Members of the Higher Education (HE) community have embodied the spirit of designers by identifying needs and creatively responding with speed, agility and ingenuity as a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While these rapid changes were required at the time of the pandemic, the lack of an innovation structure in HEIs (Higher Education…

Purpose: The challenges facing 21st-century society are becoming increasingly complex, requiring the development of new citizen competencies. This study aims to validate an educational model focused on developing complex thinking in higher education students. Current educational models lack future-ready competencies, necessitating the emergence of…

In England, the Studio Schools model, focused on developing employability skills in young people, represents a disruptive attempt at educational innovation. Through a documentary analysis of foundational documents, interviews with the model's architects and case studies of five Studio Schools, we map the tensions between theoretical…

The widespread adoption of school autonomy with accountability reforms in education has generated debate regarding the relationship between autonomy, innovation and accountability. While at the policy design level, these three elements are highly related, several authors highlight the contradictions among them. By analyzing key documents and…

This philosophical study aims to inform improvements to teacher professional development by introducing and integrating principles from the Theory of Margin. Specifically, a critique of existing professional development norms illuminates traditional offerings increase teacher load without consistent increases in teacher power, leading to the…

This research explores the use of human-centered design as a lens through which to view the work of leaders in highly innovative schools. I propose that human-centered design is a model for change leadership, customizable to the varying contexts in which a school may exist. As human-centered design has captured the imagination of innovators as…

Michael E. Raynor limits his commentary to Flavin's discussion of Wikipedia. Flavin argues that Wikipedia is a disruptive innovation, and has disrupted the hard-copy encyclopedia. Flavin sees Wikipedia in optimistic terms, as democratising education and 'reframing the means by which knowledge is produced, distributed and consumed.' He implies that…

Higher education institutions must prepare students for success in the dynamic knowledge economy by providing a high-quality educational experience. As the world and our understanding of learning processes continually evolve, educators face the challenge of developing innovative strategies to engage and motivate students in their own learning.…

Since the 1980s, the Maryland Collegiate Honors Council has offered an annual conference on a host campus in late February. In 2020, MCHC slipped in the conference just before the apocalyptic arrival of COVID-19 in March. Because this conference is hugely popular statewide, we decided to organize it virtually in 2021. Our topic--"In…

How can faculty development (FD) support responsive innovations? At one end of the spectrum are rich, time-intensive programs grounded in frameworks like the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, where instructors' innovations are part of larger projects in which they design and conduct comprehensive research studies in their courses. At the other…

Universities across the globe are transforming or upgrading their campus infrastructure to prepare students for the work in the 21st century. Such campus transformations can be important in various ways. For example, universities can introduce innovative learning spaces that support recruitment and enrollment policies on campus. Even though the…

On the surface, this trickle-down view of educational change--what T. Nichols calls "innovation-from-above"--makes sense. Teachers learn about new devices, apps, teaching techniques, and leadership strategies as they show up in articles, reports, and other professional resources, or after they have already been implemented elsewhere.…

This paper explores how a novel university governance model at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), largely learned from the West, has been implemented in the highly institutionalised and centralised Chinese higher education system. For this purpose, we first constructed an analytical framework, integrating the…

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused massive disruption to business as usual across all industries, including education, and there is a growing consensus that the higher education (HE) sector may never go back to 'business as usual'. While universities are now developing strategies for 2030, several management consultancies are projecting a very…

Our classrooms haven't kept pace with innovation. The Ford Model T represented breakthrough technology in its day--more than 100 years ago--but it wouldn't serve us well today. Likewise, our traditional classroom model from the same era doesn't work well for far too many students and teachers. In fact, as a result of this outdated model, it is…