related paper - Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

Mainstreaming the Practices of Innovative Teachers
Managing Decentralized Professional Development in Public Schooling
Vijaya Sherry Chand, Indian Institute of Management, India
Abstract: The formal state-run (public) schooling system in developing countries depends on a centrally-driven approach
to the professional development of its teacher workforce. The culture which underpins this approach is defined by hierarchy,
centralized control of training delivery, an ethos which facilitates a downward ‘cascading’ transmission of expertise by
knowledgeable authorities, and an assumed uniformity of training needs. This culture hinders the abstraction and processing
of relevant and effective practices from the grassroots, resulting in the system’s inability to learn from the strengths within.
An alternative culture that values peer-learning, sharing of experiences, validation of outstanding practices and development
of learning material for use by decentralized professional forums will promote key principles like self-learning, applying
external practices to one’s own problems and monitoring self-development. This paper has outlined an “educational innovation
bank” (EI Bank) initiative, drawing on processual theories of innovation that identify specific types of networks for
the three “episodes” of innovation: design and development, diffusion and implementation, and the related knowledge
transformation that is called for. The establishment of the EI Bank combines the social construction of knowledge by decentralized
networks with knowledge objectification in the diffusion episode, through a process of screening and validating innovations
and converting them into user-friendly products like case studies, a curriculum module and an open-access,
searchable database of teachers’ practices. The use of the EI Bank calls for a return to local user-networks to adapt the
objectified ideas in new contexts. Such an alternative approach demands that educational administrators perform three
tasks—develop a learner-focused perspective, convert validated local knowledge into ‘products’ through appropriate networks,
and undertake “policy entrepreneurship”—if they are to develop a culture of decentralized professional development.
Keywords: Culture of Decentralization, Professional Development, Educational Innovations
THE FORMAL STATE-RUN (public)
schooling system in developing countries
depends on a centrally-driven approach to
the professional development of its teacher
workforce. The culture which underpins this approach
is defined by hierarchy, centralized control
of training delivery, an ethos which facilitates a
downward ‘cascading’ transmission of expertise by
knowledgeable authorities, and an assumed uniformity
of training needs. This culture hinders the abstraction
and processing of relevant and effective practices
from the grassroots, resulting in the system’s inability
to learn from the strengths within. An alternative
culture that values peer-learning, sharing of experiences,
validation of outstanding practices and development
of learning material for use by decentralized
professional forums will promote key principles like
self-learning, applying external practices to one’s
own problems and monitoring self-development.
This paper has outlined an “educational innovation
bank” (EI Bank) initiative, drawing on processual
theories of innovation that identify specific types of
networks for the three “episodes” of innovation:
design and development, diffusion and implementation,
and the related knowledge transformation that
is called for. The establishment of the EI Bank
combines the social construction of knowledge by
decentralized networks with knowledge objectification
in the diffusion episode, through a process of
screening and validating innovations and converting
them into user-friendly products like case studies, a
curriculum module and an open-access, searchable
database of teachers’ practices. The use of the EI
Bank calls for a return to local user-networks to adapt
the objectified ideas in new contexts. Such an alternative
approach demands that educational administrators
perform three tasks—develop a learner-focused
perspective, convert validated local knowledge into
‘products’ through appropriate networks, and undertake
“policy entrepreneurship”—if they are to develop
a culture of decentralized professional development.
The context for this paper is the professional development
of teachers working in large formal staterun
(public) schooling systems in developing countries
like India. The approach to in-service teacher
development in such systems has usually relied on
top-down hierarchical delivery of training inputs in
a ‘cascade’ mode. Some key assumptions made by
such an approach are an assumed uniformity of
training needs and a ‘deficit’ reduction model of development
which does not recognize the knowledge
and practices of the teachers themselves. The cascade
model—in spite of its limitations (Shaeffer 1993),
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE, CULTURE AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT, VOLUME 6, NUMBER 5, 2006
http://www.Management-Journal.com, ISSN 1447-9524
© Common Ground, Vijaya Sherry Chand, All Rights Reserved, Permissions: cg-support@commongroundpublishing.com