Reforming Schools through Innovative Teaching

This executive summary describes a resource about innovative teaching that profiles and analyzes the work of eight educators working in secondary school communities in Australia. Each case study in the resource is intended as a stand-alone snapshot of good practice in which voices of students, colleagues, principals, and community members illuminate teachers' work from their perspectives. Those profiled are considered by the authors to be ordinary teachers doing extraordinary things, managing to sustain their level of innovativeness, and making innovative teaching look easy. According to the executive summary, the research reveals that the innovative educators exhibit a diverse range of strengths that reflect an enhanced level of teacher professionalism. The executive summary describes a concluding chapter in the resource that lists these strengths of the teachers: personal attributes (altruism, creativity, and passion); skills (applied learning, standard setting, and change management); knowledge (innovation, pedagogy, and professional development); values (total commitment to those they teach; willingness to share their knowledge, skills, and strategies with others; and an insatiable desire to improve their own practice and "reinvent" themselves in response to new demands, challenges, and opportunities) and strategies (creation of alliances, marshaling of resources, and identification of advocates). The executive summary lists work such as the following undertaken by the innovative educators: (1) initiating student-run businesses that provide community services and on-the-job training for students; (2) supporting students as they partner with local organizations to provide community development; (3) engaging retired community members as mentors for year 10 students to research career options; and (4) using computer-assisted language to help students design and operate a Japanese "virtual village." (Contains 19 references.) (YLB)