Innovation of didactic and learning strategies is one of the basic
demands in teacher training at all levels of education, as has been clearly
recognized by the European Union. In its communication of 13th
September 2007 entitled Putting knowledge into practice: A broad-based
innovation strategy for the EU, the European Commission stressed the
need for 'collective action to safeguard the European way of life that
combines economic prosperity with solidarity' and said it was
'convinced that innovation in a broad sense is one of the main answers
to citizens’ material concerns about their future'. The Commission
defines education as a precondition for creating a true European
innovation space. As a core policy it must promote talent and creativity
from an early stage.
The European Union Council of Education, Youth and Culture has
stressed in its 2008 Conclusions on promoting creativity and innovation
through education and training that creativity and the capacity to innovate
are crucial to a sustainable economic and social development of Europe,
and acknowledged that all levels of education and training can
contribute to creativity and innovation in a lifelong learning perspective.
The Council held that, starting at the level of individual schools,
education systems need to combine the development of specific
knowledge and skills with generic capacities linked to creativity, such as
curiosity, intuition, critical and lateral thinking, problem solving,
experimentation, risk taking and the ability to learn from failure, use of
the imagination and hypothetical reasoning, and a sense of
entrepreneurship. It stressed that teachers have a crucial role to play in
nurturing and supporting each child's creative potential, and can
contribute to this by exemplifying creativity in their own teaching; and
that teacher education institutions also have a key contribution to make
in providing teaching staff with the knowledge and competences
required for change, such as the skills needed to promote learnercentred
approaches, collaborative work methods and the use of modern
learning tools, particularly those based on ICT. Fostering creative
abilities and attitudes within schools also requires the support of an
organisational culture open to creativity and the creation of an
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innovation-friendly environment in general, as well as committed and
forward-looking leadership at all levels.
I’m certain that the monograph Facilitating Effective Student Learning
through Teacher Research and Innovation is a timely, necessary and
important step in this direction. This has been recognized by the
reviewers as well. I would like to recommend this book to readers with
the words of one of the reviewers, Prof. Grozdanka Gojkov, who writes
that the teacher’s role “implies constant innovations of procedures in the
pedagogic-didactic competences of a teacher, which is a guiding
principle of all the researches in the present monographic study and its
great value, having in mind that it is one in a small number of similar
publications in Europe, dealing with innovation of didactic procedures
of teachers from the angle of their new role, based on participatory
epistemology. Numerous outcomes of empirical researches on the
application of new procedures heading in this direction are precious, not
only as facts on effects and possibilities of application, but as ideas for
designing new relevant research frameworks and ideas for new actions.
Truly convinced of the value of the present study, I express my
admiration to the authors and congratulations to the publisher.”
Janez Krek
Dean
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