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Tuesday, July 1st, 2014

Innovation in teaching as problem-solving
Marta Libedinsky


Introduction

.Good morning. Yesterday we talked about creativity, on Thursday we will work on
global learning. And as you know, todays theme is innovation, the second component
in iEARN 2014 International Conferences motto, taking place in the city of Puerto
Madryn, Argentina.

.This brief talk will be divided into four parts: in the first part, Ill talk about the concept
of didactic innovation, in the second part Ill invite you to think about innovations in
teaching as problem-solving initiatives, in the third part Ill refer to a very rich
professional development activity for teachers: documentation and sharing of teaching
experiences, and to wrap up this talk, Ill prompt you all to participate in a collective
activity on our online Twitter with the hashtag #iEARN2014 and also on our offline
Twitter which you will find in the lobby of the hotel.

.It is very important for us to mark the difference, throughout the day, between
technological innovation and didactic innovation. New technologies and new ways of
teaching. As we know, it is usually evident when technological innovations enter the
classrooms in the shape of technological devices, programs, and applications, but this
doesnt mean that innovation in ways of teaching, of learning, of assessing happen
simultaneously. (Manso et al, 2011; Garzn et al , 2012). This is why we think it is
important for us to dedicate this workday to both types of innovation: technological and
didactic.

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1. The concept
.Weve been asked many times what is didactic innovation. One of those times, this is
what we answered:
The answer to the question of what is didactic innovation? is very similar to
the answer to the question of what is happiness?. It is very hard to define happiness. It
is very hard to define didactic innovation. But everyone can clearly perceive it when we
witness it, we all wish it for those we love, we all search for it constantly, we want to
preserve it when we find it, and afterwards we need, we have to, share it with others.
Like happiness.

Even if the link between innovation and happiness is very poetic and inspiring, the
question remains unanswered. To try to answer it, and leaving poetry aside for the
moment, we looked initially to dictionaries, and afterwards to innovation analysts that
study its characteristics and possibilities of replication.

According to the dictionaries, the term innovation is made up of three lexical
components: in-, nova and ation. Nova refers to renovating, doing anew, changing; it
also means novelty, a characteristic of what is new, an unexpected thing; novel, novice.
The prefix in doesnt have a negative value here, but instead means entrance,
introduction of something new in a preexisting reality. And the suffix ation implies
activity or process, result or effect, as well as interiorized or consummated reality.

Two French authors, Cros and Adamczewski (1996) very lucidly characterized
innovation as something different from invention. Inventing something means creating
something new in a given knowledge domain, while innovating means giving that
creation social space. Referencing social space requires us to not only stop and analyze
the characteristics and qualities of a new practice but, very especially, to analyze the
process of its implementation in one or more social spaces, in more than one
opportunity. It then requires us to analyze the reach of this didactic innovation, the ways
in which each of the people involved think and act, to see what are the goals that direct
it, who leads it and how, how conflicts are solved between ones and the others (the
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ones that applaud the innovation and the ones that reject it), how trust and harmony are
built, how to generate organizational skills, how the value of each initiative is reflected
in the performance of the groups of students that it benefits, how its implementation
evolves as time goes by.

What types of innovation can we think of? Innovating in education implies many
varied things. Lets see some examples. We can think about new institutional targets
(for example: teaching not only students but also their families about ICT and
Education, or teaching Seniors elements of ICT so they can find new ways to spend
their free time, practice active citizenship, and keep learning), design new organizations
(for example: teachers networks such as iEARN), incorporate new curricular contents
related to ICT (for example: teaching programming in the classrooms in different school
levels), integrate new technologies in all subjects (for example: with virtual classrooms
and web conference rooms), implement new structures for learning activities (for
example: WebQuests and WonderPoints, designed by Bernard Dodge and adopted by
many teachers in several countries), implement new ways of evaluating or assessing
performance (for example: with rubrics and feedback protocols), think about new
spaces to learn and teach (for example: outside the classrooms: streets, museums,
libraries, virtual spaces), find new didactic resources different from traditional ones (for
example: interactive infographies), put varied devices into practice for teachers
professional development (for example: using virtual spaces provided by social
networks).

On some occasions, colleagues have asked us what are the condiments of didactic
innovation. Experience tells us that every time we find didactic innovation, we can
identify ruptures as well as continuities. Ruptures, where there is an opposition to
previous, or frequent, practices, and continuities in that every innovation recovers, in
one way or another, the past, the roots. To quote just three examples that most of you
will find familiar:

In the pedagogy of John Amos Comenius and in his textbook The Visible
World in Pictures from 1659, we can find interesting clues for the creation of
multi- and hypermedia didactic resources such as building scenarios, presenting
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information in two columns and in two languages, exhibiting semantic fields,
articulating images and words in order to teach.
In William Heard Kilpatricks method of project-based learning we can find the
theoretical and practical bases of the interinstitutional collaborative projects that
the iEARN network has been developing since it began.
In Clestin Freinets pedagogy, from 1926, we can find references to interschool
correspondence that resemble exchange activities between sister classrooms
from different cities and countries that now take place on virtual platforms.

