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INNOVATION CULTURE AS A FACTOR IN TEACHER’S LIFELONG LEARNING
A. S. Mishchenko
The value of continuing professional development and lifelong learning acquires a new meaning for educators in today’s day and age. Teachers are under a lot of pressure to become more creative and more active as citizens, and that is what we are going to talk about in this report. The empirical base we drew on were the teacher surveys we conducted in some of the leading vocational schools and colleges in St. Petersburg between 1998 and 2009. We polled over 300 teachers and internship instructors.
During phase one of our research, we set out to define and “operationalize" teachers’ lifelong professional development and innovation culture in terms of categories. We assumed that the “innovation culture” of a pedagogue is the definitive indicator of his/her inclusion in the system of continuing professional development and learning (which does not preclude the reverse but, in fact, implies it). The innovation culture of a teacher is an integral component of his/her professional work. In our view, the term “innovation culture of a teacher” expresses more than merely a teacher’s readiness to teach and educate young people professionally and socially; it is a way to see how well the teacher is prepared for the productive, creative development of new teaching ideas and his own personal development. As a personal “system” feature, the innovation culture of a pedagogue is a meaningful expression of his general education level, professional potential and, ultimately, his real capability to adequately (in terms of what society dictates) shape and creatively transform the teaching/learning process in his school or college. The strength of the concept of “teacher’s innovation culture” lies in its capacity to track material progress in teachers’ professional development and their commitment to lifelong learning. On an empirical level, the tracking mechanism consists of a series of indicators we used, namely: (а) whether the teacher is capable of creative work and has the requisite skills; (b) whether he sets creative targets in its work; (c) his creative outlook on life, commitment to nurturing or improving his own creative capacity; (d) his commitment to developing his esthetic taste, appreciation of art, etc.
When we analyzed the lifelong professional development of a teacher (in this report, the concept is synonymous with continuing professional education/learning of both teachers and internship instructors), we assumed it
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to be a multidimensional concept. Continuing professional development and learning enables teachers to fulfill many different personal, professional and citizenship aspirations. On an empirical level, we defined the multidimensional nature of lifelong learning in terms of three sets of indicators: (а) indicators of teachers’ commitment to “horizontal” professional development; (b) indicators of teachers “mobility” to move across the different social strata; and (c) indicators reflecting whether a teacher’s system of values recognizes the need for lifelong professional development and learning (see Figure below).
Given the multidimensional nature of teachers’ lifelong professional development/lifelong learning, we assumed that, (1) socioeconomic and educational factors determine teachers’ commitment to lifelong learning in a structurally “heterogeneous” way; (2) to what degree teachers will be able to fulfill their thirst for lifelong professional development and learning, has little to do with socioeconomics and much more, with the educational environment of their institution and the personal qualities of the teachers and internship instructors themselves. This theory was bolstered by the following conceptual points of our research:
first of all, we based our assumptions on the fact that socioeconomics and educational environment factors intersect organically in the work of teachers in vocational schools and colleges; therefore, the impact of the socioeconomic factors upon teachers and instructors always passes through the medium of their institution’s educational environment, which transforms that impact in some ways;
second of all, we assumed that the complex socioeconomic and political changes underway n Russia always undergo a refraction through the individual’s personality as some kind of a “prism” within which the movement occurs of the sum total of the material, socioeconomic and spiritual values that form the content of the life of individuals (in this case, of vocational school and college teachers); this, in turn, conditions the propagation of teachers’ “innovation culture” and how it motivates their inclusion in the lifelong professional development and learning process.
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Relationship of innovative potential of teachers of colleges with their continuing professional education
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During phase two of our research, we built a socio-pedagogical model with a system of factors that determine the value of lifelong professional development and learning in the eyes of vocational school and college teachers. The model incorporated over 70 individual factors (see classification below): (а) the factors that determine the role of teachers within the system of the social institutions of a modern civil society (or factors that describe their sentiment about the changing production modes and dominant property ownership formats; their position in the social stratification of a modern civil society, in the political system of the state, etc.); (b) factors of the teaching/learning environment (indicators of the cultural potential of individual schools and colleges, characteristics of the educational environment and internship environment, interpersonal ethics within the teaching community, the socio-cultural potential of teachers’ leisure activities, and so on); (c) personal characteristics of teachers (percentage of creative thinkers, teachers’ propensity to social mobility, their personal ideals, where they stand on the enormous wealth of some and poverty of others, gender differences, etc.).
