Final reflections

As I write my final blog and reflect on the knowledge that I have gained throughout this entire module, I can say with certainty that my perception of the concept of innovation is very different to what it was when I first arrived in Denmark. If I am to be completely honest, I have to say that I did not know very much at all about innovation before I came here. However, after studying this module, I have been enlightened as to what the concept involves and inspired by the opportunities that it presents when it is implemented with children in primary school.

I found it particularly interesting to research the concept of innovation within the Northern Ireland primary school curriculum. Before looking at this through the lens of innovation, I had not realised the huge potential for entrepreneurship education that exists within my own country. The Northern Ireland curriculum (CCEA, 2007, p. 9) notes that teachers should help pupils discover how to “seek out questions to explore and problems to solve”, “make ideas real by experimenting with different designs, actions and outcomes” and “value the unexpected or surprising” amongst a number of other activities that are built on innovative concepts. When I return home and use the curriculum to plan my lessons, as I have done in the past, I will try to be more mindful of the inherent potential for innovation and entrepreneurship education and incorporate this into my teaching.

Throughout this module, I have also gained useful knowledge about various other aspects of innovation. In particular, my opinions regarding the significance of creativity have been challenged. I have always struggled, both as a pupil in school and as a trainee teacher, when it comes to taking part in creative activities. However, my views have been challenged by Kelley and Kelley (2013) who discuss the concept of ‘creative confidence’ and assert that teachers must believe in their own individual creative potential so that this passion for creativity can be transmitted to their pupils. They note that “…the real value of creativity doesn’t emerge until you are brave enough to act on those ideas. That combination of thought and action defines creative confidence: the ability to come up with new ideas and the courage to try them out” (Kelley and Kelley, 2013, pp. 5-6). Indeed, this has challenged me to consider the importance of being willing to step out of my comfort zone, develop new ideas and then put them into action. I believe that it is only when I as a teacher grasp the significance of this that I can begin to put it into practice in the classroom and truly extract the real opportunities inherent in innovation and entrepreneurship education for my pupils. Brown (2009) also emphasises the importance of creativity and urges that our objective as teachers must be to develop an educational experience that does not eradicate children’s natural inclination to experiment and create but rather, encourages and amplifies it. It is my responsibility as a teacher, therefore, to understand the role that creativity plays in innovation and entrepreneurship education, as well as the immense potential that it has, so that I can correctly implement it within the classroom.

Thus, I complete my studies in this module and leave Copenhagen inspired by the knowledge I have gained. I hope that I will be able to take what I have learnt back home with me and put it into practice with the children I teach, perhaps during my next practice placement. I have gained a lot of useful knowledge and I feel that the value of innovation and entrepreneurship education is evident; indeed, with the world that we live in changing and developing at a rapid rate, I agree with Wagner (2012) who claims that innovation is absolutely essential to our future.

Reference List

Brown, T. (2009) Change by Design, New York, Harper Business.

CCEA (Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment) (2007) The Northern Ireland Curriculum Primary, Belfast, CCEA.

Kelley T. & D. Kelley (2013) Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All, Palo Alto, IDEO.

Wagner, T. (2012) Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World, New York, Scribner.

 

 

Doing and Sharing

We have now reached the penultimate stage in the 'Design for Change' process, the 'Do' phase, during which we have created a prototype to illustrate our idea. Design for Change (2016) break the 'Do' phase down into three steps; planning, implementing and reflecting. We completed these steps in class and subsequently developed our prototype; a resource for students to use to plan an overnight school trip based on the topic of Financial Capability. Throughout the creation of this resource, we ensured that an emphasis was placed on students being active in their learning. Arthur et al. (2006, p. 52) advocate the importance of active learning, writing that "...knowledge is therefore actively constructed by the learner rather than passively absorbed...". Indeed, through working together in groups, having to seek out information from different sources and communicate their findings with each other, I believe that all students, both high ability and low ability, will have the opportunity to actively take part in the completion of this project. This will hopefully serve to develop the confidence and motivation of all students, particularly amongst those who struggle with Mathematics and view the subject as irrelevant and boring.

Design for Change (2016) also assert the value of reaching out to organisations and professionals, who work in the same field, in order to obtain advice. As part of our research, therefore, we contacted Mathematics lecturers from our home universities in order to consider their opinions. During our last class in Innovation Lab, it was also particularly useful to be set up with some Mathematics students from UCC and to present our prototype to them. They provided us with extremely useful feedback and cautioned that the targets we had laid out in our resource for the children to reach were, perhaps, too high. We took this advice on board and adapted our resource appropriately in order to make the task more realistic and achievable for the students. After making some final changes to our resource, we will complete the last stage in the 'Design for Change' process when we present it to our peers during our final class on Tuesday.



The prototype we have developed for the students

Reference List

Arthur, J., Grainger, T. and Wray, D. (2006) Learning to Teach in the Primary School, Oxon, Routledge.

Design for Change (2016), available at http://www.dfcworld.com/fids.html#nogo (accessed 12/05/16).

