Innovative Curricular Change and Contextual Factors

Abstract

Within the last decade, mainly due to the technological advancements, educational institutions have witnessed a great deal of change. In a constantly evolving environment, all stakeholders have felt a kind of urge to invest in new technologies to provide a better learning/teaching environment for their prospective students and therefore innovation and innovative curricular change has become a fundamental issue in educational institutions. However, while some innovations flourish in some institutions, they simply turn out to be epic fail in some others. This paper argues on the importance of acknowledging the fact that innovative change - especially when it involves technology - is shaped and influenced by contextual factors such as leadership, teachers’ attitudes, institutional policies and context specific norms and values. The current paper firstly aims at focusing on “change” phenomenon and its friction generating nature, and then proposes – and – argues on the relevance of a certain model for the sustainability of classroom innovation.