Social Sciences, Geography and History Teaching Based on Research: Innovation and Professional Development

Introduction

Innovation accompanies us in our daily lives. When a new product or service catches our attention, we usually classify it as “innovative”. In other words, we know how to recognize something that can be innovative or not and we intuitively associate it with something that can be useful in our life or professional context. Despite this, answering the question “what is innovation?” requires go beyond intuition. Das Gupta defines innovation “the design, invention, development and/or implementation of new or altered products, services, processes, systems, organization structures or business models for the purpose of creating new value for customers” (2017: 345). In other words, innovation it is not just what we consider new. As Vrba & Mitchell (2019) indicated, it must add value to the organization, including the following characteristics: it contributes to the success of an organization; culture of innovation become essential to the success of business and education; technology in educational practice has been increased to support new demands of students and there are multiple options on useful applications to preparing for action in social and professional environment.

Even though innovative actions can contribute to professional development of teachers and learning improvement of students, not all of them allow the development of institutional changes. Regarding this, we must understand the difference between innovative experiences and innovation. Innovative experience is associated with small-scale changes. Usually, it is carried out by a person or small group, and that does not transcend from a very specific context within the organization. When that person or that small group leaves the organization, the innovative experience disappears. So educational innovation can be defined as “management process of specific changes (in ideas, materials or practices of the curriculum) until their consolidation, with a view to personal and institutional growth” (De la Torre, 1997: 50); establishing a clear differentiation with the educational reform, a process of modification of the general teaching framework in terms of official curriculum.Thus, another defining aspects of innovation are the depth of changes and their permanence over time. Innovation must include a process of managing, defining and consolidating changes, and a shared understanding of the advantage of innovation for students, teaching staff and their institution (Puig & Morales, 2013). In education, Pozuelos (2007) highlights that numerous innovative experiences could be contextualized in a wider innovative project. In general, these experiences can share a common topic, deliberative strategies and plurality of outputs from students.

In this chapter, the most important epistemological traditions of the teaching-learning process and teaching models will reviewed; focusing on an innovative methodological proposal based on school research, highlighting the role of relevant socio-environmental issues, teacher professional knowledge, student's daily knowledge and metadisciplinary knowledge in the construction of significant school knowledge connected with reality. The final point will approach the evaluation from a formative and professionalizing perspective; highlighting action research as a reference to promote innovation and to systematize decision-making on the transformation of teaching-learning processes in Social Sciences area.