Exchanging curriculum ideas for 21st century education: Australian ‘technologies’ and Icelandic ‘innovation education’

Abstract

Creative thinking and creative action are considered important competencies in the world today. In Iceland, creativity was presented as one of six fundamental issues in education in 2011. One approach to enhance creative thinking and creative action competencies has been to use the methods of innovation and entrepreneurial education, which have been developing in Iceland and other countries over the last 20 years. Australia has developed a curricular area called ‘Technologies’ which is in many ways similar to parts of innovation education in Iceland. In this article I present my research on how teachers in one primary school in Brisbane, Australia, implement elements of innovation education in their students’ school work and how they categorize such education. The research question I seek to answer is: How does innovation education, as categorized in Iceland, emerge in school practice in one Australian primary school? This paper describes a qualitative case study of Northgate State School in Brisbane, Australia. Field visits and seven interviews were carried out in September 2014. Before the interviews the author gave a presentation for the teachers about innovation education (IE) as it is practiced in Iceland. The findings show that many elements of IE are present in the practice of the school. The national curriculum, state curriculum (Curriculum to classroom: C2C), school culture, school principal, and professional theories of the teachers all inf luence how and where IE emerges in the curriculum in practice.