How Can Educational Innovations Become Sustainable? A Systematic Review of the Empirical Literature

• In Event: From Partnerships to Sustainable Change in Education

Abstract

In the literature there is a great variety in definitions and identified critical features of sustainability of educational innovations. This review aims to provide a definition and overview of the range of factors influencing the sustainability of educational innovations. A systematic review was performed in which electronic databases were searched for peer reviewed articles, published between 2002 and 2017. Based on results of 44 publications, the following definition could be constructed: “Sustainability refers to the process of integrating the innovation’s core aspects in organizational routines that are adaptive to ongoing work, with continuing improvement of results”. Four categories of factors influencing sustainability of educational innovations were distinguished: school organizational, innovation, individual, and context characteristics.

Authors

• Anne Tappel, University of Twente

• Kim Schildkamp, Universiteit Twente

• Cindy Louise Poortman, University of Twente

• Rilana Prenger, Saxion University of Applied Sciences