Lecture given at Microsoft's Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum, held at its Heardquarters in Redmond, WA, on Aug 1st, 2005

1. Reform or Innovation
in Education?
Eduardo Chaves
eduardo@chaves.pro
Redmond
01 Aug 2005

2. Outline
1) Change: Nature and Types
2) Change in Society and in Education
3) Why We Need Innovative Change in Education
4) Technology and Change in Schools
5) Conditions for Innovation
6) The Reconceptualization of Education
7) The Reinvention of the School
8) Innovative Teachers
9) Innovative Leadership

3. – 1 –
Change:
Nature and Types

4. Change: Its Nature
• Change can be negative or positive: we can change for
worse or for better
• Change can be involuntary and voluntary: we can
undergo changes or make changes
• Change can be individual or organizational: both
persons and institutions can and do change
• Positive, voluntary organizational change is the process
through which an organization moves from an old,
established way of doing things to a new one that will
bring positive outcomes

5. Change: Focus
• The focus here is on positive, voluntary change in
organizations and individuals responsible for education
• Organizational change: What changes are needed in
present educational organizations (mostly schools)
• Individual change: What changes are needed in us as
educators (mostly teachers and school administrators)
• Effective change is a product of both: individual and
organizational change

6. Change: Types
• Changes can be incremental or radical
• Positive incremental changes lead to improvement
• Positive radical changes lead to transformation
• A series of improvements leads to reform, a process in
which present form is maintained but perfected
• Transformation means transcending present form and
can only be reached through innovation – a process in
which there is search for a totally new form

7. – 2 –
Change in Society and in
Education

8. First Thesis
• The world in the West has undergone drastic, radical,
transformative changes over the past 60 years
1945 1960 1975 1990 2005
• Invention of
Atom Bomb
• End of WW II
• Beginning of
the Cold War
• Invention of
the Computer
• Beginning of
the Counter-
Culture
• Invention of
the Personal
Computer
• Collapse of
Communism
• End of the
Cold War
• Commercial
use of the
Internet
• Microsoft’s
School of
the Future
Summit
• Microsoft’s
Innovative
Teachers
Forum

9. Second Thesis
• The catalyst agent for most of these changes was
technology – technological innovations: the atom
bomb, computers, personal computers, Internet . . .
• (Many consider the US Star Wars project to be the
last drop that broke the resistance of Communism)

10. Third Thesis
• Education is a social practice and so, whenever
society changes in radical and transformative ways,
education is likely to need to go through important
changes as well (even though the educational
establishment may resist them)

11. Fourth Thesis
• The changes that we need to make in education so
that it keeps pace with the changes in society are not
mere improvements in the system: they must involve
its transformation
• They include:
• A new vision: a reconceptualization of education
• A new tool: the reinvention of schooling
• A new role: the redefinition of our function and
identity as educators, teachers, school principals

12. – 3 –
Why Change in Education
Needs to be Innovative

13. Three Reasons
• Quasi-universal availability of information
and ease of access to it
• Globalization of communication and ease of travel
• Learning taking place anytime, anywhere, anyhow
(All of these reasons have to do with technology)

14. Information and Knowledge
• Information, today, is easily available, to be acquired
as needed, and access to it is simple and easy
• Knowledge (differently from information) is seen, today,
as something to be built or constructed by each person
• So, information need not, and knowledge cannot, be
transmitted, transferred, delivered
• This is the collapse of the view that education is
content delivery, transmission of information and
knowledge from the teacher to the student

15. Globalization
• Not only is access to information easy but access to
experts anywhere in the world has become possible,
costless and easy (from a technical point of view)
• If an urgent face-to-face encounter is necessary,
technically it can take place within 24 hours
• So, the teacher is far from being the only expert to
whom the student can resort, in case of need

16. Learning
• Anyone can now learn anytime, throughout one’s
entire life, whenever one needs it
• Anyone can now learn anywhere, wherever one has
access to the Internet
• Anyone can now learn anyhow, in tacit, non-formal
and formal ways
• So, learning need not, and perhaps even should not,
be concentrated in a given period of life (school age)
and in a particular place (the school) nor ought it to be
“standardized”, “one size fits all”

17. Bringing it All Together . . .
• These three reasons (and there are others) force us
to conclude that the changes that need to take place
in education today are drastic, broad, profound, far-
reaching, transformative – in other words, innovative

18. – 4 –
Technology and Change
in Schools

19. Technology and Change
• Technology can be used
• To sustain and support what we are already doing
(conservative use – does not lead to change)
• To supplement and extend what we are doing (leads
to improvement and reform)
• To subvert and transform what we are doing (leads to
transformation and innovation)
(George Thomas Scharffenberger, 2004)

20. Reform or Transformation?
• As the quality of a given school or school system
goes down, the degree of radical innovation that is
acceptable in it goes up !
• As the quality of a given school or school system
goes up, the degree of radical innovation that is
acceptable in it goes down !
(Nicholas Negroponte, 2005)

21. – 5 –
Conditions for Innovation

22. What is Innovation?
• Innovation has to do with what is new, with searching a
new form
• The new is not the old, refurbished, warmed over…
• Innovation is more radical than mere improvements
that lead to reform: it is a true transformation, that
leads to transcending present form
• New and old are context-bound terms – and the
context, in this case, is defined by the changes that
have been taking place in the last sixty years

23. How does Innovation Come About?
• Creative people
• Open environments
• Resources and tools

24. Present Schools and Innovation
• There certainly are creative people in our schools
• There are resources and technology in our schools
• But there is no culture of innovation, that is, the right
kind of environment is missing
• So innovation is rare and difficult to sustain (and
technology is not used innovatively)

25. The Environment for Creativity
• Creative people, even when they have a fair amount
of resources and powerful tools (technology), have
difficulty generating sustainable innovations if the
environment is not right . . .

