Pedagogical innovations that have never won any innovation competition do not mean they are completely worthless in the eyes of educators. Sometimes the evaluators do not see the value of the innovation, and sometimes their evaluations depend on the scoring criteria for the competition. Remember, the criteria evaluated in the scoring forms are not necessarily aligned with what is considered 'valuable' in the eyes and minds of other educators.
Even if the innovation has never won, we might try to 'sell' the idea to other teachers through writing and physical or online workshops (note: WORKSHOPS, not LECTURES or TALKS). We can see if anyone signs up and tries to join the workshop.
My pedagogical innovation is somewhat niche - PROJECT-BASED LEARNING + CIVIC ENGAGEMENT + ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING. I have received comments that not many people might be interested in attending the workshop because most are more interested in ‘exam-oriented’ methods. That's the reality. Maybe my innovation does not align with what is considered more valuable in the current education system. FYI, the version of my innovation that includes all three elements I mentioned earlier was actually rejected twice for two different innovation conferences. But it’s okay. I just needed to improve it. So I did. But at the same time, I felt like I was just being 'self-indulgent'. Then I remembered a good friend who once said to me - 'if you yourself don’t believe in your ideas, then who else will?' (or something along those lines, I forgot haha).
But being the logical person that I am, I needed ‘evidence’ to back up this ‘belief’. So what I did was, I held an online workshop for my innovation. I did not expect more than 10 people to attend. For me, 10 is already a good number. But it wasn’t about the numbers.
I used the PRESENCE AND INTEREST OF ANYONE who attended the workshop to adapt my innovation as a measure of ‘evidence’ instead of HOW MANY WERE INTERESTED. There's a difference here. Forget numbers. Indeed, there WERE TEACHERS WHO WERE INTERESTED. So for me, that was already enough to count as ‘evidence’ to back up this belief. The most exciting part was that the teachers were very active in sharing their thoughts during the workshop. I love this kind of dynamic. Because it affirmed to me that there are other teachers with similar interests and visions that I have…even though it looks kind of ‘niche’.
So the main takeaway from this is…an innovation competition is just one of the platforms for us to validate the value of our innovations. But it should not be the only platform for us to do so. There are other platforms out there that we can explore. At the same time, we need to rethink how we see and measure ‘value’ in pedagogical innovations. The norm currently is by looking at ‘numbers’ - the number of people attending workshops and marking criteria.
Perhaps we need to rethink this.
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