This chapter looks at the characteristics of innovative schools. Drawing on the findings of the Innovative Learning Environment (ILE) project, it uses case studies to illustrate how schools can innovate by regrouping the four elements of the pedagogical core: learners (who?), educators (with whom?), content (what?) and resources (with what?) to rethink how traditional schools work. It then considers schools as learning organisations themselves: how they can become formative organisations with strong learning leadership, constantly informed by evidence. Finally, it discusses how technology has the potential to enhance innovation in schools by improving engagement and motivation and support student-driven learning and inquiry, interaction and collaboration, and considers the evidence for improved outcomes from investment in information and communications technology (ICT) in schools.

Introduction

Schools can only play their role in the local and regional ecosystem if they are themselves open to innovation. Indeed, schools have a great potential for innovation. Yet, to many observers schools are still bulwarks of outdated practices, limiting their capacity to develop the skills of tomorrow. The OECD 2008 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) found that two-thirds of the teachers surveyed considered the school where they work to be essentially an environment hostile to innovation. Yet, measures used to estimate change and innovation in schools, both at the micro-level of classroom practices and the mid-level of school organisation, point to significant levels of change (OECD, 2014). Recent CERI research into innovative learning environments has unveiled an impressive universe of innovative schools in systems around the world. Around the world, many schools are becoming serious about innovation. What can we learn from them? How can we foster new ways of learning, how can we more effectively build communities of collaborative learning? How can we encourage educators and learners to build a collaborative culture of learning?

While innovation in schools should happen at the micro-level and cannot be forced upon them “from above”, ministers, policy makers and leaders more generally can play an important role in sparking innovation in schools. For example, they can provide a compelling vision of the future; set ambitious goals that force innovation; provide opportunities for autonomy, choice and competition; empower agents of change; tolerate risk taking; and reward success. Innovation only happens within a strong context of knowledge creation and diffusion, and, hence, also requires external partners in schools’ networks to foster the knowledge dynamics and the collective learning. Schools need partners to embrace innovation.

This chapter looks at the characteristics of innovative schools, offering pointers to how innovation can be achieved in schools. Next, it investigates schools as learning organisations. Finally, it discusses the role of technology in innovation in schools.

Innovating learning environments

The Innovative Learning Environments project

OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) ran the Innovative Learning Environments (ILE) project from 2008 to 2017. Part of that work consisted of an in-depth study of some 40 powerful learning environments that have taken the innovation journey, published in 2013 (OECD, 2013a). The project used the broader concept of “learning environments”, rather than “schools” or “classrooms” in order not to confine the analysis to particular institutionalised settings and to focus on the essence of what an ecosystem of learning is supposed to do.

Prior work on the learning sciences (Dumont et al., 2010) led to seven learning principles that define “21st century effectiveness” and together function as an analytical framework for examining innovative learning environments (see Box 2.1).

The ILE project added three more dimensions to the framework, optimising the conditions for putting the seven principles into practice:

1. Innovate the “pedagogical core” of the learning environment, whether the core elements (learners, educators, content and learning resources) or the dynamics which connect them (pedagogy and formative evaluation, use of time and the organisation of educators and learners), or combinations of both.

2. Become “formative organisations” with strong learning leadership constantly informed by evidence about the learning achieved through different strategies and innovations.

3. Open up to partnerships by working with families and communities, higher education, cultural institutions, media, businesses and especially other schools and learning environments, in ways that directly shape the pedagogical core and the learning leadership.

In the next section we explore the first element, innovating the pedagogical core. The section that follows will discuss the second dimension, of becoming formative organisations. The third and fourth chapters of this report focus on the third dimension, partnership. This chapter and the chapters that follow use case studies (in indented block text) drawn from OECD (2013a).

Innovating the pedagogical core

Four main elements comprise the pedagogical core in our framework: learners (who?), educators (with whom?), content (what?) and resources (with what?). To rethink and then innovate these core elements – each individually and especially all four together – is to change the heart of any learning environment (see Figure 2.1).

Innovating using the pedagogical core at the heart of schools and learning environments means transforming organisational relationships and dynamics to make them relevant for the 21st century. In many cases, this means rethinking the kinds of organisational patterns that are the backbone of most schools today: the lone teacher; the classroom separated from other classrooms, each with its own teacher; the familiar class schedule and bureaucratic units; and the traditional approaches to teaching and classroom organisation. This is not to suggest that all schools across OECD countries strictly follow this pattern; many no longer fit this profile at all. The case studies described below have systematically rethought many of these practices and have created new learning environments by regrouping teachers, regrouping learners, rescheduling learning, and/or changing pedagogical approaches and the mix of those approaches.

Regrouping educators and teachers

The case studies highlight three main reasons for abandoning the conventional one-teacher-per-group-of-learners format. First, teachers benefit from collaborative planning, working together and shared professional development strategies (i.e. teamwork as an organisational norm). Second, team teaching allows for a wider variety of teaching options. Third, teamwork can benefit certain groups of learners who might otherwise not get the attention they need when only one teacher is in charge.

In some of the cases, collaboration might be described as part of the general culture of the learning organisation: