Innovation at KA

Our Innovation School provides all our pupils with an innovation-focused experience. The work pupils engage in within the Innovation School involves navigating the messiness of the creative process from inception to completion by prototyping and testing.  Pupils are set a challenge, problem to solve or product to design.  They are challenged to learn in new ways: analytical thinkers are inspired to explore their creative selves, while creative learners expand their capacity to think and learn analytically. We focus on hands-on problem solving, encourage an inventive culture, promote peer teaching and learning, and cultivate pupils’ curiosity.

Our pupils spend time in the Innovation School from their very first day at School in Junior 1.

In Junior School, our Innovation School Coaches work with our class teachers to ensure that the Innovation school design projects are themed with current class topics.  This offers real depth of understanding even for our youngest learners.

Our older pupils from S3-S6 can select Innovation as one of their subject choices – separate from the usual National 5 or Higher subjects.

Older pupils are taught within the multidisciplinary framework of the design Studio unlike more traditional subjects, with the aim of them acquiring a highly personalised understanding of the world and how they relate to it and can fully participate in it. They develop multiple solutions to problems and learn the importance of moving from one solution to the next, combining, exploring and thinking of the possibilities. They also learn how to change their perspective on an issue quickly. They learn that solutions depend on perspective, and only by understanding an issue from multiple perspectives can they fully explore the terrain of possibilities.

Most Innovation Studio projects are done in a team. Pupils quickly have to learn how to work together, listen to other people’s ideas, sell their teammates on their own ideas, find each other’s strengths, and assign project components based on those strengths.

When we fail at something, we might give up and move on to something new. However, Innovation Studio is teaching the process of “iteration” — the repetition of a process and the willingness to refine concepts. Pupils get feedback from staff and community partners, and continue to refine their project during the term. This is such a HUGE part of the learning process — to realise that solutions often require a willingness to take risks and to try different things.

Pupils are tasked with documenting their work, publicly presenting their projects, accepting constructive feedback, and using that feedback to improve their work. They are consistently developing their creative critical thinking skills as they work through multiple iterations of their project.

Pupils present their projects to each other at the end of the studio, to staff, at meetings with community partners, and to school visitors.  The ability to communicate effectively and confidently is a valuable skill.