Educational Innovation as Ideology

Introduction

This entry plays devil’s advocate to voice some of the reservations that arise whenever scholars in education present something new as a panacea. Excessive value is placed on innovations in educational processes and settings. Innovations, it is assumed, should be put into practice in a continual movement of ideas, methodological changes, new technologies, and transformations in approaches; accordingly, one must always innovate, outdo oneself. This obliges teachers and schools to outdo oneself, to transcend that which only the teacher’s laziness would otherwise keep static. Thus, teachers and schools alike feel obliged to push ahead without stopping to reflect on what has been achieved and stabilized; all justified by necessarily adapting to a society in constant change.

Innovation as the New Ideology

Everything done as “education” is loaded with ideology, i.e., every pedagogic discourse and every theory upholds a particular conception of the world, of humankind, and of...