How Do Teacher Educators from the 'Startup Nation' View Pedagogical Innovation?

Abstract

A qualitative inductive analysis of 110 open-ended questionnaires was performed, as part of a research network aiming at investigating views of pedagogical innovation among teacher educators in seven Israeli colleges of education. Three results emerged: (i) Teacher educators mention technology when describing implementations of pedagogical innovation in their teaching; (ii) the stories that teacher educators associate with pedagogical innovation do not deal with the most up-to-date learning technologies; (iii) Teacher educators tend to use inclusive terms in their descriptions of pedagogical innovation. The discourse of teacher educators on the subject of innovation seems to differ from the discourse in other professional communities, such as the medical, agricultural, high-tech, and business communities. The importance of these findings is heightened in view of the expectation that those who are responsible for the training of the next generation of educators would design innovative approaches to meet the future needs of the education system.