editoridly /poking What's So Great about Innovation? Innovation. That's the great hope currently sweeping through the science education community. Innovation is expected to help alleviate some of our major manpower nroblems. There is a oerceotion that the human resourcesstudent3, teachers, professional scientists necessary to meet society's needs-are simply not available in the science education pipeline. Thus, innovation in techniques for attracting and retaining more and better students in science-oriented careers, and in the way we teach basic science courses such as general chemistry, is viewed as a means to reverse the tide of students fleeing from science. Assuming someone figures out how to do "it" better, that is., to -~- innovate. what then? Then the hard work starts. What does the observation that an innovation produces a better result in one environment mean to a second environment? "Better" is one of those slippery, anthropocentric words like "truth" or "beauty." In education, "better" is characterized by the environ&ent, by that collection of peoole that is charged with carryingout an educational task in a certain place 2 a certain timer "Better" also changes with time because the educational mission of an institution continuously changes. Thus, one of the basic problems associated with innovation is t o define "better" and then create a to another environment where "better" transfer function ~~-~~~ may he interpreted differently. Indeed, i t has been successfully argued that the evaluation of an innovation needs to he an integral part of the development of the innovation so that "better" can be more precisely defined. However, this still leaves the potential recipient of the innovation t o struggle with its definition of "better" so that the two environments can he mapped onto each other in order to describe a transfer function to move the innovation from one institution to the other successfully. If we can manage to d e f i e a transfer function under these conditions there is still a psychological barrier often referred to as the "n i h" (not invented here) syndrome. This is often the key element in the harrier t o the transfer of innovation. An obvious way t o decrease the effect of t h e n i h syndrome is to co-opt significant numbers of people who should be ~
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involved in the transfer function. Make the innovation a part of them or have them involved in its developmenr. In other words, try to broaden the base of involvement in the innovation. R e c o d t i o n that the transfer function must involve both the innoovation itself and its transfer as legitimate parts of our educational svstem is essential: this has not usuallv been the case. 1ndeed;innovators currently often work inseclusion, with little or no interaction with the outside world. I t can be argued that this condition obtains because there are few outlets available for them t o inform their colleagues of innovative ideas. Methods for informing people about innovation are not as obvious as are those for announcing the details of changes in their discipline. Perhaps that is the nature of innovation. Nevertheless, the "system" must somehow accommodate to the need to communicate the development, indeed the existence, of innovation. Such accommodation is vital for the growth of the educational process in science. Innovation often transcends individual sciences, and, perhaps, that is why discipline-oriented information systems have not accommodated to it. Innovation often does not "belong" to an individual discipline except in the sense that it mav have been first exoressed in that disci~line.Further, there-may not be generil agreement on the;mportance of innovative ideas; disagreements on the cutting, edge of any subject are not uncommon in the disciplines. For example, discipline-focused innovation could involve information delivery within that discipline, a contribution some might consider of marginal importance while others see i t as an important communication hreakthroueh. Innovation. Who needs it? W: all need i t a t this moment in time. But we also need to give more serious thought to the nature of the transfer function so that successful innovation in one environment can he mapped onto a new and different environment and critically evaluated. The transfer of innovation is far too important to leave to the orocess of trial and error or chance. ~~~
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JJL
Volume 67 Number 6 June 1990
440
