DEFINING EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION
This article is based on different language teaching innovations and why some ideas spread while others do not.
First, there are some goals to understand why sociocultural patterns affect the implementation of innovations. Educational language teaching professionals must have as part of their intellectual preparation, the educational change. Second, curriculum development and teacher development are inseparable issues.
What the idea projects, is that cultural, economic, political and some other factor mediate the possibility of change and that exists some limitations. All innovation is risky and fraught with difficulty. This is relevant because many teachers and principals must reinvent their classes. A critical understanding of important issues is reach just by mixing the practice and theory of innovations. Is important to understand that this sociocultural factor can vary a project’s success depending on the place it occurs. Some examples of innovations:
· The notional –functional syllabus= seeks the needs of adult learners as being quite different from those of secondary school students. They require foreign language instruction that is geared to specific professional and personal needs. It was innovative in two aspects:
o Based on learner communication oriented approach to language instruction.
o Was analytic rather than synthetic.
· The process syllabus= Promotes innovation through a problem-solving model change. In this syllabus, content, materials, methodology and assessment are negotiated between instructor and the learner’s through the course. They can help to select course content and material on how they want to be taught and assed.
· Natural approach= created to meet needs of beginning and early- intermediate adult learners. Monitor hypothesis is conformed by 5 hypothesis:
o Can be used just for monitor or edit output.
o Learners acquire syntax and vocabulary by guessing and inferring the meaning of linguistic information.
o There’s a natural and predictable order of development in which learners acquire the grammatical structures of the target language.
o Effective factor such as, self-esteem, anxiety and social and psychological
o Distance can impede learner’s progress in the target language.
o Promotes communication in the target language rather than focus on its structure. Also, teachers should allow linguistic competence to emerge over time and error correction should focus on meaning, not grammatical form.
· Procedural syllabus= was initiated because of dissatisfaction with the grammar translation method. Second, it develops a meaning-focused methodology in which students learn language by communicating. The idea of using games to promote communicative language use predates the the beginning of the project.
· Task based language teaching= focuses on analytic activities and material. Contributes to work in different groups based on top-down activities.
· Context based approach= means that language learning is contextualized and purposeful.
· Produces declarative and procedural. So, students will gain procedural knowledge and declarative knowledge. Innovations which focus in the content are very important because with this activity teachers can attract and transform classes into interactive and effective songs.
Implications for educational change
Curricular innovation is complex. Is an activity affected by ethical and systemic constraints like that one must learn by doing the thing
A diffusionist perspective on curricular innovation involves:
Explaining differences in the rates of adoption by users in terms of potential adopters’ and social characteristics, variables and attributes of innovation.
Understanding the personal and social consequences of innovations and analyzing how change may be designed, implemented and maintained.
Characteristics of a renewed and innovative pedagogical practice.
It should not be routinize a conscious act and enable a good atmosphere in the classroom, participation, permanent interactions between teacher and students.
A place where a holistic view of knowledge is stimulated.
Where students’ interest in learning is awakened.