Using our imaginations

During the past few weeks, we have continued our second project using the 'Design for Change' process of innovation. We have just completed the second step in this process, otherwise known as the 'Imagine' phase. This involved us thinking about a problem within a particular subject area, for a specific age group, that we could address through the development of a new initiative. Our group decided to focus on the subject of Mathematics for children around 11 years of age. We agreed that a particular problem concerning Mathematics is the lack of confidence and/or motivation that often exists amongst children when they are given a task to do. In response to this problem, we thought about how we could develop an initiative that would encourage children to work together on a purposeful activity in order to increase both their confidence and their motivation in Mathematics. We devised various 'How might we...?' questions using the 'D.school toolkit' (2016) concerning how to 'amp up' the good, use different adjectives and change the 'status quo'. We also wrote down numerous thoughts on post-it notes and subsequently organised them into questions and simple statements.  After completing this entire process, we came up with a final question which led us to think about different ideas that we could use and incorporate to try and solve our problem.

Initial pooling of ideas

Organisation of ideas into questions and simple statements

We decided to develop a whole-class Mathematics project based on the topic of Financial Capability. Students will work together in different groups to plan and budget for an overnight school trip at the end of their school year. The 'real-life' aspect of this task illustrates the applicability that Mathematics has to the students' lives and the fact that they are working towards their own school trip will serve to motivate them with the task at hand. Working alongside other peers should also increase the confidence of children who struggle with certain aspects of Mathematics. Before approaching the 'Do' phase, we will contact lecturers from our home universities, as part of our research, in order to gain more of an insight into the problems associated with children's lack of confidence and/or motivation in Mathematics. Upon collection of this research, we will move into the 'Do' phase and begin to develop our prototype by creating resources that the students will use during their project.

It was also interesting to consider the research of Brinkman (2010) whilst we were in the process of completing the 'Imagine' phase. Like many other researchers in innovation, he also asserts the importance of nurturing creativity in all students, something that we as teachers must always be mindful of.

Reference List

Brinkman, D.J. (2010) ‘Teaching Creatively and Teaching for Creativity’, Arts Education Policy Review, 111, pp. 48-50.

D.school toolkit (2016) Bootcamp Bootleg, available at http://dschool.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/BootcampBootleg2010v2SLIM.pdf (accessed 04/05/16).

An introduction to 'Design for Change'

The past few weeks have involved finishing our first project and completing the final stage of evolution, as part of the Design Thinking Model of innovation, by pitching our prototype to our user, Simon. This required us to show him the model we had made and outline how we would envisage it working if it were to be implemented in the new UCC campus at Carlsberg. Brown (2009, p. 214) notes that "No matter how compelling an idea might be, it is of little value if it cannot be sustained by its intended customers...". Indeed, after pitching our idea to Simon and explaining it through a video recording, we were unsure of its value and the extent to which it would be feasible, given the fact that some negative feedback was received. However, if it is a realistic goal and something which can be achieved and sustained by the students at the new UCC campus, it would be interesting to observe how it is implemented.

It has been insightful to reflect on the Design Thinking Model of innovation and to compare it with 'Design for Change', a movement established in 2009 by teacher, Kiran Bir Sethi, from The Riverside School in India. Design for Change offers a simple 4-step design process of 'Feel, Imagine, Do, Share' which aims to develop the values of empathy, ethics, engagement and elevation within children (Design for Change, 2016). Kiran Bir Sethi's inspirational view is that all children can be enabled to say 'I can'. She speaks of unleashing the 'I can' superpower, empowering children to believe that change is possible and that they themselves can be the instigators of that change. The process equips children with the tools to be aware of the world around them, believe that they play a role in shaping that world and take action towards a more desirable, sustainable future (Design for Change, 2016). In essence, this movement is child-centred and it is this aspect that makes it fundamentally different to the Design Thinking Model of innovation. I am excited to see how this more learner-centred, rather than user-centred, approach will impact how we view and take part in the innovation process as well as the result that will stem from our involvement in it.



The four steps involved in the 'Design for Change' process

The concepts inherent within this more learner-centred approach to innovation, where the focus is primarily on the children concerned, are closely connected to Brown's (2009) assertion that the most important opportunity for long-term impact is through education. He critiques the focus that exists in many schools on analytical and convergent thinking, rather than on the development of creativity, and claims that teachers must nurture the natural creativity of all children, keeping it alive as they advance through the education system and into professional life. Perhaps this is something that more teachers in our schools today should bear in mind in an attempt to harness the value of the creative potential that exists within the minds of young children.

Reference List

Brown, T. (2009) Change by Design, New York, Harper Business.

Design for Change (2016) available at http://www.dfcworld.com/index.html (accessed 20/04/16).

Models of Innovation

Over the past few weeks, we have continued our journey through the innovation process and also engaged in some complementary readings which have provided a theoretical perspective to contextualise what we have been doing in class.

Upon reading the articles written by Darso (2012) and Scharmer (2008), it has become evident that there are distinctly different models that can be used to approach a task in innovation. These are the stage-gate model, highlighted by Scharmer (2008), and the non-stage-gate model, highlighted by Darso (2012).

