Toward a Political Economy of Educational Innovation

Abstract

Many policymakers and researchers still maintain that “modernization” of education through sustained and well-focused investment in educational innovation can improve the quality of education, significantly ameliorate social and economic problems, and lower educational costs as well. By restructuring management and teaching practices, putting more reliance on prepackaged curriculum materials, exploiting the possibilities of computers, radio, and TV, and changing teachers’ roles, it is believed that children and youth would be better prepared to meet the requirements of the modern workplace. We contend, however, that these benefits have failed to materialize. In an attempt to understand why the promise of educational innovation has not been realized, we critically examine educational innovation, its ideological and paradigmatic underpinnings, and the major stages of the innovation process. Review of a large body of research suggests that conventional theory fails to understand the nature of structural and institutional factors and processes that characterize class-based societies. A political economy of educational innovation perspective is elaborated that focuses on the centrality of power and the generation of correspondence and contradiction as key analytical concepts. It is argued that this “radical” perspective better explains the failure of innovation. Recent arguments that the central ideas behind educational innovation are still valid, but that greater emphasis must be put on the implementation process and participation of potential adopters, are also critically reviewed and found to represent no substantive shift from the “failed” model of innovation. Although shortcomings of the radical view are acknowledged and some of its theoretical weaknesses underscored, it demonstrates how the innovation process actively extends and creates a “technological” ideology that is self-legitimating, providing the illusion of change, not its substance. Yet despite the predominance of this reproductive function, we discuss how the radical paradigm also posits that educational innovation yields contradictions and resistances that have the potential for social transformation.

Research into Educational Innnovation: a possible case of educational transfer

“…The point of that observation will not be lost on anyone who has had the opportunity to read the penetrating and evocative article, Toward a Political Economy of Educational Innovation, by Papagiannis, Klees & Bickel (1982). In that article's terms the present research must be regarded as reflecting the dominant as distinct from the radical paradigm.…”

From technology to craft: on teachers’ experimental adoption of technology as a new subject in the Swedish primary school

“…The distance between formulation and realization within education has entailed a certain autonomy for teachers and schools, and also many different attempts at interaction and communication between centre and periphery in education, linked to concepts like in-service training and innovation implementation. Here we find different strategies for government, control, and innovation (House 1979, Papagiannis et al 1982. Such different strategies for reform and innovation have been used by the centres in educational systems, referring to various justifications in terms of legislation, rationality, and science.…”

Environmental education: the development of a curriculum through ‘grass‐roots’ reconstructive action

“…Here environmental degradation has reached alarming proportions, resources (human and financial) are very limited, and support infrastructures for more teacher-centred and participatory variations of these models are minimal. Papagiannis et al (1982) suggest that the policies and actions of curriculum development projects should be seen as political economies of change. This perspective is useful as it reveals some of the inhibiting features of prevailing models of curriculum development.…”

“…These have usually involved external, rational and objective research processes (curriculum development), followed by dissemination/adoption strategies to communicate the new curriculum to teachers or to implant it in schools (curriculum implementation). 'Develop and implement' approaches to change have, unfortunately, proved to be surprisingly weak (Papagiannis et al 1982, Popkewitz 1984. Their repeated failure has most often been ascribed to communication weaknesses, insufficient or poor evaluation and a lack of teacher participation (Eisner 1985).…”