Valuable didactic innovations also awaken curiosity, stimulate individual and team
creativity, help deconstruct conceptual errors, prejudices, stereotypes, and over-
simplifications, promote students intellectual autonomy, invite the asking of important
questions in the each disciplines framework, establish interesting connections between
different knowledge domains, open up spaces for approaching the emerging curriculum
(that is, the curriculum that is planned step by step according to the interests,
expectations, needs, and passion of the students and their teachers), propose
metacognitive activities, awaken interest, generate enthusiasm, entertain, seduce. These
experiences are a turning point, an important transition.


2. Innovation in teaching as problem-solving

.An interesting way of approaching innovation in teaching is to think of it from the start
as a way of solving a problem. What is a problem? A problem is a situation that an
individual or a group of people wants or needs to solve but doesnt have a quick, direct
way to reach a solution. Without intention, without will, without need, the problem isnt
detected and/or isnt solved.

David Jonassen (2000) calls our attention to two critical attributes of problems. First, he
points out the existence of the unknown. Second, says Jonassen, finding the solution
for that which we dont know must have social, cultural, or intellectual value for
somebody. Someone thinks that finding a solution for these problems is worth it.

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.When we talk to colleagues about persistent problems in the classroom (by
brainstorming), the following problems have been mentioned repeatedly through the
years:

. Some students, they say, though not all:

- have trouble listening in an active way,
- have trouble concentrating,
- have trouble finding and transforming information,
- have trouble communicating through writing, respecting the essential characteristics of
different genres,
-have trouble communicating orally: describing, narrating, discussing,
-have trouble communicating complex ideas through images and sounds,
-spend little time in the handling and mastering of software, webware and ICT resources
when operating them isnt intuitive.
- get frustrated easily when mastering a new tool takes time,
- dont concentrate and read assignments carefully, and instead guess and answer
impulsively,
-forget, then, to answer certain parts of an assignment because they dont understand
them or because theyre easily distracted,
-reinterpret assignments according to their strengths and interests and dont see the
differences between what was asked of them and what they actually did,
-dont recognize the importance of meeting deadlines,
-have trouble giving structure to their own reflections,
-have trouble using knowledge in a flexible way in new situations,
-plagiarize, without conscience of having done so, in their haste, and dont know how to
summarize, paraphrase, or quote.
-have trouble prioritizing and time-managing,
-have trouble working with others and collaborating in harmony,
-have little experience and dont know how to give or receive feedback.

.This list of problems, from an optimistic pedagogical point of view, could serve as a
starting point: we could take each of them and design didactic innovations that
contribute to solving them.
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3. Documentation of innovative didactic experiences and sharing in networks
and communities of practice

.For a didactic innovation that has been designed and implemented to benefit others,
beyond a limited group of students, it is important that these experiences be documented
and shared.

.This was analyzed by the American teacher Lee Shulman (2001), who said:
One of the frustrations of teaching as an occupation and profession is its
extensive individual and collective amnesia, the consistency with which the best
creations of its practitioners are lost to both contemporary and future peers.
Unlike fields such as architecture (which preserves its creations in both plans
and edifices), law (which builds a case literature of opinions and interpretations),
medicine (with its records and case studies), and even unlike chess, bridge, or
ballet (with their traditions of preserving both memorable games and
choreographed performances through inventive forms of notation and
recording), teaching is conducted without an audience of peers. It is devoid of a
history of practice.

.For their own part, and keeping in the same vein, authors Thomas Hatch and Desire
Pointer Mace (2005) explain the problem of the ephemeral condition of the act of
teaching with these words:
"Teachers who study teaching all need to wrestle with a fundamental issue: the
act of teaching itself is ephemeral. Of course, teaching leaves traces, creates
artifacts like curriculum materials and student work: it lives in our memories and
fuels our teaching stories. But fundamentally, practitioners who want to study
teaching reflectively and critically feel as if we are always running after it, trying
to capture it and hold it still so that it can be pondered awhile, taken apart, put
back together, and compared with other cases. Its a dilemma shared with other
performance artists dancers, musicians, actors who rely on various note-
taking, recording, and representational schemes to capture performance and
intention so that it can become an object of study.
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.In both quotes, we can see that the authors invite us to not let our teaching practices be
forgotten, to register and share our performance and intentions.

