Reaction Paper Concerning Educational Innovation and its Importance in the Teaching-Learning Process

    Education should be a part of everyone’s life. A high-quality education offers opportunities for all and sundry. Therefore, education is the most outstanding resource all citizens should have in order to improve and strengthen their lives and humanity as a whole. I do deem that the overall purpose of education is to prepare…


 

 

Education should be a part of everyone’s life. A high-quality education offers opportunities for all and sundry. Therefore, education is the most outstanding resource all citizens should have in order to improve and strengthen their lives and humanity as a whole. I do deem that the overall purpose of education is to prepare people for both present and future generations. The world is becoming more technologically advanced each day. Notwithstanding, education is a paramount tool to understand these new conceptions completely. Thus, education is the key to a successful and fulfilling life. Accordingly, educational systems play a preeminent role all over the world. Educational systems define society and the way citizens perceive reality. Nevertheless, educational systems should provide pupils with opportunities to ascertain a sturdy sense of confidence and develop a strong sense of creativity, high self-esteem, and a life-long respect for learning.

An educator is a professional who helps students learn and progress along their way through life. Educators practice their profession eagerly to be able to give a first-rate education to students. As a matter of fact, educational systems doubtless have a preeminent role in the development of society, but educators and students have to deal with a lot of problems and there are urgent changes to be made on the way in order to strengthen the teaching-learning process. Therefore, educators like us have to deal with many vital functions within the learning process. Assuming that the teaching-learning process is a social task for both present and future times, all of us should not delay our efforts to improve this process. It seems to me that the ultimate purpose of the diverse components of our educational policies is focused on the intellectual development of pupils. Consequently, teachers often develop in students academic expectations based on characteristics that are unrelated to academic progress. These expectations can affect the way educators present themselves toward students, making an alteration in the way our students learn, and thus causing an overall degeneration in the potential growth of students.

Moreover, innovation is one of those weighty words that are eagerly bandied around in modern society. The importance of innovation can partly be seen in the fact that educational policies are expected to be innovative rather than simply appropriate. Yet for all its weight, there remain many questions about its substance. What exactly is innovation? Is it the same everywhere? How does it work? You can certainly train people to carry out tasks in a better way, acquire new techniques and skills and to accumulate new knowledge therefore, innovation is an important key to success in today’s rapidly changing world that can be attributed by creativity. Creative or innovative thinking is the kind of thinking that leads to new insights, novel approaches, fresh perspectives, and whole new ways of understanding and conceiving of things. The products of creative thought include some obvious things like music, poetry, dance, dramatic literature, inventions, and technical innovations. But there are some not so obvious examples as well, such as ways of putting a question that expand the horizons of possible solutions, or ways of conceiving of relationships that challenge presuppositions and lead one to see the world in imaginative and different ways. So, process improvement, problem solving, recruiting, retaining and motivating pupils and students, decision making, dealing with limited resources, and rapidly changing technology are all examples of educational realities that require creative and innovative solutions. Hence, somewhere along the line, many teachers have forgotten how to use their imagination to think and solve problems out of the box. Accordingly, teachers should make use of innovation which is an effective resource that resides in all people and within all organizations. Thus, some researchers have demonstrated that creativity can be nurtured and enhanced through the use of deliberate tools, techniques and strategies. 
         The great need for educational innovation goes beyond what programs alone can provide. Notwithstanding, I do reckon there is no better economic policy than one that produces more professionals. That’s why reforming education is the responsibility of every citizen, every parent, every teacher, every business leader, every public official, and every student. Likewise, educational innovation is needed for teaching and learning process is not boring. Innovation starts with education can change the pattern of learning. Innovation is a paramount tool which enables students to learn in a better way and efficiently. 

Innovation is not a new phenomenon. People know about how to innovate but to be able to do it meaningfully for society is a different story. Rate of change in our society, business products, services, and education has created a need for a lot more innovation. Basically innovation is feeding more innovation. It is like an innovation explosion. However, education has not figured out how to exploit innovation systemically. In order to institutionalize innovation, people must be able to learn, and teach. The challenge I see that there is no formal way of teaching innovation. 
It has always been difficult to distinguish between tradition and innovation in education, not least because of the absence of clear-cut criteria. Definitions of teaching methods are also loose rather than binding. Nevertheless a trend towards active participation by students is noticeable and very often taken as marking “progressive” teaching. Starting from the basic relationship of method and objective, an attempt is made to further relate cognitive activity of students to specific levels of achievement which are considered as teaching objectives. It is suggested, too, that a loose notion of education can for practical purposes be replaced by a more reliable notion of teaching text whether presented orally or given in written form. Then the problem of innovation in education can be stated a bit more precisely as that of creating a good teaching text. 

In days gone by, before the advent of computers and other forms of technology, classrooms were all about chalkboards and chalk. If the teacher wanted to try and engage their pupils they had only very limited resources and their own confidence and knowledge to do it with. Therefore, today things are very different. Innovation is a dynamic and forward thinking word, but it is necessary to introduce this word into every classroom if we want to give our children the best education possible. Thus, innovation is all about ideas. Ideas must still come from the teachers themselves if we are to create truly engaging lessons that will work on many levels. There is no doubt that by using multimedia and modern technology to help get those messages across, we can achieve better results than we would otherwise. Furthermore, innovation can also help to wipe out the problems experienced by less confident pupils. For instance, not everyone has the confidence to speak up in class for fear of having the wrong answer. With individual handsets that enable children to enter their answer without other pupils knowing what they have put, teachers can get a much better idea of who needs additional help. This is the real power in classroom innovation, the power to gain more knowledge from the pupils as well as leading them to gain more knowledge themselves.

The programs to be developed by teachers are too large and not necessarily respond to what pupils want or need to learn. As a result, both teachers and students work in a heavy atmosphere which is not suitable for either teaching or learning. Accordingly, educators have noticed that most of students “do not learn”. For instance, pupils can memorize or repeat some information; however they will not be able to remember it for a long period. For that reason, educators must apply innovative methods to achieve a proper acquisition of knowledge in each student. They must not continue teaching by means of strict and routine pedagogical practice. Therefore, we as educators are obliged to begin a continuous educational process by taking into consideration new techniques and efficient didactic methods. 

By: JULIE ANN R. PURA | T-II | Capunitan Elementary School