Educational Research

ISSN: 0013-1881 (Print) 1469-5847 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rere20

How educational ideas catch on: the promotion

of popular education innovations and the role of
evidence

Nathalie Carrier

To cite this article: Nathalie Carrier (2017) How educational ideas catch on: the promotion of
popular education innovations and the role of evidence, Educational Research, 59:2, 228-240, DOI:
10.1080/00131881.2017.1310418

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2017.1310418

Published online: 20 Jun 2017.

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Educational Research, 2017
VOL. 59, NO. 2, 228–240
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2017.1310418

How educational ideas catch on: the promotion of popular

education innovations and the role of evidence
Nathalie Carrier
OISE, University of Toronto, La Jolla, CA, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Background: Within the wider education industry, a large quantity Received 15 July 2016
of ideas, practices and products are routinely promoted as useful Accepted 15 March 2017
innovations. These innovations span many forms such as software
KEYWORDS
applications, open source courseware, online learning platforms and Educational innovation;
web 2.0 technologies. Coupled with this promotion, there is increasing practitioner professional
interest and debate around the possibilities that novel innovations can development; evidence-
have on changing education practice and providing more effective informed practice; content
learning solutions. The media plays an important role in facilitating analysis; knowledge
the travel of educational ideas: the advent of the Internet and social translation; education media
media technologies allows for an abundance of innovation to be
promoted and shared with and between educators, and, in classroom
settings, the increasing use of technologies such as tablets results
in the advertisement of numerous new education applications. For
the educator, there is the difficult challenge of knowing how to sift
through this material and separate those innovations that may hold
value for their classroom situation from those that have gained wide
appeal, but may or may not be substantiated.
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the persuasion
techniques used across a variety of documents promoting a selection
of popular education innovations of different types. Questions
included: (1) How are popular education innovations promoted in
the media? (2) What contributes to the appeal of these innovations?
and (3) What is the role of evidence in this process?
Design and Methods: The paper examines how seven innovations
of different types have been promoted in the mass, professional
and social medias through a content analysis (a research technique
used to code and interpret text) of 63 documents including non-
peer reviewed journal articles (education magazines and trade
publications), mass media outlet newspapers and online blog posts.
The content analysis involved inductively creating and labelling
sub-categories of six ‘persuasion criteria’: compatibility; accessibility;
practicality; evidence; credibility and appeal. The analysis performed
was not examining the worth of the innovations themselves, but
rather seeking to understand how the innovations were promoted.
Findings: The language that was used to promote the innovations
was often emotive or descriptive, rather than evidence-informed.
Documents tended to emphasise the appeal and credibility of
innovations over and above the evidence that supported, or did not
support, them. Where evidence was cited, it was usually anecdotal,

CONTACT Nathalie Carrier nat.carrier@utoronto.ca

© 2017 NFER
 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH  229

related to personal experiences, provided general statistics about

problems that the innovation sought to address, or presented
statistics related to use of the innovation.
Conclusions: The results of this study offer insight into why various
kinds of innovations, irrespective of whether or not they are supported
by an evidence base, nevertheless ‘catch on’. The study highlights the
need for practitioners to develop the evaluative skills to distinguish
evidence-based innovations that are effective, and of real value, from
those that may simply sound or look good.

