How can we develop teachers’ innovative capacity to drive complex educational change? A scoping review

Successful innovation in schools is often complex and depends on the innovative capacity present at multiple levels of the school organization, yet, a clear conceptualization of the individual innovative capacity (IIC) of teachers (how they cope with and guide change) remains underdeveloped. Drawing on a scoping review, we identified and brought together a set of competencies that are frequently associated with teachers’ capacity to contribute to educational change: entrepreneurship, creativity, resilience, and inquisitiveness. Rather than presenting these as the definitive elements of IIC, our results represent a first step in unpacking the concept and offering insight into its possible content. While the term innovative capacity is not used consistently across international contexts, our synthesis shows that combining separate, yet related, concepts can help create a more comprehensive understanding of how teachers can develop the competences needed to lead change. We propose that this integrative perspective offers a useful foundation for future research and discussion on teachers’ IIC in relation to complex school-level change.