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Tag: Disruption & Innovation

  • Innovation Often Means Teaching Against The Grain – TeachThought

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    November 18, 2025 | Updated November 15, 2025

    by TeachThought Staff

    Recently I came across this interesting article: Shifting from Pedagogy to Heutagogy and whilst espousing all contained within, it got me thinking about the inescapable perils faced when adopting this and other progressive forms of teaching.

    See also 7 Differences Between Good And Great Teachers

    Going against the grain can be a lonely experience at times, and whilst sound theory and instinct act as a nice warm blanket against the cold, one could well do with a practical survival guide to assist in implementing new practice. Teachers need to be prepared for the reality of what lies ahead of them to assist in the reshaping of their classrooms, and to ultimately strengthen their resolve in maintaining the chosen epistemology.

    Most progressive teaching models from Heutagogy, Constructivism, to PBL concern themselves essentially, as much as possible, with placing the process and outcomes of learning in the hands of the learner. But let’s cut to the chase here, implementing such pedagogy is very messy, requires enormous patience, a degree of pragmatism, and most importantly, needs a teacher of great skill who can de-school their students to engage with it.

    See

    1. De-schooling means re-tooling. 

    When shifting your teaching practice to a style that centers itself more on the learner and less on the teacher, be prepared for many students (and parents) to vehemently complain that you are not teaching them, and the inevitable confidence killing that these savage claims create. Never is this feeling stronger when you have students of good ability beginning to complain. In these times it can seem as though you are robbing Peter to pay Paul, but in order to counter such occasion, ensure you have a very well thought-out plan and rationale that can be defended in case your line manager decides to investigate their ire, and more importantly, one that you can talk yourself through in predictable moments of doubt.

    Always remember what constitutes real learning, and you’ll be fine.

    2. Be pragmatic.

    Having said that, it would be wise to initiate the students with small doses of the new style, easing them in to what can be for many an uncomfortable territory. Imagine the look on most students’ faces if you begin the unit by saying ’Ok, here are the outcomes you need to achieve by the end of the unit, but you design the learning to achieve it.’ This is not just throwing students into the deep end. This is dropping them out of a helicopter into the middle of the ocean.

    You need to set up the space, set up the culture for them to succeed in: how to research, how to work cooperatively, how to set incremental goals, how to manage time, how to work independently. Remember, by the end of high school, students have had up to 11+ years of teacher-led learning, and as they get older, have been told probably thousands of times how important it is to achieve a certain grade, a grade which may seem in jeopardy without the strong lead of the teacher.

    This blending is exactly what I find myself doing. I always begin a unit with a strong learner-based approach, and slowly incorporate a much more guided flow towards the end as we approach assessment. No matter what anyone says, it is at the end of the unit that we have to be pragmatic: students will be tested on specific learning outcomes, and there’s a lot at stake for me as a teacher if they aren’t met. The overall aim however is to continually manipulate the ratio in favor of learner-based learning.

    3. Patience (amongst great mess) is a virtue. 

    This is where lots of patience comes in. With some groups, it may take much much longer to make it standard practice. You have to remember that to achieve success with student-centered learning is by no means an easy feat, and so you must be patient with yourself as you try to get it right. You have to be especially patient with the messiness of it all.

    The messiness can be overwhelming at times, particularly with learners who have been largely disconnected to learning. For them, it can seem like a free ride, a chance to do nothing, and the compulsion to manage and structure such occasions by reverting to old tricks is strong. In such instances, guidance and coercion down a certain path may be the only chance of keeping the dream alive. But this needn’t mean that it has to be completely teacher-led. Ensuring students arrive at an end outcome doesn’t mean that there is only one way to get there.

    Sensible bridging strategies are not compromises, but smart decisions made to stay afloat.

    4. No pain, no gain.

    If it all sounds quite daunting, that’s because it is. But we shouldn’t expect any less, because after all we are talking about perfecting teaching models that take a teacher to the top of the game. The number of times I’ve fallen off the wagon are too countless to name, but I always return, knowing that the learning is significantly stronger and that ironically, eventually the compulsory testing yields better results. 

    But more than that, I keep returning because when it works, the feeling that I get observing students learning for themselves and assuming ownership of their experience is one of pure joy, and always confirms why I love education.

    Adapted image attribution flickr user Dan; Innovation Often Means Teaching Against The Grain

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    TeachThought Staff

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  • The Most Dangerous Phrase In Education

    The Most Dangerous Phrase In Education

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    dangerous-phrase

    by Terry Heick

    I was speaking (tweeting) with Mark Barnes tonight, and he mentioned the idea of challenging existing forms and practices. And then someone tweeted the above image–a quote attributed to Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, according to the image source globalnerdy.com–and I was happy and favorited and saved and blogged.

