Innovation Plans in Portuguese Schools: The Importance of the Aspects and Locus of Action on the Slow Path to Metamorphosis

Academic failure and social inequalities are becoming more prevalent in schools. While knowledge has evolved and society has undergone significant transformation, schools have largely remained structured around a uniform model applied indiscriminately to all. In Portugal, efforts were made to initiate change through the conceptualisation and implementation of innovation plans to alter the prevailing grammar of schooling, prompting an inquiry into whether these initiatives yielded the intended outcomes. To this end, a case study was conducted in two such schools, aiming to capture the perspectives, ideas, and perceptions of various stakeholders: students and teachers through questionnaires, coordinating teachers via narrative accounts, and school leaders through semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that the contexts of implementation, the scale of the initiative, and the number of schools involved significantly influence both practices and leadership outcomes. Nonetheless, despite these constraints, the innovation plans facilitated the emergence of more collaborative dynamics and the creation of more meaningful learning environments, wherein students assumed a more active role in their educational processes. The results further indicate that these innovation plans encountered obstacles rooted in entrenched professional and organisational cultures, which hindered profound changes in the structuring of teaching and learning practices.