Pedagogical Innovation in Higher Education

Abstract

Quality teaching in higher education (HE) is gaining increasing international attention and pedagogical innovation is seen as an important construct of quality teaching. The drivers for pedagogical innovation include the need for 21st century skills and understandings, student demographics and empowerment, technological advances, and a turn to teaching in HE. Defining innovative pedagogies is a recurring challenge in the literature and a key focus of this article. Using an investigation into innovative approaches to teaching and learning at one New Zealand university, prevailing themes of newness, benefit, and student outcomes are discussed to develop a working definition. What is missing from the discourses and definitions is specific consideration of the influence of context on what counts as pedagogical innovation. In light of this, the authors offer an emergent definition of pedagogical innovation in higher education.

Shaping a Sustainable Future

“…Innovativeness may refer to novel teaching methods, innovative adopted technologies used for teaching and/or to contemporary topics in the field of sustainability (Dieleman et al, 2022). Innovations can be radically different or just incrementally change an approach that was used before, where the degree of innovativeness depends on the specific context (Major et al, 2020).…”

“…Effective teaching and learning require knowledge about (pedagogical and other) variables that influence the learning process and the internal predictors of responsible and sustainable behaviour. Persisting with the same old seems to be not an option if educators want to avoid the conformity trap of trying to solve today's problems with yesterday's tools (Major et al, 2020). Instead, they must take an active approach to tackle these challenges and develop, implement, test, and validate new and innovative ways of teaching (and learning) (Walder, 2014).…”

“…In the introduction, we suggested to understand pedagogical innovation as "teaching approaches and practices that are new or different in a particular context, and which are designed to purposefully and responsively benefit student experiences and outcomes in that context" (Major et al, 2020). Drawing on the contributions in this book and the inclusivity principle of the SDGs (United Nations, n.d.), we furthermore propose the following commonalities regarding sustainability-oriented teaching innovation:…”

Can Pedagogical Innovations Be Sustainable? One Evaluation Outlook for Research Developed in Portuguese Higher Education

“…The remaining projects (20) highlighted pedagogical innovations implemented in engineering courses (16), biology courses ( 3) and an accounting course (1). Some funded projects were, for instance, focused on the promotion of teachers' academic growth (e.g., Proj.…”

“…Around the academic world, the development of pedagogical innovations is increasingly a focus of institutional leaders (e.g., Rectors) and teachers [1][2][3][4], as a response to specific problems (e.g., lack of students' learning) [5]. A pedagogical innovation can be the introduction of a resource and/or strategy that, when implemented and evaluated by teachers, leads to student learning [6][7][8][9][10][11][12].…”