A framework for teaching educators to teach innovation

There is a building consensus among policymakers and industry stakeholders that the future economic wellbeing of European societies relies on peoples’ innovative skills. Thus universities must educate graduates who have the capabilities to be innovative and entrepreneurial (I&E). As an answer to these challenges, three Danish universities in the Copenhagen area have taken the initiative to develop a course for educators at the three institutions that will provide the necessary skills to teach innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) to their students. In this paper, we present a framework for the course in the form of a possible conceptual basis for teachers of I&E, that will enable them to interpret the meaning of I&E in their own discipline, and design teaching and learning activities that will support student development of I&E capabilities. In the paper, we present a framework for the course in the form of a conceptual basis for teachers of I&E.
The elements will be:
• A terminology clarification in terms of a means to distinguish creativity, design, innovation, and entrepreneurship, based on Peirce’s terms of the potential, the actual, and the general.
• A presentation of three conceptualisations of I&E in engineering education, which should be taken into account when designing teaching and learning activities to foster I&E skills.
• The critical educational potential: How academic skills can be brought into play in relation to a user group, and the necessity to consider the consequences of the users’ intended and non-intended use of the innovation.
• Teaching for innovation with the intension for students to develop innovative skills or teaching through innovation with the intention for students to learn the disciplinary knowledge through innovative processes.
• How does I&E relate to the disciplinary knowledge, and what is I&E in a given discipline?
• The relation between disciplines and trans-disciplinary skills
• Learning to teach innovation through innovation of teaching: A central element of the course is that teachers should go through an innovative process in which they create and implement a course unit teaching trough or for innovation - for their own students.
• Entrepreneurship is addressed through the notion of effectuation: Focus on partnership and exploit contingencies.
• I&E capabilities: We present a core set of capabilities necessary to possess in order to be able to innovate and to be entrepreneurial.