Abstract:

The issue of school innovativeness has in recent years become one of the most important challenges of educational management and leadership in most educational systems aiming at social reforms and development. Policy makers and change agents look for factors that may help in raising potential of innovation and many of them see chances in school reforms and innovative ways of education of young generation.

More specifically factors of innovativeness in education may be seen on three different levels: system, group and individual level. At system level these are such factors as, for example: legal regulations, material resources of schools, the structure of the education system, its flexibility and openness to changes. At the group level factors like: the type of leadership, the ways of group work at school and their diversity. Third, individual level concerns factors such as personalities of teachers, their creativity but also their attitudes and ways of professional thinking.

Paper focuses on the third level, asking the question about importance of teachers’ thinking on innovativeness in school context. It presents results of a study carried out with participation of a group of teachers from Polish schools of different type who answered three main questions: How they understand and define school innovativeness and innovative work with students ? What are examples of their innovative work with students? What are examples of innovative work with students they know from their colleagues?

Presented results are used to formulate some recommendations for teacher training and professional continuing development as well as school management and leadership.

Keywords:

Educational management, educational leadership, school innovativeness.