The Process of educational innovation: an international perspective

Abstract

Incl. bibl.

This study of recent educational innovation in seven different countries aims to provide an understanding of how innovation and reform can be made to work by focusing on process. Chapter 1 discusses common concerns such as national identity, as well as methodological problems. Chapters 2 and 3 describe the contrastive styles of educational planning in Indonesia, where innovation is based on research and development, and West Germany, which has approached educational reform primarily through legislation. While the efforts at educational innovation in Sierra Leone discussed in Chapter 4 focus entirely on teacher training, the Israli approach described in Chapter 5 involves a project that has evolved at the municipal level without official support from the national Ministry of Education. Chapter 6, which describes the pragmatic-realist Malaysian "experiment in systematic adaptation" is followed, in Chapter 7, by a description of New Zealand's efforts to overcome "institutional inertia" by decentralization and innovation in the designs of school buildings. Finally, Chapter 8 discusses the Ghanaian attempt to introduce practical work into a basically traditional academic curriculum. Chapters 9 and 10 summarize the book's findings and conclusions and call for further research into the nature of educational innovation.