26. The Environment for Innovation
• Is open, relatively flat, non-bureaucratic
• Stimulates initiative and risk-taking
• Requires and promotes continued learning
• Views mistakes as an integral part of learning
• Rewards competent, successful innovation
(This kind of environment attracts creative people:
see Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class
and The Flight of the Creative Class)

27. What Innovation in Education is NOT
• Teaching technology to students
• Integrating technology into the present curriculum
• Using technology to improve teaching

28. Real Innovation in Education
• To reconceptualize education
• To reinvent schools
• To transform ourselves (educators, teachers, school
administrators)

29. In Other Words . . .
• How can we reconceive education, so that it goes
beyond (transcends) the present paradigm?
• How can we reinvent our schools, so they can
become open environments that stimulate initiative,
require continued learning and reward innovation?
• How can we recreate ourselves, so we can become
truly creative and innovative in facing the demands
and the expectations that the 21st century places
upon education?

30. – 6 –
The Reconceptualization of
Education

31. Education and Human Development
• Education has to do with human development, with
realizing human potential
• Human beings are born totally incompetent and
dependent
• But they are also born with an incredible capacity to
learn
• Education is the process by which incompetence is
translated into competence, dependence into
autonomy
• This process takes place through learning

32. Learning
• To learn is to become capable of doing that which
one was not able to do before
• To learn is to build one’s competence to act with
autonomy
• The learning that is essential to human life has two
sides to it:
• To become able to freely define one’s life project
• To become competent to transform it into reality

33. How do we Learn?
• Observing expert or acceptable behavior
• Desiring to do the same (motivation)
• Attempting to do it
• Generally failing
• Receiving feedback (collaboration)
• Attempting to do it again
• Succeeding in a limited way
• Receiving incentive and more feedback (collaboration)
• Improving behavior until its performance becomes
acceptable
• Sometimes seeking to become experts

34. Education, Learning & Collaboration
• “No one educates any one else. Nor do we educate
ourselves. We educate one another, in communion, in
the context of living in this world”
(Paulo Freire, 1979)

35. – 7 –
The Reinvention of the School

36. Personal Learning Environments
• Living a life that is fulfilling and leads to personal
realization is the most creative accomplishment anyone
can achieve
• Helping students to learn how to live this kind of life is
the most challenging task of education
• This type of learning requires rich and stimulating
personal learning environments that are centered on
the needs and interests of the learners and that are
clearly focused on human development and on
competence-building

37. A Learner-Centered Environment
• Built into life (related to the
learner’s life project)
• Centered on the learner’s
needs and interests
• Driven by demand
• Aimed at problem-solving
(project-based)
• Focused on building
competence & autonomy
• Learning is active, hands-on
• Learning is collaborative and yet
individualized to the level of
personalization
• Learning takes place when
needed (just in time) & in
small modules (just enough)
• Learning is lifelong and always
focused on the future
Learning is deeply personal and yet it can always
be enhanced and often mediated by technology

38. – 8 –
Innovative Teachers

39. Innovative Learning Facilitators
• The most innovative thing learning facilitators can do
in this kind of environment is not to teach (unless
students insist that they do so!)
• Learning facilitators should listen and watch first, and
then try to orient, advise, support, cheer, facilitate,
instigate, ask questions (rather than give answers),
open exciting new horizons, gently provoke, give
incentive, be coaches, mentors, role models . . .
• These roles for so-called teachers are more important
than their role as content deliverers!

40. Innovative Learning Facilitators
• Innovative learning facilitators are the ones that use
their creativity in order to help students become truly
creative in the living of their lives
• They are the ones that use their creativity to support
the building of this kind of “school of the future”
(needed in the present)
• Innovative learning facilitators are not the ones that
learn to use technology well, but rather the ones that
empower their students to use technology to learn
effectively, at any time, in any place, in whichever way
fits them best

41. – 9 –
Innovative Leadership

42. Innovative Leadership
• Leadership, to be effective, must be spread through-
out the organization
• A leader seeks to develop the leadership potential of
others
• Leader, therefore, is not only the manager or the
boss: everybody should be a leader in their own
sphere of action
• The success of a leader is directly related to their
ability to make other people successful
• It is only this way that an organization can succeed

43. Leading for Change in Schools
• An innovative leader is one that is capable of making
the school the sort of open environment that is
conducive to ongoing innovative change
• An innovative leader is one that is capable of
developing leadership in others on an ongoing basis
• There is no other factor as important to creating and
maintaining an organization culture conducive to
ongoing innovation in a school as innovative leaders –
be they principals, supervisors or, nor infrequently,
teachers themselves

44. Thank you !
Eduardo Chaves
eduardo@chaves.pro