Whether coming from a place of positive future building or a grim reality, education research and development is increasingly elevated as a missing piece of the puzzle to create the solutions students want, need, and deserve. Research and development (R&D) enables education entrepreneurs to develop innovative solutions so that positive, equity-driven change can be achieved for students at scale. As discussed in the Alliance for Learning Innovation’s inclusive R&D brief, to realize the potential of education R&D and unleash an era of creativity, adaptability, inquiry, and collaborative design, we must make it accessible to all.
At Imagine Network, we prepare school system leaders to innovate for equity, with rigor, at scale. Our community of leaders builds the skills and mindsets needed to create a future-ready learning environment for students in collaboration with others. We support educators and school system leaders working to innovate for equity inside the system. This includes innovative schools and school systems as well as visionary parent leaders across the country. We get to see firsthand how education innovation is helping to advance outcomes for students, as well as the gaps and missed opportunities to address as we seek to unlock a brighter future for all students.
The Current State of Education Innovation
Traditional approaches to education, characterized by rigidity and resistance to change, are increasingly out of step with 21st-century demands. Yet innovative practices are constrained by skill, will, and belief gaps. Those inside and outside of the system struggle to utilize inclusive R&D practices that center students, parents, educators, and the community as fellow solutions-finders.
District leaders, though keenly aware of the need for systemic innovation, often find themselves constrained by a lack of investment in, and the skills to, make innovation a daily practice. From district to classroom leadership, rigorous R&D skills need to be developed as well as the systems–like better data systems and testing practices–to execute the development of new solutions well. As one parent leader recently shared on an Imagine Network roundtable on centering parents in education innovation, “There's not a lack of innovative ideas, there's a lack of implementation.” Key to implementing better is understanding students and parents better and working together to develop and implement solutions.
Education entrepreneurs outside of the system often do not have the practitioner experience needed to understand how the system works and lack the relationships with the community they see as their “user” for their innovation. That lack of system understanding and root cause analysis means they are building without a real sense of the needs of students, families, and educators. Absent these important perspectives, they often develop novel ideas but lack the nuance and buy-in necessary for the successful adoption, implementation, and scaling of potential breakthrough ideas.
Lastly, school systems leaders and education entrepreneurs rarely develop and execute co-design efforts with students, families, and educators. Instead, the tendency is to bring mostly or fully “baked” solutions to the intended “users” with the intent to sell the concept and create buy-in. This lack of authentic collaboration leads to mistrust of new ideas from the community. And it leads to solutions that lack key perspectives to meaningfully meet the needs of those intended.
Inclusive R&D: Innovation for All
Inclusive R&D is key to unlocking transformative learning experiences for all students. This involves the demystification and democratization of the research and development process.
R&D must be demystified, and that begins with making it accessible. The language of innovation inadvertently leads to gatekeeping: students, families, the community, and teachers with new ideas may not realize that their creativity, agility, and problem-solving is innovation. Empowering students, families, educators, and the broader school community is critical to getting past the limitations of lower-level “engagement” activities and truly creating and implementing new ideas together. Education entrepreneurs and anyone else seeking to innovate should ask themselves the following questions to demystify their R&D practices:
What trainings, conversations, or other empowerment activities will close the belief gap, allowing proximate users and practitioners to see themselves as innovators?
How can a future-focused orientation create shared vision and beliefs to inspire and enable more proximate solution designers?
What will need to be invested to change mindsets about the capacity and value of parents, students, and practitioners so that the broader field of investors, developers, and researchers elevates and empowers an increasingly diverse entrepreneur field?
R&D must also be democratized, which requires true collaboration. In the last several decades of “education reform," ambitious leaders often focused on what should change without first understanding how to create new programs and models for and with those impacted by them. Flipping this orientation to develop new solutions with those most impacted requires new ways of resourcing and supporting a diverse range of education entrepreneurs. Education innovators should ask themselves the following questions to democratize their R&D practices:
What will resourcing and supporting a broader range of education innovators need to look like to create a path to launching and sustaining new solutions that are responsive to community needs?
How can we remove barriers to innovation and inclusive R&D to make it an accessible process for a broader range of emerging innovators?
Students, parents, community members, and educators are key to unlocking transformative learning experiences. Demystifying and democratizing education R&D–making it accessible and collaborative–will usher in a new era of innovation leaders focused on inclusive, equitable, learner-centered solutions.
Margo Roen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Imagine Network, a nonprofit that prepares school system leaders to innovate for equity, with rigor, at scale.