    “We’ve always done it this way” implies legacy and tradition, which can be good. But it’s also one of the most dangerous phrases we can use—and this danger extends to education, as well.

    I talk a lot about disruptive teaching and paradigm shifting in teaching and learning not because I’m inherently rebellious, or some kind of academic anarchist. I’ve just taught long enough–in a wide variety of places–to realize that this idea of progress–and slow iteration–through data and sharing and ‘opening our classroom door’ just isn’t sufficient.

    It’s not bad, it just doesn’t reflect the priority and urgency of our collective challenge. At best, students come to school to play the game and be thought of as smart and successful; at worst, they come to disrupt and resist and simply make it through the year because they see no value in what they do.

    We have to create laws to force students to come to school, and it’s often the students that need school the worst who aren’t ‘made’ for it; that is, school is made for students who are strong readers and writers that can manage their work while learning to play nicely with others.

    Changing lives usually comes from relationships with teachers rather than the power of curriculum. But talking about mobile learning, self-directed learning, new content areas, adaptive learning, or valuing questions over answers can kill conversations in school and elicit polite smiles from teachers, mainly because those aren’t the rules of the game they know.

    The problem with the safe approach to teaching is that it won’t yield anything other than what we’ve always had. Without doing things radically different, the most we can hope for is some kind of increment. This isn’t a plea for chaos, but rather the courage to make mistakes.

    The phrase, ‘We’ve always done it this way’ symbolizes stagnant thinking and a resistance to innovation, reflecting an unwillingness to question established methods or consider new ideas. This mindset often stifles creativity, limits progress, and prevents growth by clinging to outdated practices simply because they are familiar.

    It can also create an environment where change is seen as a threat rather than an opportunity for improvement, discouraging individuals from challenging the status quo or exploring alternative solutions. Over time, this rigid adherence to tradition can lead to missed opportunities, decreased efficiency, and a lack of adaptability in a rapidly evolving world. To foster innovation and continuous improvement, it’s crucial to replace this mindset with one that values flexibility, embraces change, and encourages forward-thinking approaches.

    To ‘experiment’ on students (because that’s what’s already happening anyway). Dream, try, and collect data.

    Do something different this year.

    Don’t necessarily–and mindlessly–do what you’re told. 

    Light up a new pathway.

    Creatively, professionally, and persistently agitate your department, grade level, school, or district to not just become the best version of their existing selves, but become something else that they didn’t think was possible.

    The same hope you have for your students.

    The Most Dangerous Phrase In Education

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    Terrell Heick

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  • When Schools And Parents Don’t Talk

    When Schools And Parents Don’t Talk

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    by Terry Heick

    Having gone on for decades now, discussions around the idea of ed reform are a bit tired.

    They seem pointless. Exhausting. A waste of time and creative bandwidth. Bottom-up change is exhausting and top-down change is exhausting for entirely different reasons.

    Rather than state or federal policy, make schools and communities accountable to one another.

    This would require supporting those communities in various ways and supporting learners by expanding the definition of ‘academic’ success.

    Among the benefits, the improved visibility of our collective, shared challenge to educate every learner every day for every standard regardless of background, literacy, learning habits, or scheme would be visible to everyone–kind of like opening the kitchen of a failing restaurant for the public to see; not to shame, but so that everyone could better understand.

    See also What Else Schools Could Be Besides Schools?

    It’d be a mess at first, but it would also expose the overwheling problems with our standards and curriculum and other related flaws like those in assessment and instruction, for example.

    It might also, indrectly, reveal ‘flaws’ in our collective practices as a society (not just as schools and classrooms), but doesn’t education already has enough on its plate? Parents might see our collective challenge as something whole and shared–or at least would have the chance to.

    In Why Parents Don’t Understand School, I said “This is a challenge (of schools and communities not speaking the same language) not new to education, but because of the unique position of educators as both experts and conduits between formal education and local communities, the burden falls to teachers to not simply paraphrase and translate but build and transfer capacity from the inside out.”

    But what if parents and families ‘don’t have time’? Judging by our collective test scores, student apathy, teacher burnout statistics, graduation rates from high school to college, and general lack of widespread, genuinely inspirational teaching and learning, neither do we.

    ‘Accountability,’ then, could become opportunity for all of us.

