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Educators are urged to embrace innovation. Today's corporate leaders explain that 'innovation is everybody’s job' and many workplace seminars invite personnel to develop skills in 'seeing what’s next'. Entrepreneurship in education has long been encouraged. However, if today's leaders are serious about leading schools in the transformation agenda, they need to envision the future and excel at the processes of innovation that deliver tangible outcomes.
Innovation can be disruptive and has the potential to divide. For many, it is not an easy way forward. There is a growing awareness that abandonment is an important element in structuring innovation. This concept is often a trigger for resistance, as some clutch on to the familiar, 'tried and true' habits of a lifetime (long or short). In some settings, leading innovation requires heroic endeavour.
David Hargreaves has led the clarion call for educators to enter into a new imaginary, in which educators commit to fostering a culture of transformation. There are obvious opportunities and benefits for students in this new imaginary. In the emergent, new way of working, educators are strategically placed in policy formation and engage in transformational activities as part of a 'by schools, for schools' approach. We need to celebrate the early successes of those at the forefront of this transformational change.
The iNet agenda calls for colleagues to network and share effective practice. Focused networking increases one's personal responsibility to interact with colleagues. It helps to push back personal boundaries in our thinking and can generate enthusiasm to implement significant and sustainable change. In addition, there is an obvious need to more widely recognise the contributions of education's innovators and entrepreneurs. Indeed, Snapshots provides many examples and excellent case studies of headteachers, principals and others who have exploited opportunities and used innovative technologies and new ways of working to deliver better outcomes for students.
Some business corporations exhort their employees to build their reputation through sharing knowledge. In education, we also need to strengthen our ability to generate ideas and to accelerate the application of these ideas. By developing and retaining the skills of educators, we can make a very significant contribution to education in the 21st century and beyond. Hedley Beare (2006) sums it all up: 'Diversity and resilience now rule; the days of one-best-way solutions have gone'.
Dr Wendy Cahill Head of iNet Australia