Conceptualizing and contextualizing innovation for educational change: Exploring the relationship between innovation, leadership, and capacity building

As the concept, idea, practice, and goal of ‘innovation’ has grown in dominance in the discourse around leadership and educational change, there remains a scope for exploration as to how innovation is conceptualized, theorized and supported in policy making and practice (Poirier, et al, 2017). Varied societal, systemic, and contextual conditions which influence the work of educators and leaders can come to frame how innovation is understood and manifested. Cultural values, systemic priorities, political norms, and competing demands can enable or inhibit the emergence of innovation in its varied forms (Lu & Campbell, 2020).

Deriving from an ICSEI Educational Leadership Network webinar, and subsequent research group, this session aims to explore how leaders, as sense-makers and influencers within their organizational contexts, are well placed to utilize contextual knowledge, negotiate political demands, and mobilize others in developing and sustaining collective forms of professional learning that can lead to innovation, and the improvement and change that can result (Murphy & Devine, 2023).

What remains, and will be explored through this innovate session, is the need for a critical examination of how innovation is understood and manifested across systems, how this relates to broader concerns of equity, excellence, and professional capacity building in the pursuit of improvement and change, and the lessons that can be derived from varied cultural and systemic contexts.

To facilitate this, the session will be framed around three key questions:

- How is innovation understood and manifested across contexts?

- Which, if any, underpinning concepts relating to innovation could transcend context and system?

- How might we understand the relationship(s) between innovation, leadership, and capacity building?

The session will begin with a brief provocation exploring innovation in the context of Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area drawing upon the work of Lu (2019). Participants will then be invited to collaboratively, in smaller groups, respond to the questions driving the session, and visually represent the common threads and themes for presentation back to the whole group. Following this, avenues for continued exploration of these ideas and themes will be shared; namely through a collaborative research group, Twitter Chats, and subsequent ICSEI Educational Leadership Network activity. Copyright © 2024 ICSEI.