Social innovation and educational innovation: a qualitative review of innovation’s evolution

Abstract

The paradigm of innovation has evolved over the last decades worldwide. The old conception of innovation as technological change has become more diversified and specialised. Current debates express the need to provide a holistic view of innovation, with its pros and cons, including all dimensions of innovation in society and different fields. This paper consists of a qualitative review focusing on three concepts: ‘innovation’, ‘social innovation’ and ‘innovation in education’. This research includes a historical analysis within 1939–2019 as the base period of analysis. This article is based on 108 different sources, which were carefully selected. The analysis was carried out with content analysis in our main sample. This paper contributes to our understanding of innovation more holistically, by discovering how innovation is understood and used, but also by looking at the different stages it has gone through in historical debates and evolutionary trends. This article presents different perspectives on innovation over time and helps to recognise the evolution of the concept of innovation and the emergence of social innovation as a field of its own. Furthermore, the relevance of innovation in the field of education is presented and current debates on the understanding of innovation are situated.

Keywords:

• Innovation
• social innovation
• innovation in education
• paradigm
• review
• evolution trends

Acknowledgments

We presented an earlier version of this paper at the IV ISA Forum of Sociology 2021 and we welcome feedback from the commentators. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their relevant comments to improve this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karina Maldonado-Mariscal

Karina Maldonado-Mariscal is a senior researcher at the TU Dortmund University, Social Research Centre. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the Humboldt University Berlin and was postdoctoral researcher at the ETH Zurich, where she led projects on social innovations in education and on vocational education. She led research projects for sustainable development at a Mexican Ministry and co-founded a governmental start-up initiative in Mexico “Reto Zapopan”. She works on several projects funded by the European Union and is a member of the European School of Social Innovation and co-chair of the Europe and Latin America Section at LASA. Her past research projects were about social innovation in education in Brazil and Mexico, innovation policy in Mexico, social inequality in Germany, vocational education and training, and innovation in science, through science shops and research transfer between university, government and civil society.

Iwan Alijew

Iwan Alijew is a PhD student at the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland. He received a bachelor's degree in business from the University of St.Gallen, a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Zurich and a master's degree in philosophy from the University of St Andrews. He is interested in moral and political philosophy, business studies and business ethics.