An innovation foreign to the rest of its system tends to be rejected; lasting change needs a coordinated bundle of innovations.¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2000 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

"Innovation" here covers new technologies, teaching approaches and designs being introduced into a school, programme or organisation. The claim is about adoption and persistence, not about whether the innovation works where it is used.

Subclaims¶

q2 i? A single innovation that is foreign to the rest of the system may be rejected, and success depends on a coordinated bundle of innovations affecting several stakeholder groups that results in a coherent system after implementation. → Ellsworth 2000

Evidence¶

Ellsworth 2000¶

Ellsworth, James B. (2000). A Survey of Educational Change Models. ERIC Digest. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED444597

q2 · i? · review · r2

In its Succeeding Systemically section, the digest asserts, drawing on the classical change models, that "a single innovation (like a new technology or teaching philosophy) that is foreign to the rest of the system may be rejected" and that success depends on a coordinated bundle. This is the author's synthesis, not a tested result.

"Yet a single innovation (like a new technology or teaching philosophy) that is foreign to the rest of the system may be rejected, like an incompatible organ transplant is rejected by a living system. Success depends on a coordinated "bundle" of innovations-generally affecting several groups of stakeholders-that results in a coherent system after implementation."

Studies bearing on this claim¶

Does an innovation's adoption and effect depend on the rest of the system it enters, beyond the innovation itself? This table gathers the studies behind this claim and the 20 narrower claims that bear on it: 18 distinct studies (5 qualitative, 5 theoretical, 4 review, 2 design, 1 causal, 1 associational), q1–q2, 2 of 18 with an effect size coded. One row per study, codes as each entry records them; no effect is averaged and no verdict is drawn. Built by scripts/synthesize_claim.py from eval/synthesis/; a row that looks wrong is fixed on the claim it comes from.

Discussion¶

For a designer. A well-designed course, tool or practice can fail at adoption for reasons outside the design: it clashes with assessment, scheduling, incentives or other stakeholders' roles. The practical step is to identify what else in the system would have to change for the design to fit, and to plan those changes with it. Stakeholder Mapping and Theory of Change are the wiki's methods for that. See Ellsworth's Framework of Educational Change for the models that address each part of the problem.

What would strengthen it. The digest points to the empirical base without presenting it. The evidence would come from the underlying works, especially studies of implementation and diffusion, and from implementation research on how school reforms are sustained.

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