During phase three of our research, we performed an empirical analysis of the links between certain aspects of the innovation culture of teachers, and the impact of the core factor clusters upon the progress of their lifelong professional development and learning. When we looked at the totality of the features that describe the innovation culture of vocational school teachers, we established that what lies at its core is the teachers’ professional aspiration "to teach harmonious classes that keep the students interested.” With both teachers and internship instructors, this teaching aspiration was adjoined by the following skills and ambitions: (a) ability to "think in paradoxes”, (b) no fear of "new things”, (c) commitment to personal growth, (d) esthetic taste and appreciation of art. The following aspects of teachers’ innovation culture were defined as secondary (peripheral but significant): desire to be "part of the modern market economy” and desire to "impart leadership qualities to students.” A more in-depth review of the core groups of factors shaping, one way or another, teachers’ lifelong professional development and learning vindicated our initial assumptions. This is what we found out from our factor analysis of our survey findings. The factors we placed in the first cluster defined 6.5 % of the progress of teachers’ lifelong professional development and learning. The factors in the second group defined 53.3 %. The factors in group three (which include, at the core, the innovation culture of teachers) defined the remaining 40.2 % of the entire determinism to learn and improve.
Further analysis of our empirical data lead us to the following tentative conclusions. To explain how the innovation culture of teachers dictates the pace
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of their lifelong professional development and learning, the place to start is to define what "personal fulfillment” means to them in this day and age. Part of this is how teachers feel about their personal and professional prospects, their job security, the degree of fulfillment of their "human potential.” Our analysis manifested that all these constants fit in seamlessly with the logical sequence that causes teachers’ innovation culture to "flourish” along the lines of three meaningful groups of relations and interactions between teachers, and between teachers and students. Those interactions enabled us to register the levels of teachers’ innovation culture within their professional environment as a system of special groups of relations between all the parties to the teaching and learning process. Those are role-type relations and interactions, subject-object relations and interactions and interpersonal relations and interactions. It’s a complex system. For example, a "personal” focus in teaching manifests the following levels of teachers’ innovation culture as a premise of their lifelong professional development: "project,” "logical” and "production process.” At the top level of innovation culture driven by "personal” motivations, the teacher acquires the full power to program his professional work and lifelong learning as he emerges as a player in a league of his own within the educational process and his personal qualities and values put him in a position of personal responsibility for all. A teacher in this position of formidable value and authority is not only able to spearhead innovation in shaping the culture of the educational process in his institution; he is also capable of taking an innovative view on (the content and meaning of) his own lifelong professional development and learning.
Therefore, the essential link between the innovation culture of a teacher and his lifelong professional development and learning lies in the realm of his fulfillment as a Person, a Professional and a Citizen. The key point of focus here is whether - and how well - teachers can develop certain up-to-date social and cultural (esthetic and artistic) aspects of their professional training. We have found that a high intensity of teachers’ lifelong professional development and learning is first and foremost (if we speak of their innovation culture components only) related to how advanced they are in terms of esthetic and artistic education (r = 0,224). The second runner-up is the teacher’s creative outlook on life (r = 0,194). The third most important factor is whether the teacher is committed to fostering leadership qualities in his students (r = 0,146). Our research also showed that, as a driver of teachers’ lifelong professional development and learning, their innovation culture reaches its maximum level only when teachers and instructors are able to fulfill in their practice and constantly expand and reproduce the "social” trajectory in the entire teaching/learning process of their institution. On an empirical level, this is manifested in the teacher’s professionalism, loyalty to his trade, respectful treatment of students, his kindness, integrity, original personality and openness to students.
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