A Focus Group approach to School-based Educational Innovation: The Case of the Canary Islands in Spain

Résumé

This article is part of a wider research program that was carried out in all Spanish regions on the nature, impact and challenges of school-based educational innovation projects and processes. The study in the Canary Islands used focus groups with a wide representation of actors and stakeholders involved in school innovation projects. Participants acknowledge the regional government’s efforts in simplifying the procedures related to the allocation of grants to schools, which has widened the accessibility to these funds to many schools. However, the discourse of the participants in the focus groups clearly shows that the selection of priority areas in those calls for proposals is not consistent with the realities at the practitioner level, the resources and the time allocated are not sufficient, and the lack of solid monitoring and evaluation turns most of the innovation projects into weak and hardly sustainable rituals. Thus, education administrators can claim that funds are disbursed for education innovation but the majority of schools are not participating and they have no evidence on the outcomes of those investments. It could therefore be argued that there is a bureaucracy of education innovation but perhaps not yet a policy of education innovation in the Canary Islands.