Article Resume part 2: Realization of a Desired Future: Innovation in Education

Authors:

Fuat Fındıkoğlu

Dilek İlhan

INTRODUCTION

Innovation in education, as the name suggests and unlike the traditional educational settings, will transform the students from ‘knowledge consumers’ into ‘knowledge manufacturers’ by placing them at the center of innovative educational settings. Therefore, what will take the global society today to the future is knowledge and innovation. That puts a heavy load on educational systems to raise individuals with high innovative skills and knowledge production capacity. As knowledge is not the result of scientific studies any longer; rather, it is a way of raising skilled problem solvers and individuals who will maintain their learning all their lives. Innovation in education is needed to incorporate old and new technologies and educational environments that already exist may be adapted and upgraded through the use of technology.

 

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INNOVATION IN EDUCATION

The role of the use of technology in education and how it relates to the content that needs to be conveyed to the students and the role of the knowledge that is part of that content need to be handled carefully while designing the curricula and the instructional environments and handling the outcomes of the instructional processes in terms of how to evaluate the value of workforce that will enter the market and consecutively their use for the economy and the services they will offer. This takes the nature of this relationship back to the objectives of the education that will shape the nature of the instructional processes. No matter how difficult it may be to acknowledge the fact that technology isn’t sufficient alone in education or any student who attended to a technologically-enhanced classroom would be an expert on the topic or learn anything, the curricular circumstances of what has already been perceived about technology will be in question sooner or later.

Here, it becomes more and more important to take an innovative stance on education. This being the case, innovation isn’t merely adopting the latest technology; it must be accepted as a process where the content to be communicated to the students is being coded in a more attractive and meaningful way through the use of technology. Therefore, instruction shouldn’t solely be confined to conveying standard content to students no matter what advanced technological tools are being deployed in the process. Innovation should be taken into account in the ways that goals, content knowledge and learning outcomes are treated with an efficient perspective and approach.

 

INNOVATION IN EDUCATION

Under the light of literature provided until now, innovation in education can roughly be defined as the ways of coming up with alternative ways of ensuring behavioral change in individuals if/when the current way (learning theory/learning task/teaching method/learning approach, etc.) is not working effectively. Curriculum is the broadest concept in educational innovation. Again, in curricular aspect of educational innovation, teachers’ understanding and background determines the extent to which conveying of the innovative curricular content is going to be achieved.

The figure suggests that the highest activity regarding innovation occurs among the teacher, curriculum and classroom trio. Teachers’ interaction with the curriculum is significant in that he can control and monitor other variables within the educational system. In general, using ICTs can only help teachers to code a core message (a goal and content) in an unconventional form that is targeted for students with different learning styles. Innovation basically means providing alternatives or novel ways to already existing methods or approaches.

When a need for a change or an urge for alternatives calls for attention, it can be said that innovative educational practices are taking place. That is to say, innovation in education can mean ameliorating the problems existing in practice at the moment. Taking education to an innovative level of practice requires teachers stopping the old routines and changing their old or traditional beliefs for the untraditional students and learning environments and social life at hand today. An encouraging way of innovation in education would be the teachers searching for creative and innovative solutions to existing problems and carrying out research into instruction and education.

 

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Individuals must be equipped with skills to compete in the knowledge era. The outcomes of the education system must be targeted to ensure that the outcomes are newly produced knowledge. Langworthy, Shear and Means suggest that governments, systems and schools must develop techniques to measure to what degree innovative education is happening and what its implications of it on student learning and academic progress are and they also suggest that the goals of the educational systems must be synchronized with the demands of the 21st century economies and societies.

The educational systems change the people and their societies and vice versa, the societies always transform and with themselves, they transform the inner dynamics of the country they belong to. Generally speaking, using ICTs is only a way of supporting the content of the curriculum. Teaching professionals must discriminate between innovation and using technology in education, both of which have attributions to different concepts. In conclusion, it can be said that using technology in education can be a part of using innovative practices and innovation in education. Innovation itself fits better to the practices where curriculum-related levels of instruction are enhanced through technology or technologically enhanced materials, techniques and equipment. In other words, technology facilitates the conveying of the content to the students.

REASON

I chose this article because there are still many people or educators who don't care about the development of the education system in this country. They are still not aware that the education system in this country is still poor. That is why if we want a good education system, then we need to look for new innovations so that our education system is better than before.

IDEAS AND INSPIRATION

The role of government in developing educational innovation is very important. Not only that, technology and students have played a big role in achieving new educational innovations. Therefore, in my opinion, the government should put limits on the use of technology for underage students. Because the problem that occurs in Indonesia today is the excessive use of gadgets for underage students. Indeed, problems like this the role of parents are the main factor. But the role of the government should be much more important because they have more power to control this Indonesian system. If we want to create new innovations, the characteristics of students must be improved first.