Title: To change or not to change: indicators of K-12 teacher engagement in innovative educational practices

Authors: Louis S. Nadelson; Anne L. Seifert; Christina Sias

Addresses: School of Teacher Education and Leadership, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322, USA ' Idaho National Laboratory, 1955 Fremont Avenue, Idaho Falls, ID 83402, USA ' School of Teacher Education and Leadership, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322, USA

Abstract: Teacher adoption of educational innovation frequently involves in taking risks and having a vision of trying something new. Some teachers seem to have a higher level of propensity for embracing the novelty associated with educational innovation. Building on our work to empirically document the behaviours associated with K-12 teacher engagement with educational innovation, we developed an instrument to measure their level of willingness to consider changes in instructional approaches and curricular choices. We administered the instrument along with several other measures to over 400 K-12 educators engaged in a professional development program designed to enhance teacher capacity to adopt educational innovations. We found a number of personal and professional variables to be associated with propensity to adopt educational innovation and developed a structural equation model to verify the relationships. We also found the pre- and post-professional development tour participants experienced significant increases in all but one of our measures. We discuss our results in the context of teaching in schools and the implications for teacher and organisational change.

Keywords: educational innovation; innovation indicators; K-12 teachers; professional development; teacher engagement; teacher development; K-12 education; structural equation modelling; SEM; schools.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIIE.2015.074704

International Journal of Innovation in Education, 2015 Vol.3 No.1, pp.45 - 61

Received: 30 Oct 2015
Accepted: 21 Dec 2015
Published online: 14 Feb 2016 *

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