Introduction
Within the ‘education industry’, it has become typical for a large quantity of ideas, practices
and products to be promoted as useful innovations. In current times, these take the form
of, for instance, software applications, open source courseware, online learning platforms
and web 2.0 technologies. There is much debate around the possibility that novel innovations
might change education practice and help to provide more effective learning solutions.
The growth of innovation can be seen in developments such as the rise of start-up incu-
bators (organisations that support and/or fund newly emerging companies that offer inno-
vative products, practices or services); philanthropic initiatives supporting choice and
entrepreneurship; and the growth of free-to-use and widely promoted programmes and
products that are available through the Internet and social media technologies. For the
educator, there is the difficult challenge of knowing how to sift through this material in order
to distinguish those innovations that may hold the most value for their classroom situation
from those that have wide appeal, but may or may not be substantiated.
There are many views, but little consensus, about what an innovation is, beyond the
notion that it involves something actionable and new. For the purposes of this paper
­innovations are defined as ideas, practices, products and services that change the system
into which they are introduced.
Based on a more detailed and extensive study (Carrier 2015), this paper reports on how
seven popular education innovations of different types have been promoted in the mass,
professional and social medias, drawing on six ‘persuasion criteria’ (compatibility, accessibility,
practicality, evidence, credibility and appeal) synthesised from the research-use and social
psychology literatures. The goal of the paper is to better understand the factors that con-
tribute to the popularity of educational innovations. It is based on three key research ques-
tions: (1) How are popular education innovations promoted in the media? (2) What contributes
to the appeal of these innovations? and (3), particularly pertinent to this special issue of
Educational Research, What is the role of evidence in this process?
Extensive research from communication science has shown the powerful effects that the
media can have on framing issues and influencing people’s views and concerns (Bryant and
Oliver 2008). This type of research is considerably more limited in the field of education,
however. By further understanding how educational innovations are promoted, this paper
offers insights as to why, irrespective of whether or not there is a research base, educational
innovations may be discussed and used widely by school practitioners, stakeholders, schools
and systems. The study highlights the need for educators to have access to opportunities
for further developing the professional skills required to evaluate educational ideas, practices,
230  N. CARRIER

products and services. The focus of this paper is in applying a conceptual framework that
includes persuasion criteria, in order to better understand the promotion of the different
innovations in various media forms; the paper does not focus on evaluating the effectiveness
or characteristics of the innovations themselves.

The movement of ideas and the role of the mass media

The question of how ideas flow and are retained in the social consciousness has captured
the interest of thinkers from a range of fields. A sampling of such theories includes the
following:

• from organisational theory, institutionalism explores why organisational forms tend to

look the same over space and time (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983);
• from the social psychological literature: the presence of idea habitats or environmental
cues, that assist in the likelihood that an idea will be remembered (Berger and Heath
2005);
• perspectives that compare idea movement metaphorically to natural science phenom-
ena, such as complex adaptive systems (e.g. Davis and Sumara 2009).

When exploring the travel of ideas, it is important to consider the characteristics that allow
better diffusion and capacity for take up. Rogers (1962) classic work on the diffusion of
innovation is often cited and used as a framework for studying the way that innovations
move and are adopted over time. Rogers synthesised 508 diffusion studies and created a
theory of innovation adoption, summarised in five stages as knowledge, persuasion, decision,
implementation and confirmation. Rogers also classified the qualities of an innovation that
made it likely to be adopted. These included: compatibility (ease of assimilation into an
individual’s life); simplicity (ease of use); trialability (ease of ‘trying out’/experimentation);
relative advantage (how improved the innovation is over its predecessor, if there was one);
and observability (the extent of visibility of the innovation to others). Several studies in edu-
cation have applied the lens of diffusion to understand the movement of an innovation over
time, including Frank, Zhao, and Borman’s (2004) study on the diffusion of computer tech-
nology, and Renzulli and Roscigno’s (2005) examination of charter school policy
implementation.
Scott (2003) synthesised research in this area and created five categories (or ‘institutional
carriers’) that facilitated the travel of ideas. These included: symbolic systems (such as media
and modes of communication); interpretation (the ways ideas are interpreted or decoded
by recipients); relational systems (such as interpersonal and social networks, the nature and
quality of ties between individuals and organisations); routines (patterns of human behav-
iour); and artefacts (materials that individuals use). Within the field of knowledge translation
in education (exploring how to better connect research ideas with policy and practice), a
number of studies have examined contexts for research use, such as the interpretation and
use of research by practitioners (Biddle and Saha 2002), contexts for research production,
such as the effective dissemination of research findings (Hemsley-Brown 2004), the impact
of research on practice (Nelson, Leffler, and Hansen 2009), and the role of ‘intermediary’
organisations that support linkages between producers and users (Honig 2004; Sharples
2013).
 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH  231

