GEMS Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education Partner to Drive Innovation-Led Teaching

GEMS Education has collaborated with Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero – a world-renowned research centre devoted to examining facets of human potential – to participate in a study that explores innovation and inquiry-driven professional development for teachers. 

Over the last 18 months, seven GEMS schools participated in Creating Communities of Innovation (CCI) – a multi-year year study pursuing new approaches to educational innovation with teachers and administrators. 

Helping teachers create an overall learning experience for students, this partnership will equip educators with the skills necessary to support the development of learner’s skills that matter most in today's complex, global, and interconnected world. 

Dino Varkey, Chief Executive Officer, GEMS Education, said: “The UAE, especially Dubai, is committed to driving growth by incorporating innovation as a key pillar of its economy. Partnering with a prestigious institution like the Harvard Graduate School of Education will play an instrumental role towards achieving the UAE Vision 2021 as dictated by His Highness Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. 

“By working closely with Project Zero, we can produce work that serves to inspire our students and leads the way in equipping young people with the education, skills and dispositions that they need to succeed in a rapidly changing, globalised, and increasingly more complex world,” added Dino. 

The main objective of the CCI study is to explore how innovation and inquiry-driven teacher professional development can be developed and sustained both within and across schools.

Teachers have focused on innovation-driven projects ranging from transformative curricula to thinking new frameworks. 

In the process, teachers and administrators will develop valuable inquiry and design thinking skills, familiarity with new pedagogical frameworks, and the motivation and confidence to become agents of change in their schools. 

Edward Clapp, Harvard Graduate School of Education, said: “Through our collaboration with GEMS educators and school administrators in the UAE, the CCI project has begun to develop an exciting framework for supporting innovation within education. By pursuing “inquiry-driven innovation through networked professional development”, we have found that both individual and more group-based outcomes have accrued to our participating practitioners and their schools.” 

The key activities in phase one include developing new digital and face to face CCI tools to support teachers to become inquiry-driven innovators and conducting research into the processes by which teachers shift their mindsets toward innovation. The GEMS Innovation, Research and Development (IRD) team will continue to focus on investigating the kinds of systems and structures needed to help teachers take risks, try out new ideas, and exercise agency through innovation initiatives. 

Teachers will continue to work with the GEMS IRD team to integrate learnings from CCI into their professional development and teacher certification programs, and including developments within our digital ecosystem.