JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL INNOVATIONS
Year:2006 | Volume:5 | Issue:15|Papers Count:7

Diachronic study of the development and expansion of the educational innovations in the West proves the resistance against the aforementioned innovations. That is to say, the addressees of educational innovations including those in charge of the education system, school principals, teachers, and even the students’ parents and the students themselves resist and deny the necessity of innovation and such activities in education. This is due to their unfamiliarity with the inevitability of adopting creative attitudes and so like, beside lack of preparedness. In facing the recent resistances, Western scholars have recommended cultural and educational sub-structuring, allocation of acceptable amounts of investment and so like.Studying the obstacles and problems confronted by the Iranian educational innovators makes the point evident that these innovators not only face problems similar to their colleagues' in the rest of the world, but they also have other problems that sometimes end their innovations in stalemate due to the special socio-cultural circumstances in Iran. Through this paper, the aforementioned problems are discussed at three levels: the whole society, the middle rank and the lowest level of the educational system.

The non-stop scientific, cultural, and economical changes in the current world and the status and problems of education in Iran are in such way that they necessitate certain needs for innovation in education in our country. The important issue that has not been paid attention to in our country is the question “which group of experts and scientists in education and psychology and with what psychological characteristics are able to create new thoughts for educational innovation in Iran?” Based on the philosophy of scientific transcendent wisdom and by relying on the fundamental assumption that transcendent wisdom, broad knowledge, and the researcher’s matured scientific character are the main ground-makers for scientific innovation, it has been tried in this article to state, review, and analyze the researchers’ psycho-cognitive characteristics and its indications in educational innovations. This is done with the help of a newly designed philosophy (called "scientific transcendent wisdom") as well as a designed research method of deep and all sided recognition of the central phenomena of the subject of study, which we call the “authentic creative research method". As an example in this approach, the basis for innovation in teaching healthy thinking has been offered to the students by relying on transcendent wisdom, objective knowledge (the brain physiology, psychology, and education of thinking), and matured scientific character of the researcher.The subtitles of the article include: 1) Stating the problem. 2) Innovation in education. 3) Philosophical, scientific, and personal character of the researcher as the basis for educational innovations. 4) The authentic creative research method for studying complicated psycho-educational phenomena. 5) Transcendent wisdom: the essence of national and religious Iranian identity for giving meaning to life. 6) The philosophy of science and objective knowledge in educational innovation. 7) Teaching healthy thinking: An example of applying objective knowledge in educational innovation. 8) The barriers on getting use of objective knowledge in educational innovation. 9) The meaning of matured scientific character. 10) List of references.

This paper tries to examine the significance of various theories and styles of management in creating innovations in an organization. Therefore, we firstly analyze the positive and negative factors from the standpoint of different theories, from classical to the systematic, judicial, circumstantial, learner organization, and chaos theory. We then discuss in detail the significance, role, and impact of each of these theories on producing thought and enriching the talents of the personnel. The studies show that in having an innovative manager and personnel are not enough in order to create innovations in an organization. Besides these two factors, the structure, strategy, environment, measures and organizational life cycle, the controlling power on human resources, culture, attitude, and style of management should persuade innovation and support it.It will be shown that the systematic and cooperative systems, specially the theory of learning organization and cooperative and empowering styles in creating innovation by the personnel of the organization, are more efficient than other theories and styles. The nature and concept of learning organization, and cooperative and empowering styles help the personnel of an organization to get a joint understanding of the strategic thinking, and also share their knowledge and experiences. Moreover, they motivate the organization personnel to get together, gain a consistent and logical action and provide the infrastructures for innovation and change in the organization through group thinking.

The process of communication has played a great role in "promotion of educational innovations". Communication channels may have interpersonal or mass media nature or may stem from local or transnational sources. The present research shows that the mentioned different channels play different roles in promoting innovations in the educational system. Mass media rapidly expand their audience and while disseminating information, move and change weaker attitudes. When promoting educational innovations, mass media and transnational channels become more important for information while interpersonal and local channels are more effective in the phase of satisfaction. Mass media and transnational channels are relatively more important than interpersonal and local channels for the expensive early adaptation compared to the expensive late adaptation. In developing countries like Iran, a combination of mass media and interpersonal communications is the most effective way to reach people to promote new ideas and encourage them to take advantage of educational innovations. It seems that this issue has practical applications. In some regions ideological leaders have maintained their past roles among their followers.The acceptance levels of innovation include awareness, encouragement, decision, and cooperation. This research aims to determine the relationship between use of communication channels (mass and personal) by teachers and acceptance of educational innovations. For this reason, a questionnaire comprising of 42 questions has been given to teachers. The results that were obtained through 390 questionnaires – filled by teachers of Tehran province high schools in 2003-04 – indicate that:1. There is direct relationship between use of mass communication channels by teachers and taking advantage of educational innovations; 2. There is no significant relationship between use of individual communication channels by teachers and their willingness to avail of those innovations;3. There is reverse relationship between use of mass communication channels by teachers and their getting-along and cooperation with new educational ideas;4. There is direct relationship between use of personal communication channels and cooperation; and5. There is no significant relationship between use of mass communication channels by teachers and their participation in the study.

This is the age of permanent and immediate change in different aspects of human life. These changes have consequences for education and the education system needs innovation and change in order to be consistent with these transformations and facing their challenges. Therefore researches, studies, and projects are done that search for ways and strategies to modify the learning environment and to improve the performance of the education system. The specialists and policy makers mainly attend to the technical adaptation of innovations with today's knowledge. In other words, they try to fit the ways and strategies – designed technically and scientifically well - with the needs and problems. This effort is valuable in itself; however, it is not the entire job. What is neglected and less attended is the social adaptation of innovations; i.e., the way of establishing the innovative projects in the body of education system and their entry in the school and class. In other words, the “how” of diffusion and successful dissemination of an innovation is important, because this is at a higher level of technical adaptation of innovation and on this basis it is more or less neglected in our education system, up till today?The examination of change in the Iranian education system shows mostly that, the social adaptation of innovations with reconstruction and modification of the country's education system has not been considered at all and most of the innovations are imposed on the body of the education system according to circular letters and orders. It is as if innovation is a piece of mechanical set that is easily changed with the worn out piece. Therefore, most of the time its degree of success in terms of entry to schools, classes and the students’ teaching-learning process is little and sometimes a failure. On the other hand, the innovative projects are designed scientifically and technically well or at least tried to be so according to the experts.Dealing with the social adaptation of innovations, this paper presents a pattern for the diffusion of innovations in the education system in Iran. This pattern, which is a demand-based one and attending to the social condition of dissemination of innovations and presenting the criteria and conditions for their execution at school, establishes the base for the acceptance and execution of innovations on group decisions at school that involve the following stages:producing innovationmodifying and fittingdissemination and informingacceptance, preparation of schools and demandinvestigating the school demandsupporting the schools that want innovationfeedback and modification

Today the analysis and review of ‘creativity in education’ are considered by researchers and education planners. Educational systems can develop or destruct creativity in students through aims, programs contents, and other educational factors. Here is where the teachers have key roles.This article discuses creativity as an instructional approach and surveys creative learning theories and models including Runco, Chand (1995) and Derringer (1983). It then notices teacher's creativity training in general and in Iran (Hossieni 1381). This is examined through two studies.The main part of the program is a model of creativity development with essential dimensions: Social-environmental, emotional-cognitive, reflective, instructional, and physical.Part of this survey studies effects of model on teachers’ skills.Analysis of information through T-test shows positive effect of program and confirms the hypotheses of this semi-experiment survey. The feedbacks by teachers about the change in their operation in class imply that the model is useful.