formally tests them? Should innovation align itself in this company?
While the overwhelm focus in education continues to be on being right, when we ‘learn’ – there’s an irony, to value being wrong? When will value and give real permission to be wrong? Education is seduced by the deception and safety of being correct, almost as much as it is with assessment. Innovation is most definitely not about being correct. It is not about the outcome, if anything it is about process, it is about asking the right questions, questions other have yet to conceive. Without the security of right and wrong, innovation falls outside the inner circle or core curriculum.
So to refocus on the question, ‘how are students k-12 being taught innovation’ is the wrong emphasis. You can not directly teach innovation, just like you can not directly teach creativity (and to lesser extent entrepreneurial and leadership skills). You facilitate innovation by providing a learning atmosphere that promotes exploration and inquiry. By promoting and modeling the free flow of thoughts, ideas, dialog and discussion, student will walk their own paths towards innovation. Finally one must give consideration to the question of challenge. For if all of the students are getting it right, there no challenge. Without challenge there is little reason or motivation to innovate, to be creative.
What can teachers, school systems, and parents do to ensure that students get the education they need to innovate?
Rather than education, it is a innovative climate we seek.