Developing Innovation In Students

Powerful Excerpt From "Graduating All Students Innovation-Ready"

By Tony Wagner

Some argue that innovators like Steve Jobs are born and not made, and so the schooling they get doesn’t matter. However, I have come to understand that most young people can be taught to innovate in whatever they do. We are all born curious, creative, and imaginative. And the best schools—from pre-K to graduate school—continue to develop these capabilities in students. They do so not by delivering more-of-the-same education, but rather a very different education. Schools like High Tech High or the New Technology High Schools have established reputations for producing highly innovative graduates. But what and how these schools teach are radically at odds with conventional education.

These schools focus primarily on teaching students skills and not merely academic content, including critical thinking and problem-solving, effective oral and written communication, and many of the other survival skills, such as collaboration and initiative, which I described in my last book, The Global Achievement Gap. They do so by engaging students in rich and challenging academic content—and yet, content mastery is not the primary objective of their courses. In all of the classes, students must use academic content to pose and solve problems and generate or answer complex questions. Students are required to apply what they have learned and show what they know. Frequently, they do this work in teams.

Tony Wagner is currently the innovation education fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard University. Previously, he was the founder and co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This Commentary was adapted by Mr. Wagner forEducation Week from his recently published book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change The World (Scribner, 2012). His website is www.tonywagner.com.