The focus of this paper is on the media, one such carrier that plays an important role in
facilitating the travel of ideas. The mass media takes various forms in order to reach a wide
audience. These include print, radio, television and film and the Internet. Various forms of
social media, or publicly available user-generated content that is often interactive in nature
(such as blogs, discussion boards and other online communication services), are also found
on the Internet. Social media allows for interaction between those who created the content
and consumers of that content (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010), and is a powerful new form to
extend ideas to a larger audience. The literature on the forms and effects of the media on
public opinion and belief is extensive (Bryant and Oliver 2008). The media has been shown
to play a significant role in the following areas:
• Agenda-setting, or the shaping of concerns of the public or peoples’ perceptions about
the relative importance of issues (McCombs 2013).
• Issue-framing, or how issues are packaged through the use of ‘arguments, information,
symbols, metaphors and images’ (Bryant & Oliver, p. 19) in a way that affects the way
people come to understand and react to these issues (e.g. Gamson and Modigliani
1987; de Vreese 2005).
• Persuasion, or the shaping what people know or believe (Nelson, Oxley, and Clawson
1997).

While the literature on the influence of the mass media on public opinion is bountiful, there
are relatively few empirical studies specific to the primary and secondary education levels
(up to 18 years) that analyse the role of the mass media in the promotion of ideas and its
influence on teachers’ judgments and decision-making about innovations. Scholarship in
education has explored the role of the mass media in the policy generation and implemen-
tation process (Warmington and Murphy 2004), the influence of popular media and the
importance of critical media education for students and educators in schools (Stack and
Kelly 2006), and ways of translating research findings into popular media (Woo 2008).
Because various forms of persuasion and evidence are used in the promotion of innovations
(Anderson and Herr 2011), the conceptual framework developed to underpin this study
draws on literature from the psychology of persuasion, as well as that from knowledge
translation.

Methods
The research reported in this paper is taken from an in-depth study (Carrier 2015) that
explores how educational innovations have been promoted in the mass, professional and
social medias. It involved a content analysis of non-peer reviewed journal articles (education
magazines and trade publications), mass media outlet newspapers and online blog posts.
In this way, the analysis performed was not examining the worth of the innovations them-
selves, but rather seeking to understand how the innovations were promoted. The innova-
tions were selected with the intention of identifying a variety of ideas, practices and products
referred to as ‘innovations’ that were of potential relevance and interest to classroom teach-
ers, that could be readily implemented in classrooms and that also met several criteria for
‘spread’ in either use or discourse. The innovations were identified through a variety of
sources, including online searching and expert recommendation. The selection procedure
included that of satisfying at least four of six criteria:
232  N. CARRIER

1.  Presence of either a Twitter hashtag or Facebook page.

2.  At least 10 blog entries and or/discussion Listservs and a Wikipedia entry.
3.  A minimum of three mass media outlet reports (at least one being a television
programme and at least one being a national newspaper).
4.  At least five articles of focus in major popular education periodicals.
5.  Over 100,000 ‘hits’ via an online search of the innovation name.
6.  A user base of at least 100,000 individuals or 10 schools or five school districts (only
if clear information was available).

