Coming to Terms with "Innovation"

So, into week 2 and we're getting down to business. The big theme this week was asking ourselves, "What is innovation?". And I realised... I'm not really sure. If I'm being honest, I thought of myself as a bit of an innovation sceptic: often, in the fields that most interest me (teaching, psychology, music), in can sometimes seem like everyone suddenly jumps onto a new bandwagon (gamification, mindfulness, the latest microgenre...) which is promised to be the solution to all our problems. It can seem that every few years, it's time to throw out the old and jump onto the Hot New Thing.

But from our class discussions this week, I think I've been too harsh on innovation. It doesn't need to mean - in fact, shouldn't mean - reinventing the wheel. It can also be gradual, incremental improvements upon the tried-and-tested. It can be using what we already know in new ways. And, maybe most importantly, it's only worthwhile if it genuinely improves on what we already know: change for change's sake is no more noble than a refusal to budge from the traditional ways of doing things.

So what does innovation mean to me? I'm sure it'll change as this term and my teaching career progress. But at this early stage, I'd say something like: looking at what we already do, and what we have the capacity to do, and thinking in an informed, creative way about when we should (and shouldn't) make changes that can have a real impact on our students.