Professor Sir Jim McDonald, David Istance and David Kirk

The School of Education recently welcomed David Istance, senior analyst from the OECD, to deliver its annual David Stow Lecture.  In reflecting on innovation, learning and teaching David proposed a framework for innovative pedagogies, advocating that they ought to take five elements into account.  The audience of approximately 160 teachers, students, policy makers, and University staff heard how innovative pedagogy demands an holistic approach that carefully considers learning content in relation to knowledge, skills and values.  Schools’ and learners’ contexts must also be addressed in thinking about the appropriateness and effectiveness of the pedagogy while ensuring that the approaches taken can be embedded and sustained.  David stressed the importance of expertise in pedagogy rather than poorly-implemented applications.  David’s current work focuses on Innovative Pedagogies for Powerful Learning, with a report of the same name due to be published at the end of 2017.

David’s two days in the School were spent with colleagues from the School and our school partners discussing our work in relation to the Scottish Government’s policy agenda and David’s 2015 OECD report Improving Schools in Scotland, an OECD Perspective, a report commissioned by the Scottish Government ‘to inform the ongoing development of education policy, practice and leadership in Scotland’. 

Colleagues appreciated the valuable opportunity to engage with David and discuss his observations and insights over the almost forty years he has worked with the OECD.

David Istance