Each innovation was a different type of popular educational idea, practice, product and/or
service. A brief general description of each of the seven innovations is given below:
Innovation A – resources including workshops, products (DVDs, books and videos) and
certifications founded on a brain-based approach;
Innovation B – a website offering thousands of free-to-use teaching resources and cur-
ricula, across grade levels and subject areas;
Innovation C – a website with a social media design offering collaborative tools for the
classroom;
Innovation D – an approach to writing that encourages students to write freely without
focussing attention on spelling;
Innovation E – resources offered to support pupils with a particular learning need;
Innovation F – a resource offering thousands of tablet applications for use in the classroom,
targeted towards teaching and learning;
Innovation G – a web resource offering brief video lesson clips with simple visuals online
free of charge, in several languages, across a range of subject areas.
Content relating to these innovations in the professional and mass media were chosen
because the documents provided by these sources tended to be communicated for a large
audience of practitioners, community stakeholders and others, and were often presented
in more accessible formats than research articles or reports targeted at an academic audi-
ence. These forms of media also involved a wide range of authorship (including practitioners,
freelancers, consultants and community stakeholders) and, therefore, were likely to reflect
a broad range of perspectives. The material about these innovations was often short, ‘glossy’,
and written to educate, persuade and possibly entertain. The material may, therefore, have
been more reflective of the popular and public discourses about the innovation.

Search and selection of the documents

In order to identify the documents to be reviewed, several comprehensive education and
newspaper archive databases and an internet search engine were used. The first search
included the following databases: Canadian Business & Current Affairs (CBCA) Education;
Proquest Education Journals; and the Education Resource Information Centre (ERIC).
Together, the three journal databases covered over 1020 popular education publishers at
all levels of education and in a range of subject areas, starting from 1966 (ERIC), and with
over 150 Canadian education periodicals (CBCA Education).
The second search used Proquest Newsstand, which contains extensive coverage of major
national and international newspaper titles such as The New York Times, The Washington
 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH  233

Post, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. A separate search for each of
the seven innovations was conducted in all three journal databases simultaneously, as well
as a separate search in Proquest Newsstand using the broad filter ‘anywhere’ in order to
locate all articles that mentioned the innovation. In the journal databases, the results were
filtered to trade publications and magazines (non-peer reviewed forms of professional
media). The search string and number of ‘hits’ for each search were then recorded.
The third search used an internet search engine to identify relevant blogs. Blogs were
chosen as one example of social media in order to see how an audience that would be likely
to include non-experts discussed the innovations and in order to understand the nature of
this discussion. In this search process, the following search string was used: innovation
name + ‘blog’.
Table 1 records the search process (string and number of ‘hits’ by search engine) for each
of the seven innovations.
The documents were selected at random in order to ensure a breadth of selection from
the search results. Three trade publications or magazines (from the three education search
databases), three newspaper articles (from Proquest Newsstand) and three blogs (identified
via an Internet search engine) for each of the seven innovations were selected, providing a
total of 63 documents. This paper examines only those documents that promoted the inno-
vation positively. The results were filtered through a random selection until documents were
found that met these two criteria:

1.  Specific focus on discussing the innovation or the idea behind the innovation (as
opposed to a passing mention, for instance).
2.  Active promotion of the innovation (while the document may have critiqued the
innovation, it took a persuasive stance advocating its use).

The rationale for focusing only on those documents that were positive about the innovations
was to better examine the promotion process – i.e. the strategies used to support and per-
suade use of the innovation. Of course, it is acknowledged that limitations of this approach
include the lack of scope this provided for the examination of documents that critiqued the
innovations, comparison of different types of strategy, or categorisation of all the kinds of
persuasion techniques used across large numbers of documents in a database. However,
for the purpose of this study – which was to learn about the positive promotion of innova-
tions and the techniques used – this method of random selection from a large representation
of documents in comprehensive databases was a procedure which allowed examination of
each promotional approach in depth.

Table 1. Media search–search strings and hits by innovation.

