Innovation from necessity: digital technologies, teacher development and reciprocity with organisational innovation

ABSTRACT

This paper outlines how digital technologies support innovation in teaching and learning the English language across Palestinian Higher Education Institutes. A European project collaborated to build staff capacity in knowledge and skills, shown here through the redesign of curricula, pedagogical training, the design and implementation of interactive textbooks, the creation of language labs, helping to develop expertise in creating and utilising Open Educational Resources (OER) and significantly, the development of individual agency as a form of OER. In this paper, we draw on three years of data to present a model for teacher innovation showing how digital innovation is firstly personal at a practitioner level and shaped by need, before becoming driven by collaboration at an organisational level with like-minded colleagues. Shared practice at this level can lead to community discourse through practitioner networks, which in turn can lead to dialogue initiating instances of organisational change. This resonates with literature which shows innovation has three outcomes: originality (practitioner-based agency); scale (going beyond the site of creation) and value (how this produces benefits for others). We perceive that the resulting capacity-building extends beyond the redesign of curricula mentioned to professional enrichment, collegiality through cascading innovation to other areas, and enhanced practitioner agency.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• agency
• professional development
• ownership
• trust

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Erasmus+ [2018-3489/001-001].

Notes on contributors

Howard Scott

Howard Scott is a Senior Lecturer in Post-Compulsory Education at the University of Wolverhampton, where he also teaches Advanced Educational Research on the taught Masters and Doctoral Programmes. His research work and supervision extend across pragmatism and critical theory to explore how mobile technologies, social networks and artificial intelligence may support or transform community, vocational and adult learning and for teacher professional development. His interests include how open source and decentralised technologies may continue to shape educational provision, innovative pedagogy and assessment, and enhance collaboration particularly in informal contexts and through a social justice lens.

Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith predominantly works on mobile and digital learning, particularly in the Globalised South and with marginalised communities; digital literacy; and – currently – the use of social media for public health benefits. He co-authored a major report for the Department for International Development’s EdTech Hub on lessons learned to support governments’ digital responses to the educational crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Amongst other internationally-collaborative research efforts, Matt has worked in Palestine focusing on developing mobile technologies for supporting the teaching of English; and in Brazil, supporting school populations to influence virus control through mobile applications. Matt was Principal Investigator on an Erasmus+ project with partners across Europe creating a new online collaborative approach to textbook work. With John Traxler, Matt co-edited Digital Learning in Higher Education – COVID-19 and Beyond, charting the effects of the pandemic on digital learning across the UK Higher Education sector. Beyond these research endeavours, Matt is Senior Lecturer in Primary ITE and teaches on the Masters and Doctoral programmes at the University of Wolverhampton. For more on his publications and research interests, please see https://researchers.wlv.ac.uk/Matt.Smith/.