Six Keys to “Teaching” for Innovation and Innovating to Learn

In my 15 years experience as a college educator and as the parent of three self-directed learners, I have found that “teaching” doesn’t cause a student to build much in the way of new synaptic pathways. The learning happens along with me or in spite of me (often more the latter than the former) but my teaching isn’t the key. “Facilitating learning” is a much better way to look at it.

This is one of the fundamental changes that needs to take place in education, today: changing “teach” to “learn” wherever it occurs. We need to understand that the power to gain knowledge belongs to the student. Unschooling expert, Sandra Dodd, has been writing and speaking on this topic for years; I highly recommend her post, “What Teaching Never Can Be.” You can be the best lecturer, teacher, or team leader on the planet. But if your students or your team don’t understand you, you’re not communicating. And if they’re not motivated, learning and innovation will not happen. (Not the kind you intended, anyway — they may learn a lot about how ineffectual you are as a leader.)

Most people think learning leads to innovation. I think it’s the reverse. Innovation can inspire learning no matter where or how or with whom it occurs: in the workplace or a school; while following a school-at-home curriculum, unschooling, or in a traditional classroom; regardless of the age or grade or experience level of your team. Even if you’re attempting to innovate and don’t actually create or change anything, it’s the attempt itself that is the crux. Learning brings about positive changes to individuals, groups, communities, businesses. Focus on innovation and let your learners lead the way.

Tony Wagner, author of Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World, has been studying this topic. The following points are based on Wagner’s AP Annual Conference Keynote, his piece, “What Does It Mean to Be a ‘Change Leader’ in Education?” and my own research and experience.