Innovation Innova- Innova- Innovation Innova- Innova- Innovation
A tion B tion C D tion E tion F G
Trade 127 37 136 117 14 636 143
Journals
Magazines 21 6 19 16 5 145 25
Blogs 81,600 (344) 89,800 (128) 2,130,000 41,500 40,700 5, 980,000 2,480,000
(256) (371) (303) (360) (311)
Newspapers 380 56 186 324 324 12,703 1075
Note: Results reflect the number of ‘hits’ found on the date and time of the search. The number listed in parentheses follow-
ing blogs are non-repetitive results as listed by an Internet search engine.
234  N. CARRIER

Conceptual framework
A thorough review of the literature on research use was undertaken, which particularly
focused on studies that considered teachers’ interpretation of educational research (Williams
and Coles 2007); how research can be communicated more effectively (Davies and Powell
2012); teachers’ specific preferences, needs and desires in terms of the format of presentation
of the research (Blamires, Field & Wilson, 2010); and the strong influences of informal social
networks on sharing practice (Daly 2012). The review was also informed by the social psy-
chology literatures on persuasion and influence (Briggs and Stuart 2006; Kahneman 2011).
Articles were identified through the authors’ online database searches, a bibliography devel-
oped by a university research team whose work focused on issues of knowledge translation
and expert recommendation. As a result of the review, a set of six ‘persuasion criteria’ was
generated by the author. The six criteria are listed as follows, with a short description related
to teachers’ use of research ideas in the knowledge translation literature:

Evidence – This refers to teachers’ assessment of the quality of the research support-
1.  
ing the innovation (Carrier 2015).
2.  Compatibility – Teachers tend to prefer research that is compatible with their prior
understanding and experience as an educator (Joram 2007).
3.  Practicality – Teachers tend to prefer research that is relevant to their current prac-
tice, where abstract principles are connected to detailed illustrations and practical
examples (Robinson, Hohepa, and Lloyd 2009).
4.  Accessibility – Teachers tend to prefer research that is presented in an accessible
way, for instance, with the assistance of summary statements, accessible and clear
writing, and an organised flow (Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in
Education (CUREE) 2007).
5.  Appeal – This refers to the overall appearance and appeal of the research: i.e. whether
it appears professional in format, personalised (that is, possible to relate to person-
ally), and/or fun (Davies and Powell 2012).
6.  Credibility –Teachers tend to prefer research from those organisations that they
know or have heard of, and research that is referred through informal rather than
formal networks (Nutley, Walter, and Davies 2007).

Analysis
The content about the seven innovations was organised electronically, using a content anal-
ysis process. This involved reading through each document, inductively generating catego-
ries according to each of the six persuasion criteria outlined above and organising examples
of these categories into an Excel document, grouping by innovation, and tallying the use of
each category. As would be expected, the documents were found to be authored by a range
of individuals, including researchers, consultants, professors, school practitioners, community
stakeholders and others. Each example within a document that provided a ‘fit’ with one of
the six persuasion criteria was summarised in bullet-point form, using language extracted
from the document. For consistent analysis across the documents, each example was
recorded under a separate summary bullet-point, regardless of whether the same example
or description was provided in a different place in the document. In order to ensure
 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH  235

consistency, sub-categories of each criterion were generated inductively and clearly labelled.
One person, the author, completed the coding. The number of bullet-points for each per-
suasion criterion, by innovation, was tallied.

Findings
Table 2 (below) records the number of times that each of the six persuasion criteria (com-
patibility, accessibility, practicality, evidence, credibility, appeal) were mentioned by document
type, innovation, and in total across all the documents/innovations.
Some key findings that emerged from the analysis are highlighted below:

Frequency of use of different persuasion criteria

• A focus on the appeal of the research emerged as the most widely used persuasion
technique, used across all document types and innovations (396 mentions) as well as
used most widely across four of the innovations.

