What do we need to do to build cultural capacity for innovation in your context? A personal perspective of school education in Scotland Niall MacKinnon, Head teacher, Plockton Primary School, Highland, Scotland, UK Knowledge Building Summer Institute, Université Laval, Ville de Québec, Canada, August 2014
Scotland overall: a whirlwind of change – different conceptual currents causing functional tension Note: the four nations of the United Kingdom are fully devolved for school education and have varying and increasingly divergent school systems. Cultural capacity for innovation in Scotland currently promoted by: • A new curriculum from 2004 centred around four capacities of children's potential – confidence, responsibility, contribution and learning. • Increased focus on personal development – three of the four capacities • Proclaimed culture of increased professionalism and enhanced local autonomy • Emphasis on 'Assessment for Learning' interpreted as formative assessment • Intention of rounded outcomes and meaningful experiences • Goal of collaborative learning • A widely professed desire for innovation • Pressure of change from the 'real world' our schools serve • Increased international connections Cultural capacity for innovation in Scotland currently hindered by: • Hierarchical governance through command and control • Strong audit culture based on universalistic idealisations • 'Product model' of curriculum has transferred over to new curriculum • Features of the Global Educational Reform Movement • Mandated list of central outcomes and experiences of new curriculum – formulaic & cluttered • Jargon hindering thinking • Test based accountability and international benchmarks • Transmission model of teacher role and function still dominant • Notion of service provision rather than schools as community • ‘Assessment for Learning’ interpreted as hyper-planning and fragmented 3-part lessons • Low conceptual development • Bureaucratic assessment procedures Cultural capacity for innovation could be promoted by: • Appreciation of divergent contexts and institutional forms • Lessening enforced initiatives • Promoting conceptual shifts (without overly-imposed operational determinants) • Greater shift to the practitioner perspective in mediating change • Ending fixed mandated graded practice idealisations • Greater emphasis on concepts and their divergent situational application • Awareness and application of Knowledge Building and Systems Thinking • Policy based on knowledge (empirical understanding) not opinion (arbitrary imposition) • Shift of personnel between sectoral roles • Teachers as agents of research – generating empirical knowledge