1. Innovation is a team sport. Solutions to big problems are too complex to innovate on one’s own. Learning Facilitators need to involve the whole community (others in your team, including administrators, if you’re in a school setting; parents; students; the community-at-large) by clearly explaining the need for change and what it is you want to accomplish in an emotionally compelling way. Build a team and, if you don’t know where to start, find an effective coach. It is okay to say that you don’t know! In fact, that may be the most motivating statement of all, for your learners. Sugata Mitra is an expert on this; by giving a group of schoolchildren a difficult computer program and telling them he had no idea how to run it, he allowed the children to be the experts. (What child doesn’t love knowing more than an adult?) Those children, and others like them in subsequent experiments, taught themselves and each other things no adult could ever have expected. Be an effective coach, yourself, by offering encouragement rather than expertise, asking questions rather than lecturing, and noting forward steps and failures you can all learn from. Collaboration, in turn, leads individuals to create great work that can be shared — and to learn as they do. (More on the solo part of the creative process in #5.)
2. Focus on problem-based learning. Human brains are built to solve problems. Bringing a new thing into the world, whether it be a work of art or a school play or a labor-saving device, requires problem-solving skills that lead to deep learning. Discover and share with students what will realistically be expected of them in the world. Share with them the kinds of skills they need (“Skills To Develop A Learning Mindset” is one place to start, but there are many lists). Anyone can remember critical information or look it up quickly with the right equipment. What is needed are people who can solve problems with that knowledge. In other words, what can you do with what you know?
3. Look at problems from many different perspectives. Diversity in nature is important because if any one species fails (dies in large quantities or goes extinct), the remaining life forms that depended on it can possibly survive by adapting to utilize other species. If the farmers throughout India grew only one kind of rice and that rice contracted a disease that spread to all of the farms, people would starve. If a company relies solely on a single mode of producing or marketing their product or a service, that company will likely fail before too long; technology changes, culture changes, and individuals are easily saturated by sameness. Studying problems from the perspective of multiple disciplines requires critical thinking and a whole lot of learning. One of the many reasons I loved teaching college Geography courses is that Geography is more of an approach than a body of knowledge. It is interested in interrelationships and interconnections — not where something is but why it’s there. When your team is working, focus on these kinds of interconnections, various perspectives on the same topic, or various ways of creating the same result. All voices deserve to be heard and accounted for. The final outcome may be unexpected. It may also be more productive.
4. Make mistakes. Learn from them. Carlos Gracie, founder of Brazilian jiu jitsu, once said, “There is no losing in jiu jitsu. You either win or you learn.” Taking risks means taking a chance you will fail. That your students will fail. That the entire project will fail. Innovation requires trying again. And again. And again. Failure that results from laziness gets you nowhere. It is in aiming high and missing, reflecting on what you’ve learned, then trying again a different way, that innovation and learning can happen. “Creation is not a moment of inspiration but a lifetime of endurance,” says Kevin Ashton, creator of The Internet of Things and author of the recent book, How to Fly A Horse.
5. Create. But understand that truly creative work happens alone. Active, hands-on, creative endeavors lend themselves more readily to innovation. As often as possible, get yourself, your learners, your whole team out of meetings, out of desks, out of your heads and into making things with your hands. Cartoon sketches, clay models, cardboard mock-ups, diagrams, stories, an attempt at a final product; make whatever your team members are motivated to make, however they express themselves best. This brings us to an important point: innovation may be a team sport, but creativity is a singular process. “A pencil is a one-person device,” says Ashton. We may work in groups but, ultimately, learning is a solitary activity. Each learner can only build new synaptic pathways — or reinforce old ones — in his or her own brain. It is a process that takes willful practice. Which points to the following:
6. Foster intrinsic motivation. New research is constantly uncovering clues to how our minds work and what motivates us. So how can you instill in people the drive to learn? One key is intrinsic motivation — a desire to do something that comes from inside oneself. External motivators such as rewards or punishments — a promotion or the threat of a poor grade, for example—may motivate, but not in an encouraging way. People motivated externally tend to suffer from a lack of initiative; remove the reward or punishment and leave them to their own devices and they no longer know what to do. These are the “tell me what to do” people, the ones who wait for you to hand them the instruction manual so they can build the construction set pirate ship exactly the way it looks on the front of the box. Without the manual they are lost. Rarely does inspiration strike them and there’s no incentive to try harder than the reward or punishment merits. Intrinsic motivation is harder to cultivate but well worth the time. Wagner suggests focusing on one’s Passion as a motivator. When we are doing something about which we are passionate, we want to learn everything we can. That passion can then lead us to find Purpose, which in turn can lead to innovation. Here’s an example: as a kid, you loved trains; as a young adult, you traveled on them whenever you could; you still love them, but concerns about the rise in the number of train crashes in your region have led people to stop riding the train and there’s a good chance the trains will be shut down. So you turn your Passion into Purpose: you study the problem, innovate a solution, present it to the company operating your local railway, and work for them for the next three years improving safety and saving lives. Spend some time sifting through the latest information on motivation — even a short search will turn up all kinds of new ideas. Keep in mind, too, not only do the individual needs and desires of each of your innovators play a part in the learning process, culture and community also have a role.

In order to affect change, you will have to take some risks, surf some big water. You might have to reinvent, re-engineer, or reimagine your job. Don’t be afraid to make changes, even in the middle of an assignment, if you find a better way to handle a situation or motivate people. The world around you is constantly changing. It is your job to model for your team how to ride the shifting waters and arrive on the beach in once piece, satisfied that you worked hard and learned much.

If your school, workplace, or community won’t support a big jump, start with a small hop — find a way to incorporate what you have to do into what you want to do. At my college, I had to find a way to assess my students and present them with a grade at the end of the semester. Tired of the top-down judgments on learning I had been taught to hand out, I took a chance and tried something new. I asked them to tell me what grade they felt they deserved and why. Surprisingly, there was only one student who overshot the mark by a wide margin. Most knew just where they stood and how hard they had (or hadn’t) worked; they were thoughtful and fair in their self-assessments. One especially self-aware student explained that, although he hadn’t done well on the exams, every question he’d gotten wrong had taught him something, and he was constantly sharing his new knowledge with the young kids at the after-school program where he worked. His mature, deeply-reflective, hand-written note to me is still pinned to my home office corkboard. It is a constant reminder that facilitating learning really can happen, and it is indeed possible to assess what’s going on.

But the learner and the innovator are the ones in charge, not the teacher or the team leader. That can be a humbling experience. Your innovators may not learn what you wanted them to, may not do what you had intended for them. Your role is to celebrate it all, even the unexpected and the seeming failures, because you never know where it all may lead.

In other words: give them a challenge and get out of the way.