.The idea of how important it is to document didactic experiences began to take shape
for me when I was writing my Masters Thesis on Curriculum and Teaching at the
University of Buenos Aires, many years ago. I had chosen the secondary school level
for my thesis. It seemed to me and to many of my colleagues to be the most
problematic. I had chosen the emerging didactic innovation and had sided with
pedagogical optimism. My colleagues helped me find three cases of innovative teachers
in three subjects: past, present, and possible. History, the past, Geography, the present,
and Literature, the possible; in the words of Jerome Bruner (1997). Didactic experiences
full of stories and arguments, full of truths and truthfulness. All three of them brilliant.
Passionate. Generous. Suggesting crossovers between different disciplines: History and
Cinema, Geography and Photography, Literature and Political Science. But even they,
the three brilliant teachers, hadnt registered, sorted, systematized, or compiled their
didactic innovations. My visits were a mess of cardboard boxes and papers that they
showed me as the conversation advanced. They were missing documentation of their
experiences so they could share them and so this tacit knowledge, so extremely tacit,
became explicit and could be externalized. These are teachers who know, who can, and
who want to solve problems.

.The activity we call documentation of teaching experiences implies putting into
action a process inverse to planning. Planning is an activity in which professionals in
charge of design and/or implementation of a program, project, or activity operate with a
prospective attitude, that is, they anticipate and plan what will happen. Documentation
of activities requires a retrospective attitude, and consists of the systematization of
information and relevant evidence that shows, in the clearest and most complete way
possible, the activities that took place. These processes of systematization and
documentation allow us to rescue tacit knowledge from oblivion, meaning, according to
Gibbons (1997), knowledge that isnt available as text, but that resides in the heads of
those who work on a particular process of transformation or that is hidden in a particular
organizational context.

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.In education, particularly, there is knowledge and experiences that are highly valuable,
but havent yet been transformed into texts, and so can only be known by those who
lived through them and enjoyed them. Systematization and documentation of innovative
experiences benefits us in at least two ways. On the one hand, the very activity of
documenting is an opportunity for professional development in teaching for those who
participate in it. On the other hand, documentation of experiences also contributes to
the solution of a problem that can be defined as: the lack of pedagogical literature
referred to knowledge- and experience-based educational practices in educational
institutions and real teaching teams from our time.

.Teachers and educational institutions have many experiences to share with other
teachers and other institutions in the framework of communities of practice, but for
varied reasons- many still havent done so. On some occasions, when asked why they
dont document, people say: I dont have the time, Its not recognized by the current
teachers assessment system, I dont want people to plagiarize my ideas, I dont
know how to do it.
If the problem is the lack of abilities to face documentation processes, today we can find
highly developed qualitative research methodologies: case studies, action-research, and
the narrative inquiry method. Studying the literature that explains how to implement
these methodologies, groups of interest, or methodological consultants could be of great
help for teaching teams interested in facing the practice of documentation; conscious
that doing so will take time and will require effort from everyone involved.

We think, then, that it is necessary to find the time, to persuade the people in charge of
designing educational politics to consider documentation and sharing as valuable
professional development practices for teachers and look for ways to recognize the work
of teachers who dare to innovate.

4. Activity
We invite you to now, and throughout the day, to answer two questions through our
online Twitter (with the hashtag #iEARN2014) and through our offline Twitter.

The two questions are:

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Question 1: What type of innovation do you think should be promoted
within the school level in which you work?

Question 2: What problem or problems would that innovation solve?

The answers we receive throughout the day will be compiled in one of the publications
of the iEARN 2014 Conference and shared with everyone later on. Thank you very
much!

Bibliography

Bruner, Jerome (1997). The Culture of Education. New York: Harvard University
Press.
Cros, Francoise y Adamczewski, Georges (1996) L innovation en ducation et en
formation. Pars: De Beck Universit.
Garzn, Magdalena; Garca Tellera, Mara Ximena;Libedinsky, Marta; Lpez, Natalia
y Prez, Paula (2012). Actividades escolares con TIC. Buenos Aires: Noveduc.
Gibbons, Michael et al (1994). The New Production of Knowledge. Southern Oaks:
Sage.
Hatch, Thomas et al (2005). Going public with our teaching. An anthology of
practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
Jonassen, David (2000). Toward a design theory of problem solving in Educational
Technology. Research and Development. Vol. 48. N 4. pp 63-85.
Libedinsky, Marta (2001). La innovacin en la enseanza. Diseo y documentacin
de experiencias de aula. Buenos Aires: Paids.
Manso, Micaela; Prez, Paula.; Libedinsky, Marta; Light, Daniel y Garzn, Magdalena.
(2011). Las TIC en las aulas. Experiencias latinoamericanas. Buenos Aires: Paids.
Shulman, Lee (1987) Knowledge and Teaching: Foundations of the New
Reform. Harvard Educational Review. Vol. 57.