When life doesn't give you lemons - some thoughts on pedagogical innovation under constraint

Pedagogical ideas, scholarship and interventions should aim to make a difference to teaching practise and learning outcomes first and foremost. Everything else is box ticking and ego. Very often the most valuable and meaningful innovations or tweaks come from obstacles and frustration with what we face in our daily teaching lives. This blog post was prompted by the below article and is largely a response and reflection on some of the ideas therein.

Thirkell, E. (2026). Frugal pedagogical innovation: reframing creativity in higher education teaching. Teaching in Higher Education, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2026.2630374

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13562517.2026.2630374#d1e717

This paper discusses pertinent issues that I can relate to and offers insights from three types of actors in HE on innovation. It focuses on the quiet, unrecognised innovation that happens in every classroom but remains hidden apart from staff room converstions and sharing of ideas. It also touches upon the daily small innovations we make out of constraint - the latter functioning as a springboard for creativity.

The paper proposes a framework for pedagogical innovation depite obsatcles of various nature. It respresents the interpay between institutonal and education environement on the one hand and and educators' values, motivation, expertise and relatedness to others, on the other. It argues that innovation has traditionally been linked to tech innovation and performance metrics in HE. The proposed framework accounts for pedagogical decisions based on the educator's intrinsic needs as well as collegial sharing of ideas. The latter is emphasised by accounts of academic reposndents as a prerequisite for successful authentic innovation. I would argue that if your innovations and tweaks do make a difference, it is not necessary to look at others or seek support - it is personal and idiosynratic. I have come to this conclusion as a result of workplace isolation and lack of support for my ideas (not necessarily intentional or deliberate). I have now become a self-sufficient innovator in my classroom and I believe every eductor is to an extent. I have my own silo containing my personna, my expertise, my experience, my values, my students and their needs, and the resources at my disposal (curriculum, materials, logistics). I very often find myself not agreeing with the way materials are done or organised so I often tweak and re-order things to better suit my students' needs and ensure successful completion of ILO. The greatest geniuses and innovators were not recognised during their time, but they certainly did not share or seek support from their peers. If you seek support, you admit to being insecure and helpless. If you don't, this points ot arrogance and perhaps ignorance. However, a true innovator is one that does their own research and does not rely on others for support and inspiration. This is a person with a vision. Of course, I can't deny that inspiration can come from others and their ideas/ work as i the case with this blogpost.

Looking at the wider picture of HE competitiveness and strife for recognition, remaining authentic in your practice gives you the freedom to be true to your values, experiment and truly make a difference to the learners in your classroom.

At the end of the day, leaving a trace is what matters in my opinion. Not necessarily putting your signature to it. That's ego and pride. But then that is what academia thrives on...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Back to human - resisting the devil's tool

Image
    In the Biblical story of Job, the devil challenged God that the righteous man Job was only a faithful believer due to God blessing him with wealth, family and good health, and if he were to be stripped of all this, he'd curse God. The devil challeneged God to take all wealth away and reduce Job to a wretched human being to prove his point. God then gave permision to the devil to tempt Job whilst taking away all he had. Job did not succumb and endured the test. This shows that God is almighty and it is only through His permission and will that the devil tempts us but it is through our free will that we choose how to act. Is AI God's permission to the devil to test man? Man seems to fail abysmally. Those who are able to see beyond the flashy exterior of technological innovation and progress, might be already retreating to calmer, more human-ridden, spaces. While Internet democratized access to and sharing of ideas and content, AI seems to be pushing people away t...
Read more

Proposed formative assessment tasks for Academic Writing and Research Skills modules

A fundamental principle of assessment is validity - we should be testing whatever we taught. When it comes to research skills and academic writing modules, we are teaching students to be able to independently research a topic via a set of ordered steps in a process. I personally am in faviour of a very hadns-on, demo-style of teaching, especially in the initial stages of the research process. When I teach finding and evaluating sources, for example, I ask students to follow my steps on their devices and do exactly as I do: I come up with example key words related to a general topic of students' discipline area and perform a search on the university's library website or Google scholar. I then look at titles and if suitable read the asbtracts to decide on a source all the while thinking aloud as if this is my topic and I am the researcher. I show the students my thinking process behind discarding or choosing an article. I read the abstract and then summarise the main findings in ...
Read more

Teaching to impress or teaching to comply - some thoughts on teacher observations from a teacher's perspective

Image
Formal teacher observations are an obligatory part of every teacher's journey but they can be rather stressful in most cases. They are institutional box-ticking exercises in most cases advertised as develpmental or opportunities for CPD. While they might be such for some (or in some contexts), for others they are an unnecessary and quite inauthentic experience bringing very little if anything by way of benefit to the tutor (not to mention it can be uncomfortable for the students as well). Some ways in which they are unnatural: ● they are disruptive as they impose additional burden on the teacher to prepare and perform for a higher level audience - it creates tension and stress ● they are inauthentic because they might urge the teacher to perform by the expected rules to show they have learnt them rather than go with the flow of their class and lesson ● they might leave the teacher anxious and feeling they are deficient as a teacher and professional because things didn't go as ...
Read more