Innovation
Innovation is a concept that is in vogue. The word is often used as synonymous with “newness” and there is an insidious tendency to consider anything that is new as necessarily good. However, change is meaningless (and directionless) without a notion of choice, of goals and of values.

One of the main driving forces behind the current quest for innovation is product-based, particularly in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT). The integration of fast-changing ICT into education, for example, is both seen as a means of provoking change and a tool to assist that change. However, the word innovation, as it is used here, is about changing ways of doing things and not about creating new products.

Much valuable change and improvement springs from things learnt from and with our peers. Such learning is a natural part of the way we live in society and does not depend on technology. As mentioned above, technology is seen as a driver of innovation. To what extent can innovation be extended and accelerated by encouraging peer learning and the use of information and communication technologies?

Practice
Practice is the organised way in which an individual or a group carries out a particular activity. Practice is not generally a one-off thing. That activity probably happened more than once before in a similar way and is likely to happen again, more or less in the same way.

Practice is not a mass phenomenon. It is largely composed of tacit knowledge rooted in the experience of individuals or small groups and is heavily dependant on the context.
Some practice relies on formalised ways of doing things held in such repositories as cookbooks, handbooks, rulebooks and guides, but strict adherence to that “formality” has its limits as people invariably adjust those ways of doing things to local circumstances and personal experience. Policy, as a formalised statement about practice, is also interpreted and adapted by practice.

No amount of writing down can capture the full richness of practice with all the nuances of how and why and where and when we do things as we do them. Even if we were so skilled in writing that we could capture all those nuances, who would have the time and the will to read it? Luckily, the use of the practice of one person to inspire the practice of another doesn’t necessarily need “all” the details. Writing down practice also brings with it a loss of the vitality and flexibility that animates the non-formal knowledge of practice, based as it is in personal experience. We might go so far as to say practice is “incarnate” in that it is anchored in people. Formalising it, leads to progressive disincarnation. There is a delicate balance at work here. Practice needs a degree of formalisation for it to be shared with others, but the more that particular knowledge is formalised, the more general it becomes and the less value and vitality it has as experience and practice. This is why portraits and story-telling are promising ways of conveying practice.

Practice is deemed “good” if it serves as an example to others, helping them improve ways of working, making those ways more appropriate or more efficient or more satisfying. “Good practice” is a convenient concept that sounds convincing in a policy statement, but on closer examination, wide-scale sharing of “good practice” is not such an easy policy to implement. How do you deal, for example, with the implied concept of “value”? Why is practice “good”? What are the criteria? What is good for one person in one context may not be good elsewhere for someone else. To what extent are teachers going to accept their practice being classified as “good” or not so good, especially in a profession that has some difficulties with judgement and evaluation?

Practice tends to be resistant to change and the “natural” spread of practice amongst peers is fairly slow. In a society that puts a premium on innovation, policy-makers turn to networking, peer-exchange and communities of practice aided by new technologies in the belief that they will accelerate the change of practice.

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