Estudio de casos e innovación educativa: un encuentro hacia la mejora educativa.

Abstract

Educational innovation, its meaning and its need is a complex task where its definition and its practice are determined by the approach adopted, by the meaning and purposes that we give to education. In an attempt to facilitate this task, two positions of (educational) innovation stand out. On one hand, a simplistic, narrow and mercantilist perspective that responds to the law of supply and demand. On another hand, critical, ethical, and equitable perspective; briefly, an innovation with a humanist vision. From this perspective, educational innovation refers to changes that educational practices undergo to meet the special and complex student's needs. These socio-cultural transformations lived by the students must be understood from the principles of justice and equity. Nevertheless, educational innovation is part also of the neoliberal and technocratic discourse, which it defines as replicable products and methods. Therefore, and after all that said, we understand educational innovation as a proposal based on research and, specifically, on case studies as a way of doing situated research. These offer the possibility to reach a comprehensive and deep knowledge of the particular educational problems. These offer the possibility to reach a comprehensive and deep knowledge of the particular educational problems, but without forgetting the common ones, to carry out an educational innovation: transforming, emancipating and professionalizing; contextual and original; communitarian and collaborative; processual, impacting and relevant; of quality and rigorous.