Supporting Innovation in Higher Education: How can Higher Education Support Innovative Practice of Teaching Staff

Educational institutions that want to successfully innovate the education they provide must synchronise organisational growth with educational growth. A Maturity Model can be useful for supporting innovation in education by providing an instrument for identifying successful teaching and learning practises by encouraging experimentation, collaboration and alignment with strategic goals. Although Maturity Models that can support staff in the process of innovating education are valuable, they are scarce. This phenomenological study explored the views of the Centre for Expertise in Learning and Teaching (CELT) staff on the readiness for innovation of the University of Twente (UT). We conducted a survey at the UT that targeted staff members who were actively involved in projects or teacher initiatives aimed at innovating education. The questionnaire consisted of 137 closed-ended multiple-choice questions (e.g., ‘Is teaching support guided by the latest research findings?’) with answers on a five-point scale (‘Not’, ‘Partly’, ‘Largely’, ‘Fully’, and ‘Don’t know’). The structure of the survey was based on the structure of the Maturity Model. The questions were divided into five themes: learning (processes that directly impact pedagogy), development (processes related to the creation and maintenance of resources), support (processes related to support and operational management), evaluation (processes related to evaluation and quality control through its entire lifecycle) and organisation (processes related to institutional planning and management). After an analysis of the survey results was conducted, the respondents were invited to reflect on the outcomes, share their insights, and suggest possible explanations of the results. In this paper, we present the maturity model results of the educational support staff and how these results could influence the impact of teachers’ innovative practices.