Construcción Social de la tecnología – SCOT

his work with the total effort of the institution 3. Integrated - the user actively seeks ways to combine his efforts

in using the innovation with colleagues to achieve a collective impact on all learners within an institution. 4. Renewing - the user re-evaluates the quality of the innovation,

seeks new alternatives to achieve greater impact on learners, examines new developments in the field and identifies new goals for himself and the institution. This categorization carries with it two main implications. Firstly, there is a great deal more to ensuring the effective use of an innovation than initial training, and the failure to recognize this has often

resulted in the innovation itself failing. As teachers struggle towards a real implementation of a project, they need continued supportive

training and consultation, both with outside agencies and with colleagues, to sustain their efforts (Hall et al, 1973), Indeed Hebden (1977) has

argued that as a teacher becomes more deeply involved in curriculum change and becomes concerned with the development of the whole curriculum of the school, so his need for support increases.

The second implication of Hall’s model is that innovation is not a finite condition which can reach some definite and visible conclusion.

Rather it is a process of constant regeneration and refinement. At this point, however, a practical dilemma arises for teachers. Change is a physically and mentally exhausting state because it involves a vastly increased workload (Hisbet, 1974) A period of frenzied

activity is bearable in the short term precisely because it is temporary and will lead to a new and more satisfying steady state, but cannot be sustained indefinitely. A balance has to be struck-between the teachers’ practical demands for stability and the curriculum’s no less insistent demands for renewal. Such a compromise has seldom been achieved in practice and normally it has been the innovation which has suffered. Perhaps this reflects Dalin’s rather disquieting comment:

"The educational system has very little energy left for innovation and change. Most of its energy is spent in maintaining existing structures and operations"

.(Dalin, 1978)

This leads us back to MacDonald and Rudduck’s remarks and to the need for Project Teams to provide a tonic for the system.

1:7 Summary

This chapter has examined the contributions of many who have investigated the process of curriculum reform. Their findings and the concepts developed from them are varied but all point towards the

complexity of change. We do not fully understand the process - if we did there would be no point to this research - but we can outline three inter-related groups of variables. Firstly, there are the characteristics of the innovation - what it means to the person who is going to put it into practice. That person is the teacher and it is what he makes of the Project in his mind that will determine what he makes of it in the classroom. For this reason, the Project Team must ensure that the teacher perceives what they do, that he accepts what he perceives and that he has the skills to implement what he accepts. This is the most difficult part of a Project Team’s task and it is the part where failure has consigned so many elaborate programmes in the past to premature retirement in dusty cupboards. Effective strategies for equipping

teachers to handle innovation are essential. This is the second

variable, and together it assumes that teachers will take an active part in curriculum development and not merely act as sponges soaking up what­ ever is thrown at them. The interaction between teachers and Project Teams persists over a long period, and while it does so, it is matched by an interaction between teachers and school organizations. The crucial concept here is the innovative climate which determines the ease with which individual teachers may make changes. Much depends on communication networks within the school and mechanisms for identifying and solving problems. This is the Headteacher*s responsibility. He must manage the school so that innovation is encouraged in general and the specific resource and support demands of individual projects are understood and catered for. Acting as a surrounding framework for all these variables, are broad social, economic and political factors.

They affect what teachers, schools and project teams are expected, perhaps required, to do, and what they are able to do. All three groups must come to terms with these external variables.

Figure 1 is a diagrammatic representation of some of these ideas.

It stresses that there are several tiers of factors, with characteristics of the innovation and strategies and tactics forming the centre, and leading outwards by way of characteristics of the implementing unit to external features on the margin. Each layer influences the ones that are inside it. The model also emphasizes the inter-related aspect of change. This can be demonstrated through the element TIME. Time is a potential cost for the teacher. Project teams must devise structures so that the teachers* time is used as efficiently as possible. The school must do this too and provide an adequate time allowance for development. However, this costs money because more staff may have to be employed and may be impossible because of restrictions in the amount of money

allocated to education, which is in turn affected by the quirks of government policy and the nation’s general economic well-being.

Fig. 1 SUMMAHY iVIUUtL Uh Uh TEH Ml NANI 5 Uh SUUUfci>i>l-UL

INNOVATION

3. CHARACTERISTICS OF