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INNOVATION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EDUCATION REFORM EFFORT

IN ENGLAND

Valerie Hannon Director, The Innovation Unit

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The reform programme….

• Pedagogy

• Curriculum

• Leadership

• Structural change

• School failure

• Learning environments

• Early years ed/care expansion

…this is centre-led innovation

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Some initiating questions …

1. How is good practice to be spread systematically across the system?

2. How do you get bottom-up systemic change: practitioner-led innovation?

3. How do you move from ‘good/best practice’ – sharing current knowledge – to ‘next practice’ – orchestrating new ways of working?

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“There is a lot of research focused on best practice, but I focus on Next Practice. Next Practice by definition has three problems: firstly it is future-oriented; secondly, no single institution or company is an exemplar of everything that you think will happen; and third, next practice is about amplifying weak signals, connecting the dots.

Next Practice is disciplined imagination.”

CK Prahalad, University of Michigan

2004

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Why Next Practice?

Good / best practice asks: what is working?

Next Practice asks what could work – more powerfully?

Addresses pressing national issues

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Next Practice - what’s that?

• Next practice is keenly aware of conventional good practice

• Understands the strengths and limitations of current practice

• Aspires to move to a new level

And this new level may:

1. disrupt,

2. evolve, or

3. revolutionise

current practice

At its boldest it is a fundamental reconceptualisation of what

went before.

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The ‘diamond of design’

GENERATE

enquire prototype

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Next Practice Innovation Model

System-Level Reflection & Intervention Local Level Action System Learning

•Analysing Need

•Scanning the Horizon

•Mobilisation

•Generating Creative Options

Ideas for Next

Practice Field Trials

•Supporting the management of change

•Brokering relationships & alliances

•Creating communities of practice

•Invoking ‘Power to Innovate’

Next Practice

in Action

•Exploiting knowledge management techniques

•Utilising & synthesising, evaluation & research

•Facilitating incorporation in National Agencies’programmes and policy

IU ROLE Stimulating Incubating Accelerating

Access to a wider ideas pool

Access to practice of interest

Creative space (to incubate

ideas)Safer space (to

legitimate experimentation)

Obstacle removal (e.g. Power to

Innovate)

Social capital and connection (between schools and beyond)

Resourcing to support the change and

development process

Co-design of evaluation

Gateway to DfES TeamsConfidence and moral

support

Our Offer

Our offer to selected Field Trials

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Next Practitioners:

Able and informed

Learners seeking to build on the best

Know what ‘good’ is: its strengths and limitations and

have the will to take this to a new level

Direct thinking and action on addressing serious,

contemporary problems

Want to take risks in partnership with others to

achieve breakthrough

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The criteria for Field Trials

Embody ideas that are radically different from current practice

Address a pressing local and national need

Are likely significantly to enhance outcomes for young people

Are driven by practitioners already working at the edge of current practice

Have key stakeholders prepared for the scale of change involved with capacity both to implement this and to handle its consequences

Are willing to co-design enquiry and evaluation arrangements, and contribute to the learning of the wider system

• System Leadership (17 field trials commenced)

• Innovative use of resources for personalisation

(16 field trial sites recently selected)

• Beyond workforce reform – using the whole Community (creative events just completed)

• Parental / carer engagement (emerging project)

The ’06-’08 Next Practice Programme

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The role of the IU

identifies practitioners poised to make more than incremental improvement

makes assessments of potential for the creation of public value: in this instance, specifically, the achievement of the 5 outcomes for more children including the raising of standards

acts to remove, where possible, inhibitorscreates the conditions to enable faster “bringing of ideas to

market”; legitimates experimentation shares riskbrokers external facilitation and change management skillsengages in partnership with other key agencies for whom the

particular content area is core business, to ensure maximum knowledge flow