What Curriculum Innovation is and Why it is Everybody’s Concern

8 min readJun 10, 2022

What is Curriculum Innovation?

Curriculum Innovation is a response to the fact that the world is constantly changing, and education has to change if we want to avoid preparing students for a world that no longer exists. If, in the complex context of business, innovation refers to the process by which a product or service is renewed or updated by applying new techniques or implementing new value-enhancing ideas (Innolytics) then, curriculum innovation can be defined as a process of updating or renewing the current curriculum, either through new techniques or implementing new value-enhancing education/schooling ideas. There is a strong and urgent need for innovation in the current curriculum.

“Curriculum holds an outstanding place when seeking to promote innovation in education, as it reflects the vision for education by indicating knowledge, skills, and values to be taught to students. It may express not only what should be taught to students, but also how the students should be taught.”-– Kiira Kärkkäinen

Curriculum in the basic sense, refers to all the subjects or courses that a student takes in the course of an educational journey. Curriculum- as redefined to include recent research, change and innovation; is the totality of a student’s experience in the educational process. It includes instructional practices, performance assessments and learning experiences. Curriculum innovation is the introduction of new and improved practices and methods into how students are taught. It covers both planning and implementation and involves a wide range of actors that include learners, teachers, guardians, and education experts,, among others.

Why is it important?

Betty Leask () makes an argument for internationalization, globalization and curriculum innovation. It is centered on the fact that tomorrow’s professionals (today for us) will be operating in a global world as global citizens, and curriculum innovation will be a necessary process of preparing them for this world. Curriculum Innovation is an improvement on what exists and it can be minor, major, incremental or radical. The degree of innovation determines how much work will be required and also how certain or uncertain meeting intended outcomes will be.

These five are true:

The world is not static, it is dynamic, and changes happen at a rapid rate.
Many educational systems have outdated curriculums which are preparing students for a world that is rapidly fading away;.
The quality of education students receive determines not just their quality of life but also productivity in an economy, which of course is a big determinant of economic growth.
Learners are human beings who are unique, including how they learn, and their needs have to be understood if they are not to be left behind by the education system.
There is such a thing as a global economy, and an expanding labor market means that competition is high: both for job seekers and for companies. Education is the differentiating factor or equalizer.

“Knowledge is a Consequence of Experience” — Jean Piaget

How does it work?

This type of innovation takes on a number of approaches, models, and strategies. There are different means to the end.

Three kinds of innovation in education exist structure, content, and process. Structure refers to the tangible aspects such as facilities, the school buildings, and the thinking that goes into optimizing them for the benefit of learners. Content refers to what the students actually learn: what we usually regard as the curriculum. Process refers to the operations and activities that go into running a school and an educational system as a whole. These three areas are crucial in determining learning outcomes. Students must have the necessary facilities which are functional, educational content which is relevant, and pedagogical and administrative approaches that work to the advantage of everyone involved in the system.

Global concerns in regards to the curriculum are therefore identified as the quality of learners, quality of learning environments, quality of content, quality of processes, and quality of outcomes.

There are various models and approaches that have been suggested and even tested based on the work and practice of researchers and institutions at various levels of education.

On one hand, there is the dichotomy of a bottom-down and a top-down approach. The top-down approach is a policy approach where innovation flows from the top (policy makers and administrators) to the bottom (schools and classrooms). The bottom-up approach, has innovation originating from classrooms and schools, where these improvements can scale and spread to other classrooms and schools, and eventually become part of the policy.

Ronald Havelock’s models of innovation: Research, Development, and Diffusion (RD & D) model, the Social Interaction (SI) model, and the Problem-Solving (PS) model, have also been adapted to the practice of curriculum innovation. The illustrations below are adaptations from “Curriculum Essentials” by Linda J. Button

The R & D model for centralized systems like universities

The Social Interaction Model is student-centered and emphasizes communication

The Problem Solving Model is where innovation is seen as part of problem-solving.

Key strategies in curriculum innovation include personalized learning, learning communities, collaborative learning, and project-based learning.

