Individual Innovation Behavior and Workplace Characteristics: The Potential of Innovation Surveys in Education

Vol.25,No.3(2020)
Studia paedagogica

Abstract
Innovations created by teachers, teacher communities, and schools in their daily practices play a key role in improving the quality and effectiveness of education. As protocols, central regulations, and ready-made teaching materials do not provide solutions to all problems emerging in daily practice, it is necessary to invent new and original solutions to respond to the challenges teachers and schools encounter in their everyday work. As in other knowledge-based professions, creativity and innovativeness are necessary skills for teachers and teacher communities so that they can work effectively. In many countries, schools are encouraged to support innovative work behavior and are expected to manage change and innovation processes effectively. The increasing importance of innovations and innovation processes in education raises the question of how to measure innovation in this sector and how decision makers can use innovation data. This article presents some of the outcomes of an education sector innovation survey conducted in Hungary in 2018. It demonstrates the possibility to design data collection instruments that enable capturing school/department-level innovation processes. The article focuses on one specific problem area: the relationship between innovation activity/behavior and organizational (workplace) characteristics.

Keywords:
educational innovation; measuring innovation; education sector innovation survey; bottom-up innovation; teacher-led innovations; organizational studies in education
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