What can Belgrade Aviation Academy teach us about innovation?

I have the honour to accompany and mentor two exciting projects that have been taking place at the Aviation Academy in Belgrade during the past weeks (The Collaborative, authentic and personalised pedagogies in initial and adult vocational learning in Serbia assignment). Observing two teams planning, implementing and evaluating their projects showed me once again how important cooperation, mutual trust and institutional support are.  In each case, the initiative for the involvement for the project came from the school head, but it was the teachers who chose to participate and who were allowed to experiment and develop their own innovative plans for change. They had the autonomy, but also the material as well as moral support. The teachers in these projects supported one another in their project teams but they also received support from the school pedagogue/counsellor. Both projects received some additional resources from GIZ. As a mentor, I also tried to provide continuous opportunities for discussion and reflection on open issues and possible solutions.

It seems that these were important conditions that enabled the teacher to develop and implement their ideas. Yet, this is not the whole picture. As one of my entries in the project diary says: “During our session in April we discussed the teachers’ teamwork and collaboration. Despite a very complex design of the project, the teachers said that it proceeds smoothly. They believed that the success is the result of their mutual support and good working climate at the school: “If one of us doesn’t have the time to complete a task, the other does it instead. We trust and support each other, and the director supports us.” They agreed that their involvement in the project has also been an intensive professional growth for them, and they expressed the will to do more project work also in the future. They were encouraged by the students’ enthusiasm and quality work.” During my visit to the school just before Easter, I also learned that the aviation is one the government priorities, which is why there has also been considerable investment in the training centres as well as in the development of new qualifications in the aviation field. Additionally, the schools were given the opportunity to implement a model of dual vocational education programmes, combining school and work-based learning.

I recently published research which explored how well schools in Slovenia and Lithuania responded to the challenge of CoVid. The importance of the school heads’ role in the process of changing ways of operation at schools was once again proved to be of the utmost importance. Successful school heads created an atmosphere of shared common goals, supported the processes of adapting to new challenges, and encouraged finding solutions. Moreover, in more successful schools the education process proved to  be  not  just  a  matter  of  the  individual  teachers;  learning  challenges  were  addressed  collectively, with the help of each other. It seems that informal connections among the teachers were important and positively influenced their learning and the culture of collegiality among them.

The success of innovation at Belgrade Aviation Academy seems to be due to a conjunction of enabling factors: a favourable national policy framework; a supportive leadership and a culture that favours improvement at school level, and, at teacher level, the readiness to try out new pedagogies, to collaborate and access to pedagogical support, mentoring and training. In addition, these projects were supported by additional tools and materials and received external encouragement and recognition by an international agency, the ETF. It remains to be seen which of these factors were necessary or sufficient – either taken alone or in combination with one another.