    Parents aren’t clear what’s being taught in school, not to mention how or why? That’s a place to start.

    There are too few resources in communities? In schools? Another good place.

    Society at large doesn’t understand formal learning–especially K-12? What exactly is being taught and why? This might be one of the most significant challenges, but that’s fine. We can all share, invest in, and thoughtfully approach it all together.

    Is literacy a problem at home, which is why it’s a problem in schools–or is it the other way around?

    Families have no real idea at all what’s happening in the classroom? Force their complete involvement. If they can’t, that’s okay–let’s just all be transparent that schools aren’t ‘the problem.’ If we can agree there, the rest can being a bit easier to sort out.

    Does this all sound impractical? Silly? More trouble than it’s worth? Hopeless? There’s another bit of data: we’re trying open schools to families and no one understands how or why.

    Isn’t that what’s crazy?

    What happens when schools and families don’t talk?

    Or worse, when they couldn’t even if they tried?

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    Terrell Heick

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  • Why Education Needs More Than Reform

    Why Education Needs More Than Reform

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    by Terry Heick

    On Collaboration As An Industry

    Hopefully, we can agree that education–as it exists–isn’t good enough.

    For students or teachers or communities. It just isn’t.

    This is a tired argument, but it’s an underlying assumption of this concept: education needs more than reform. Iteration. Evolution. Transformation. Whatever word reflects the level of urgency you’d assign it all.

    It’s curious that in seeking this evolution, we turn to the product of the system rather than the systems themselves. We criticize the egg instead of understanding the chicken. Of course, the bits and pieces–the gears–of that chicken are complex to the point of obscurity. This makes self-correction through iteration–the current model for ed reform–a challenge.

    This is in lieu of so much creativity, knowledge, and expertise out there because these same experts get behind the machine and push. We seek approval from the same power holders and institutions that nod their heads yes or shake their heads no, not realizing it is their way of thinking that got us into this mess. We seek change not just from within but from above.

    In response, we need collaboration between and across innovators and experts that is disruptive, even if it’s simple for the sake of disrupting. Make noise. Draw attention. Walk into a movie theater and scream, “fire!” Unplug the television. Turn off the WiFi because this whole thing isn’t getting anywhere quickly.

    Disruption, in general, is about unsettling and is often thought of as chaos. Disruptive collaboration is working together to force change. It’s the artful unsettling of that which has become inartistic. Reconfiguring systems that can no longer see themselves or replacing them altogether. It’s about shifting the locus of control.

    On Collaboration In Thought

    We could talk about helping our students collaborate disruptively–and we should–but most immediately, this is about teaching and learning. As educators, we should first want our thinking disrupted–taken apart, criticized, and scrutinized, then handed back to us in pieces. And not as contrarians but as equal partners seeking to understand one another.

    We could seek collaboration that torpedoes our ideas–and the ideas of the power holders up top that have shut off their innovation trying to please the folks above them–and then emerges on the other side a kind of hybrid of what we think together. And then want it all to disappear and only come back to us in bits and pieces that we can’t recognize as my thinking, but only thought.

    We could stop seeing ourselves–or the people we collaborate with–as simply ideas and opinions because ideas and opinions replace people and diplomacy and friendliness and compliance get in the way–swapped for creative and careful thinking that actually stands a chance to survive the whole clumsy process.

    And once these ideas are articulated and broken apart and transparent, and nobody’s thinking, let’s color them with the wonderful stain of idea exchange so that we can own them as a whole thing ourselves. And then we can produce something of worth together.

    On Collaboration & Its Products

    We should want the product of our collaboration to be disruptive, too. Existing systems already have their own momentum and don’t need our help. They don’t need our hashtags or likes or affection. They’ve yielded the context that necessitates our collaboration to begin with.

    If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. So, let’s build something that offers viable alternatives for everyone–especially those marginalized by the existing system. Let’s stop demanding rigor and accountability and instead create something ourselves that is scalable beyond the walls of your school or the reach of the concept of ‘academia’ that continues to haunt learning everywhere. 

    Something that thinks not in a pattern of school->curriculum–>content–>proficiency, but instead person–>learning–>knowledge–>lots of people–>lots of learning–>social capacity–>wisdom.

    Let’s connect and build something that doesn’t serve you or the past or what’s already here but others and the here and now. Let’s build something we’ve never had–and do so by empowering everyone that’s a part of this.

    Something that isn’t built to make your school or classroom spin faster, but rather is built for the real work of understanding something.

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    Terrell Heick

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