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).