The stage-gate model is process-orientated and requires the user to move through a clear series of steps. When one step is completely finished, another is started. Within this one process, Scharmer (2008) presents five separate movements that form the path of a 'U'; these are co-initiating, co-sensing, co-presencing, co-creating and co-evolving. He also notes that the journey through the 'U' develops seven essential leadership capacities; these are holding the space of listening, observing, sensing, presencing, crystalizing, prototyping and performing. In contrast, the non-stage-gate model (or the Diamond Model), presented by Darso (2012), does not have a distinct set of steps for the user to follow. Rather, the four parameters contained within 'The Diamond of Innovation', namely concepts, ignorance, knowledge and relations are all central for initiating, supporting and managing the innovation process. During a whole-class discussion regarding these two models, we established that both encourage the user to be open-minded and emphasise the importance of effective communication and listening to form relations of trust between group members. It was interesting to compare these two models and observe that the innovation process that we are involved in is defined under a third model; The Design Thinking Model, also recognised as a stage-gate model.

Design Thinking for Educators (2012), which promotes the Design Thinking Model for innovation, outlines five phases of the innovation process; these are discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation and evolution. In groups, our 'design challenge' has been to suggest ideas that could help students to stay at university after class in the new UCC campus at Carlsberg, which opens in September 2016. As the Design Thinking for Educators (2012) toolkit notes, this has required us as a group to be intuitive, to interpret what we have observed and to develop ideas that are emotionally meaningful to those we are designing for. This has been a complex process and has involved us stepping out of our comfort zones as we have learned about the processes involved in innovation. The toolkit also suggests that collaboration is inherent to Design Thinking and, as a group, we have had to embrace each other's strengths and weaknesses in order to make progress. During the experimentation phase, it was interesting to assign de Bono's (1985) 'Thinking Hats' to each group member and ascertain the role that each one of us plays within the group. As we approach the final phase of evolution, I am excited to pitch our idea and, perhaps, begin putting it into action.

Phase 3: Ideation

Phase 4: Experimentation

Reference List

Darso, L. (2012) 'Innovation Competency - An Essential Organisational Asset' in S. Hoyrup, M. Bonnafous-Boucher, C. Hasse, M. Lotz and K. Moller (eds) Employee-Driven Innovation: A New Approach, New York, Palgrave Macmillan.

IDEO (2012) Design Thinking for Educators, available at http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/ (accessed 11/03/16).

Scharmer, C.O. (2008) Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, California, Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

The de Bono Group (1985) Six Thinking Hats, available at http://www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php (accessed 11/03/16).

 

An introduction to innovation

Based on our reading, it is evident that there are many different aspects associated with the concept of innovation.

It was interesting to discover the natural instinct that human beings have to be innovative. Wagner (2012, p. 27) refers to Bonsen (no date) who claims that being innovative is central to being human; indeed, this is closely connected to Wagner’s (2012) claim that human beings are born with an innate desire to explore, experiment and imagine new possibilities. As this desire to innovate is inherent in human beings, we believe that teachers must harness this within the classroom and build upon both their own as well as their students’ desires to be creative and imagine new ideas. Indeed, Wagner (2012) suggests that children are central to the processes involved in innovation and notes the importance of teaching, mentoring and parenting our young people to become the innovators that our planet needs to thrive in the 21^st century.

We believe that innovation begins with the children in our classes and so it follows that play is an essential component of innovation, as play is recognised as the principal activity of early childhood. Wagner (2012) highlights the importance of play, claiming that through playful activities, children are able to learn. The skills that children develop as they play, such as risk-taking, communication skills, creativity and imagination contribute to innovative thinking later on in life and the development of innovative processes. Play is also a key element of both the Austrian and Northern Irish primary school curricula and is recognised in both as a crucial part of children’s learning that contributes to the development of the aforementioned skills.

The importance of innovation is also highlighted by Design Thinking for Educators (2012), a toolkit which notes that those who have responsibility for educating children and young people are distinctly positioned to keep a pulse on students’ evolving needs and, therefore, uniquely qualified to understand and design for the changing needs of schools in our society today. Design Thinking is an integral element in education which can be used to approach any challenge in relation to the curriculum, spaces, processes and tools and/or systems. It rests on the fundamental belief that anyone can create change; a point which is also made by Kelley and Kelley (2013) who claim that we all have a creative potential within us that is simply waiting to be tapped. They note that a belief in this creative capacity lies at the heart of innovation and thus, it is essential that teachers believe in their own individual abilities to create change in the world around them. Kelley and Kelley (2013, p. 3) refer to Robinson (2006) who claims that creativity is as important in education as Literacy and should be treated with the same status. As previously alluded to, this again highlights the significance of both children and teachers harnessing their creativity and using it to bring about positive changes within the school environment. I look forward with anticipation to seeing how creativity is implemented within the Danish education system during my practice placement amongst both pupils and teachers as well as investigating the place that innovation and entrepreneurship education have within Danish classrooms.

Reference List

IDEO (2012) Design Thinking for Educators, available at http://designthinkingforeducators.com/ (accessed 18/02/16).

Kelley T. & D. Kelley (2013) Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All, Palo Alto, IDEO.

Wagner, T. (2012) Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World, New York, Scribner.