Teachers' Views on Innovative Processes in Schools of Latvia

Orienting society toward sustainable development is impossible without the development of a teacher into a creative person with his/her individual style of activity and thinking. This cannot be achieved without a continuous and systematic professional development that promotes innovation. Great hopes are placed on innovations, they are considered to be a reliable driving force for development. The research emphasizes the importance of identifying what teachers think about innovations in education and their own position in relation to innovative activity. Evolutionary Model, Innovative Milieu Model, and Propulsion Model of Creative Contributions can be applied within a context of presented study. Eight teachers (four teachers with a student/learning-centred orientation towards teaching and four teachers with content-centred orientation towards teaching), who worked at different schools, were interviewed in October and November 2006. Ettlie and O'Keefe's scale of attitude to innovations was used as the basis during the interview. The research revealed the most important factors hampering teachers' motivation for innovative activity and pedagogical regularities and criteria for stimulating innovations.