I have recently been reading ‘How To Come Up With Great Ideas and Actually Make Them Happen’ by Euan McIntosh. The book is primarily about how we, as teachers, engage in and with innovation and change within education. Euan’s background is as a teacher of Modern Languages in East Lothian, working as a National Advisor to the Scottish Government on learning and technology and as a Digital Commissioner for Channel 4. He is now CEO of ‘No Tosh’, a consultancy firm seeking to guide educators through the process of being creative and design thinking, taking lessons from the creative industries and applying them to an educational setting.

Through my initial reading of the book there are some central themes that come across as relevant and incisive given the current climate in Scottish education of development, innovation and change

1. Sharing great practice – the book early on discussing the existence of ‘Islands of Excellence’ that are commonplace around many schools. Practitioners who have developed ways of working that relate well to their context but who have not (yet) found a way of sharing their expertise with colleagues. A major struggle in innovation and design thinking is in how to initiate and maintain a wider utilisation of such pedagogical methodologies. My understanding here is of the importance of teachers being both empowered and willing to share their developments and innovations. Euan discusses the notion that oftentimes teachers can be resistant in passing on knowledge as it is henceforth outwith their immediate control and can grow from their initial vision (whether positively or not depending upon the perception of the initial innovator). How to promote the altruistic sharing of such innovations is the core question I take from this
2. Everyone leading learning – all staff in a school have the capacity to lead learning, to lead innovation, to lead and steer the direction in which the school is going. Dialogue is the key to this, negotiating the teachers (and learners) that we want to be, to model the ideal of great learning that we aspire to (which would be the ‘third horizon’ or ‘transformational change’ that we seek)
3. Sweat the small stuff – everyday problems which affect the effectiveness of learning to one degree or another are the problems we, as leaders of learning, should be seeking to solve. This is where innovation sprouts and where it can be most pronounced. There is a danger of schools looking too far ahead, in five year chunks, of where they want to be and forgetting the shorter term innovations, reflections and processes that can help to shape the ‘third horizon’, ‘the ideal’ (this strategic thinking is crucial, but should be augmented with thinking in the here and now). Ultimately, everyday innovation should be about how we build in streamlining to facilitate better learning and improving the day to day, reduce bureaucracy, to ensure that we are doing the most with the time, resources and expertise at our disposal
4. Criticality – more reflection should be given over to finding the bugs within operational systems and then seeking out solutions to these. My personal experience is of regularly thinking along the lines of ‘this seems to be a problem’ or ‘I think this could be better organised’ but then simply ensuring that whatever it is is done in the expected manner without any formal critique being offered. I now think, in retrospect that offering the solutions to such bugs is central to incorporating small scale innovation and will certainly be seeking to use this approach more in my own practice (which may result in some, hopefully creative, conflict as bugs are addressed) – possibly leading to a rash of post it notes scattered across my PC screen
5. Importance of listening and seeing – how often have people sat in meetings or conversations and not been ‘in the moment’? Of hearing what you expect to hear or having presuppositions re-enforced. By aiming to listen more carefully, to take note of concerns (or bugs), to engage in further discussion – to actually make sure meetings are about discussion for negotiating new ways of working and not simply be passive. Being able to go beyond what is simply seen or heard, to identify nuance, subtle social and environmental factors and underlying values and motivations to get to the core issues

All of this is just my own take on my reading to date and will doubtless change as I continue to read through the remainder of the book. While I have not yet finished reading the book it has refreshed my approach to planning and reflection which are at the forefront of many of our minds at this time of year, sitting as we are between last year and next year. I certainly hope to try and put in to practice some, if not all, of what I have taken from this book to date.

My engagement with Euan’s work actually started earlier in the year from following a link from David Rogers’ blog (http://daviderogers.blogspot.co.uk/ – a site also well worth reading and dipping into, particularly for those looking to move into more formal leadership at some point)to Euan’s consultancy website ‘No Tosh’ http://notosh.com/ which has a variety of ideas for generating ideas, both as departments and as teachers in classrooms leading learning (I particularly enjoyed trying to get my Highers to come up with googleable and ungoogleable questions on levels of development) and this might be a nice jumping off point for some to dip in to some of the ideas fleshed out in the book.  Euan also has a visible presence on Twitter and often links to some very thought provoking articles, often unrelated directly to education which provides an alternative narrative and lens to consider approaches to working.

If anyone wants to discuss anything covered here please accost me in the corridor or if you want to dip in to the book Geography have a couple of copies in the department.

S. Small