Personalized Learning

This is an educational approach where students’ learning is designed based on an assessment of their needs, skills, strengths and weaknesses. Personalization can mean that the curriculum is tailored to each student, or students are categorized based on similarities and taught in a way that is best suited to them. This takes a number of forms like one-on-one tutoring, mentorship, online courses and even the results that google provides from your searches, Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers an even more advanced approach to creating personalized learning experiences, and its application can be seen not just in traditional school settings, but also in corporate environments. AI is able to assess the strengths and gaps of learners to deliver tailored instructions which adapt to their progress.

Learning Communities

A learning community is defined on Wikipedia as a group of people who share common academic goals and attitudes and meet semi-regularly to collaborate on classwork. These communities connect learners, teachers, and organizations that have shared learning interests, and because of technology, these communities can connect across borders. It can exist within a school, a classroom, an organization, between individual learners, or groupings of the above. Membership is not exclusive to one community as people or organizations can belong to as many as have similar interests and goals.

“any one of a variety of curricular structures that link together several existing courses — or actually restructure the curricular material entirely — so that students have opportunities for deeper understanding and integration of the material they are learning, and more interaction with one another and their teachers as fellow participants in the learning enterprise” (Gabelnick et al ,1990, p. 19).

The community decentralizes the burden of learning and instruction, by involving multiple people who can teach, learn, or do both. In larger or more diverse communities, it brings interesting and new perspectives to learning.

Collaborative learning

This strategy involves having learners work with each other to enhance their learning (understanding a subject matter, solving a problem, or creating something). This is closely related to project-based learning because learners are usually presented with a particular project that requires them to work together. Every person in the group has a defined role to play in meeting the goal. It seeks to build upon the teaching in a class by getting students to explore and apply the material. Therefore, it is a useful way to assess the effectiveness of instruction.

In an organization’s context, people and teams working together so they can learn from each other’s expertise and experience is a form of collaborative learning. According to Forbes, it can also mean connecting new learners with high-performers to make learning more effective, and tailored to the uniqueness of an organization.

Project-Based Learning

This is a pedagogical approach that involves learners or students taking on a real-world challenge. It is meant to help them make sense of what they have learned by applying knowledge and skills in a real-world context. It is an increasingly popular way of teaching in the 21st century, applied at different levels of education. At the tertiary level, this approach provides a strong link between students and the professional world, because it often involves interaction with employers and a range of other professionals in the field. This gives them an opportunity not only to learn, but also to build a valuable network consisting of peers, collaborators, mentors, and potential employers. It also develops core skills like communication, teamwork, and problem solving. PowerSchool says that the careers of modern workers will be defined more by a series of projects than years of service to a specific organization, and learning to solve real world problems will be valuable to their careers and the organizations they will work for or lead.

While personalized learning is an important strategy in curriculum innovation, it does not mean that learning is or should be an isolated experience. Lev Vygotsky, a psychologist who specialized in child development, is famous for his sociocultural theory which emphasizes the importance of community in learning. He believed that human development is shaped by the interaction between individuals and the society around them.

The essential stages for curriculum innovation development (according to Esther Fleming) are:

Identify Issue/Problem/Need.
Form Curriculum Development Team.
Conduct Needs Assessment and Analysis.
State Intended Outcomes.
Select Content.
Design Experiential Methods.
Produce Curriculum Product.
Test and Revise Curriculum.

Curriculum Innovation can be seen as a two-part process involving both planning and implementation: where the former set the tone and guide while the latter determines success in meeting targets. It is best as a reiterative process where feedback and assessments provide inputs for evaluation and adaptation, as appropriate.

Learning is fundamentally influenced by the context and activity in which it is embedded (Brown, Collins, and Duguid, 1989)

A Lesson for Organizations

The educational system determines the quality of people you can hire to a very large extent. While there are new and alternative learning pathways like online courses et al, for now, everyone goes through traditional schooling for a good part of their foundation years. That foundation is crucial and will determine even their ability to make use of those alternative learning methods.

Learning should never be stagnant in organizations. Training and development is crucial for improving human capital, and the curriculum (what and how people learn) must be innovative if employees are to perform optimally. The various strategies and models explained above are applicable in a variety of learning environments, including public and private sector organizations.