Research and Policy: Grassroots Inquiry: Reconsidering the Location of Innovation

This column explores a grassroots approach to educational innovation as an alternative to the dominant entrepreneurial model, whereby market solutions are thought to be the best mechanism to spur change. We contend that there is a need to delink automatic connections between innovation and entrepreneurship and to reimagine the location and nature of innovation. Drawing on postcolonial theory and various examples of grassroots communities of inquiry, we highlight how practitioners, parents, and students develop creative ways to address issues relevant to their immediate contexts of teaching and learning. Our model of grassroots innovation espouses cooperation, rather than merely competition, and involves inquiry processes that value a diversity of perspectives, especially from those most directly impacted by educational policies and practices.