Table 2. Frequency of use of different persuasion criteria by innovation and document type.
Persuasion Criteria
Document Compat-
Innovation Type ibility Credibility Evidence Practicality Accessibility Appeal Critiques
Innovation A TJ/Magazines 1 11 11 11 0 32 2
Blogs 1 4 2 2 0 14 0
Newspapers 1 14 5 0 0 13 0
Total 3 29 18 13 0 59 2
Innovation B TJ/Magazines 3 17 13 5 8 32 9
Blogs 1 1 2 1 5 20 0
Newspapers 1 15 8 1 2 16 3
Total 5 33 23 7 15 68 12
Innovation C TJ/Magazines 2 6 5 22 6 22 1
Blogs 0 12 2 20 2 11 0
Newspapers 2 12 5 12 1 11 0
Total 4 30 12 54 9 44 1
Innovation D TJ/Magazines 1 0 7 4 0 12 1
Blogs 2 3 3 1 0 23 1
Newspapers 1 4 3 0 0 12 2
Total 4 7 13 5 0 47 4
Innovation E TJ/Magazines 1 11 10 0 0 8 8
Blogs 0 5 6 0 0 7 3
Newspapers 1 7 8 0 0 4 2
Total 2 23 24 0 0 19 13
Innovation F TJ/Magazines 2 7 2 6 1 26 5
Blogs 0 3 3 0 6 12 4
Newspapers 2 15 1 11 10 26 4
Total 4 25 6 17 17 64 13
Innovation G TJ/Magazines 1 14 9 0 1 27 8
Blogs 1 7 8 0 3 31 1
Newspapers 3 15 11 0 5 37 6
Total 5 36 28 0 9 95 15
All Innovations TJ/Magazines 11 66 57 48 16 159 34
Blogs 5 35 26 24 16 118 9
Newspapers 11 82 41 24 18 119 17
Total 27 183 124 96 50 396 60
Note: TJ = Trade Journal.
236  N. CARRIER

• The second most influential form of persuasion was a focus on the credibility of the
research (183 references across all documents and second most frequently cited behind
appeal for three of the innovations).
• Approaches that focused on the compatibility of the research appeared least frequently
across individual innovations and across all the documents. This suggests that the var-
ious media promoting innovations rely less on relating the innovation to the readers’
prior experiences or knowledge than on emphasising other qualities related to, for
instance, the credibility and appeal of the innovation.
• Critiques of the innovations were relatively rare (only 60 occurrences), and were less
frequently used than four of the six other persuasion criteria, behind appeal, credibility,
evidence and practicality.

Techniques of persuasion
Summary findings related to the ways in which the persuasion criteria were used across the
documents are outlined below:

• All 63 documents mentioned benefits of the innovation, drawing on the persuasion

technique of appeal.
• A wide range of strategies focusing on the credibility of the innovation were used within
the documents.
• Although a wide variety of forms of evidence were cited within the documents, these
were most typically descriptive or anecdotal (22) or provided statistics related to the
problem that the innovation addressed (21).
• Citations of other research studies relating to the innovation and its effectiveness
appeared in only eight of the documents, while none of the documents described
or explored research studies that tested the effectiveness of the innovation, in depth.
• Piloted study examples were cited briefly in just nine of the documents. This is a notably
small number of research studies to be referenced across the 63 documents.

Discussion and conclusion

There are a number of implications that arise from these findings. For the educator who is
looking to learn more about a popular innovation and who comes across a document pro-
moting that innovation, it is likely that the document will emphasise the appeal and per-
ceived credibility of the innovation over a range of other factors. The media uses a variety of
techniques in order to persuade, and this study has found that documents tended to use
emotive or descriptive, rather than evidence-informed, language about innovations. The
media also uses a wide range of strategies to promote innovations through a perception of
their credibility. As we have seen in this paper, citations of research studies relating to inno-
vations and their effectiveness appeared in only eight of the documents, while none of the
documents described or explored research studies that had tested the effectiveness of the
innovations, in depth. Piloted study examples were cited briefly, in just nine of the
documents.
 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH  237

