Revisiting the Inquiry Question: Innovation as a Working Concept (Battiste, 2013; Bender, 2022; Borsheim-Black et. al, 2014; Martin, 1996; Mueller et. al, 2012)

This week, I am revisiting the inquiry question implicitly threading these blog posts together. As a reminder, the question was: To what extent does "innovation" mean a replacement of convention? In the context of my New Media 10 course, how can I redefine "innovation" to mean, instead, a strategic/ sensitive synthesis of the "old" with the "new?" My intent is to combine our course readings, plus the additional articles integrated into these blog posts, to come to more conclusive (at least for now) findings.

This particular entry will focus on that first question, which was how to redefine innovation. My second post will respond specifically to my New Media 10 course. Through this course, I came to define innovation as the following: a personally-meaningful, personally-novel problem-solving. That is, the continuing process of creating a new solution to an existing issue, where "new" means new to the user/ agent.

For some time, I struggled to figure out how this definition could align with the module in which we read Martin's (1996) discussion on cultural wealth, and how I connected that to discussions on diversity in canonical literature (Bender, 2022; Borsheim-Black et. al, 2014) and Indigenous perspectives in education (Battiste, 2013). That post can be found here: https://pme811kaitlin.blogspot.com/2022/07/on-martins-1997-cultural-wealth.html.

I think my definition could still stand, insofar as Battiste (2013), Bender (2022), Borsheim-Black et. al (2014) speak to the "problem-solving" section. That is, in order for innovation to occur, one must not just consider what is important to them (which, for all we know, could be the upholding of Eurocentric narratives that silence other perspectives), but the recognition of "problems" and "existing issues."

Maybe I'm overthinking it, but then I start to worry about my definition being too broad, and allowing for flexible interpretations (to suit one's own stance). 

Then again, is a strong definition something which is exceedingly narrow and specific? I'm starting to wonder how to create a definition which is broad enough to encapsulate the whole, and yet narrow enough to offer a precise understanding. 

But I do feel that innovation should be important to the individual, and novel to him/her/ them. In my opinion, these are what drive the process of innovation. I spoke before about Mueller et. al's (2012) article on the bias against creativity, and how it reminded me of people's comments not to reinvent the wheel. That post can be found here: https://pme811kaitlin.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-bias-against-creativity-mueller-et.html. To expand now on that post, I feel that those who "reinvent the wheel" can be those who have personal, vested interest in a given field - i.e., "important to the individual." 

My next step, in addressing this working definition in context of our course, will be to consider how we can apply innovation to my New Media 10 course. That will be my next blog post! Thanks for reading.

References:

Battiste, M. (2013). Chapter 5: Animating Ethical Trans-Systemic Education Systems. In Decolonizing education : nourishing the learning spirit (pp. 101–124). Purich Publishing Limited. 

Bender, G. (2022). Things (Don’t Quite) Fall Apart: Exploring the Diversity Insertion in the Secondary ELA Canon. Changing English, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2022.2081131

Borsheim-Black, Macaluso, M., & Petrone, R. (2014). Critical Literature Pedagogy: Teaching canonical literature for critical literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult  Literacy, 58(2), 123–133. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.323

Martin, J.R. (1996). There’s too much to teach: Cultural wealth in an age of scarcity. Educational Researcher, 25(2), 4–16  

Mueller, J.S., Melwai, S., & Goncalo, J.A. (2012). The bias against creativity: Why people desire but reject creative ideas. Psychological Science, 23(1), 13–17. doi: 10.1177/0956797611421018