Pedagogies and practices for developing innovation capability: Beyond the AITSL standards

This paper critiques the 2011 Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership Standards (AITSL) for its currency against the innovation agenda. With discourses around innovation taking centre stage in our national agendas on the economy, and hence education, there is a strong focus on developing curricula, programs and opportunities for teachers to advance in themselves, foster in others, and model innovation capability. Recent Federal Government reports recommend that innovation capability be central to all of our major policies and that understanding technologies and being creative should feature strongly in curriculum and teacher development. Innovation capability refers to the ability of individuals to think originally and critically, adapt to change, work cooperatively and find solutions to problems as they occur. To enact the innovation agenda, teachers will need to engage with, support and lead in the development of the new fluency largely related to technological understanding and creative application. Very little literature guides teachers in what this ‘fluency’ looks like in an educational setting. Technacy education offers a framework to guide this process for teachers just as frameworks for literacy and numeracy have in language and number development. The AITSL Standards offer very little direction for teacher education programs and professional development for what technological understanding and innovation capability looks like in their professional practice. This paper offers a critical analysis of the Standards with a focus on the discourses that are privileged and the gaps and silences that surround the pedagogies and practices that support innovation capability.