Charles
Leadbeater
Leading authority
on innovation
Learning from ExtremesDEECD Innovation Showcase, Melbourne, May 2010
Charles Leadbeater
What kind of innovation do we need?Why do we need it?
Who does it and how?
Your vantage point determines what you can see…
Which strategy you adopt depends on why you need to do it
Pushed to innovate by crisis, failure
Pulled to innovate by opportunity
Which strategy you adopt will shape how you innovate
Innovation is combination
The Inside/Outside dilemma
Innovate for scale
Question you ask determines the answer you get…
Where can you see what education and learning might become ?
Formal Informal
Sustaining
Disruptive
Location
Innovation Type
Mapping education innovation
Improve
Formal Informal
Sustaining
Disruptive
Location
Innovation Type
Mapping education innovation
Good people teaching, well trained, well motivated and supported in
the right conditions
But in the developing world…
Poor teacher quality + motivationHigh rates of repetition and drop out
And in the developed world…
Main issues: community, culture and family
And in the developed world…
Danger : hitting the target, missing the point
Improve is essential but not enough…
Reinvent
Formal Informal
Sustaining
Disruptive
Location
Innovation Type
Mapping education innovation
Different kinds of learning in different kinds of institution
Personalised learning …
Big colleges that feel smallTeachers as coaches
Learners as self-reflective protagonists
Problem/question oriented learning Collaborative and real world
But…
There are lots of obstacles and traps on the journey from improve to
reform
And…
Even that may not get all you need because what happens outside schools and colleges matters so
much to learning
Supplement
Formal Informal
Sustaining
Disruptive
Location
Innovation Type
Mapping education innovation
Social and emotional conditions for learning
Culture of aspiration and ambitionCombined with economic change
Challenges…Where do you invest?
What skills do you need?Is school the right vehicle?
Transform
Formal Informal
Sustaining
Disruptive
Location
Innovation Type
Mapping education innovation
Entirely new ways to enable learning
Technology: ubiquitous participation, connection, collaboration
Radical innovation comes from the margins: social entrepreneurs and
the hardest to reach
Pull not push
Motivation is key: extrinsic and intrinsic
Learning through…
Holistic (education with health, community
and economic development)
High levels of tangible community commitment
Employ different people, technologies, places for learning
Learning as a making, doing, earning activity
Learning as with and by not for and to
Improve Supplement
Reinvent Transform
Formal Informal
Sustaining
Disruptive
Location
Innovation Type
How much would you invest, where?
Improve Supplement
Reinvent Transform
Formal Informal
Sustaining
Disruptive
Location
Innovation Type
Where would you start?
Improve Supplement
Reinvent Transform
Formal Informal
Sustaining
Disruptive
Location
Innovation Type
What order would you do things in?
Where do resources go?
Improve
Reinvent
Alternative
Supplement
Dominant
Not disruptive but marginal
Supportive
Dealing with what the mainstream
cannot cope with
Where should resources go?
Improve
Reinvent
Transform
Supplement
Where should resources go?
Improve
Reinvent
Transform
Supplement
Where should resources go?
Improve
Reform Transform
Supplement
Education needs entrepreneurs and innovators as much as managers
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