Supporting innovation in teaching: what are the key contextual factors?

Abstract

New curriculum frameworks commonly refer to new technologies and 21st century learning, requiring teachers to change their practices. This paper investigates the school and teacher level factors that are most strongly related to innovative teacher practices (ITPs). A sample of Australian secondary teachers (n = 683) completed online surveys about current practices and beliefs. The teacher responses enabled the calculation of an ITP index for each teacher which was used as the response variable in a multilevel regression with various explanatory variables: at the teacher level, characteristics (e.g., age, gender) and experiences (e.g., amount of professional development), at the school level, size, region, and other characteristics developed from school leader responses. Several factors were found to be related to ITP including teacher age, the frequency of use of extended learning activities and teacher collaboration. These findings have the potential to inform school leaders about how best to foster teacher change and innovation.