How do bottom-up innovations spread between schools and districts? An actor-container model of educational innovation diffusion

Abstract

AbstractThe present paper deals with a research methodology issue. After an introductory literature review, it presents a novel model developed to study the diffusion of educational innovations. This model does not focus on the time course, phases, or characteristics of diffusion, which can be described by various innovation indicators, but on persistent structural elements such as the actors, their relationships, and the territorial, organizational, or other entities that host the actors. The latter, which separate the actors from each other or even constitute a common space for them are called containers. The presented actor-container model (ACM) was developed to help interpret empirical data in the context of a larger research, named Innova project, dealing with the emergence, diffusion, and system-shaping impact of bottom-up innovations initiated by teachers or other local actors in the education sector. In this paper, we demonstrate the application of ACM by analyzing the responses of educational institutions (organizations) at different levels of public and higher education in Hungary, based on the 2018 online questionnaire survey database (N = 2042). The examples presented show that ACM provides a unique perspective for research on innovation diffusion by shedding new light on actors and containers, opening up new possibilities for data analysis and results interpretation. We believe that ACM can be applied not only in the context of educational innovations but also in other innovation fields.