The Permanent Importance of the Subjective Reality of Teachers During Educational Innovation: A Concerns-Based Approach

In the present contribution, the question of the conditions under which innovations appear to succeed stands central. Such objective conditions as organizational structure, technological possibilities, and budgets are clearly important for innovations to succeed. Of particular interest here, however, are, the concerns of teachers and the role that these concerns play in the innovation process. A plea is made for increased attention to the individual questions, needs, and opinions that arise among teachers in response to innovations. Concerns are presented as indicators of the subjective realities of teachers and, at times, the expression of ambivalence with regard to the innovation in question. After sketching the relevant theory, we show that increased attention is needed to the involvement of teachers and, thereby, their concerns with regard to even such recent innovations as adaptive teaching. This need is illustrated on the basis of the research material we have collected over the past few years. The data show, among other things, that teachers at different stages in the innovation process express different types of concerns. Clear attunement of innovation policy to those (possibly subjective) factors influencing the implementation process is thus seen as a necessity. Among these factors are the framework of phases in the innovation, the scale of the innovation, the individual orientations of the teachers involved in the innovation, and the match between the orientations of the teachers and the concerns elicited by the innovation.