In this way, it was not only that the media tended to highlight the appeal and credibility
of innovations (that these persuasion criteria were used most frequently); it was also that
the kinds of evidence used to support the promotion of the innovation were unlikely to be
based on formal research or rigorous, scientific study, but rather were likely to draw on
informal research studies, or anecdotal forms of evidence related to personal or others’
experiences, general statistics about problems that the innovation addressed, or statistics
related to use of the innovation. Anecdotal evidence is, by its nature, likely to be weak and
unreliable, because it is typically drawn from small, non-representative populations. However,
this form of evidence was overwhelmingly referenced within the documents included in
this study. When research evidence was drawn upon, the documents provided only cursory
descriptions of the studies, often without detailed descriptions of sample sizes, research
strategy or other aspects of the methodology.
This study suggests that the educational media that describes innovations positively
tends to emphasise the appeal and credibility of innovations, over and above the evidence
that supports, or does not support, them. For example, descriptions of wide-scale problems
and stories that were related to the successful use of an innovation in solving these problems,
a form of credibility, were often used to capture attention. This paper argues that it follows,
then, that educators need to be aware of such influences and biases, and be able to take a
‘step back’ in order to ask critical questions about the innovation: questions that will probably
not be addressed or mentioned within promotional documents. Methods of achieving this
would include actively seeking out articles that are critical or hesitant about the innovation;
identifying studies that may question the innovation’s effectiveness; or simply questioning
the potential pitfalls about the innovation. In the absence of an analytical stance, the per-
suasion techniques used by the media, through appealing language, anecdotal examples,
described benefits of the innovation, and examples of credibility, may otherwise sway edu-
cators to a positive perception. Research has shown that teachers tend to value factors such
as compatibility with their experience, relevance to their current practice, or having heard
of the provider, when deciding on whether or not to use an innovation, rather than whether
or not there is research evidence of its effectiveness (Joram 2007; Williams and Coles 2007).
There are a number of reasons for this, including a perception that research is disconnected
from the work of schools, only applicable to certain kinds of settings, and insufficient, incon-
clusive or unavailable (Carrier 2015, p. 108).
Practitioners and community members at all levels of the education system (including
teachers, school leaders and resource specialists) will encounter (and can also create and
lead) innovations, through formal or informal networks, professional development oppor-
tunities, or via their own search for resources to better inform or supplement their practice.
It is, therefore, of great importance that practitioners develop the evaluative skills to distin-
guish those evidence-based innovations that are effective and of real value from those that
may simply sound or look good. The results of this study give insight into why various kinds
of innovations, irrespective of whether or not they are supported by an evidence base,
nevertheless ‘catch on’.
A large body of psychological literature has shown the power that emotional appeal and
stories have on how people feel and how they subsequently recall issues (e.g. Pulizzi 2012;
Simmons 2006). Without learning how to be critical, educators are susceptible to adopting
many widespread but short-lived innovations (sometimes ideas that are recycled from the
past) (e.g. see Cuban 2004; Ravitch 2004; Sarason 1990; Slavin 1999). One can also consider
238  N. CARRIER

these issues more widely in the context of work on agnotology, or the deliberate spread of
ignorance and misinformation. Information can be packaged to sound convincing, through
emotional story-telling, anecdotes and references to credible supporters, yet the information
presented can be entirely lacking in substance, the arguments factually flawed, unsophisti-
cated and illogical. Ideas and practices can be normalised through emotional misrepresenta-
tions; this can be dangerous in the spread of ineffective, wasteful or harmful practices. In
summary, this study shows that a wide range of strategies are used to promote educational
innovations with a focus on promoting their appeal and credibility in preference to the evi-
dence that might, or might not, support them. These strategies are consistent with psycho-
logical literature showing the power the former criteria can have, particularly in story-telling
and emotional appeal, suggesting the importance for educators of developing an awareness
of implicit and explicit bias when seeking out information about educational innovations.
This paper reports on a study that is necessarily limited in scope. Perhaps most impor-
tantly, it focused on a selection of media that promoted innovations positively; this limitation
and others must be kept in mind. A useful addition to the work, therefore, would be a study
of media documents that critique or portray innovations negatively. This study also consid-
ered a range of mediums for promoting innovations – newspapers, non-peer reviewed jour-
nals and blogs. Because of this, the study does not compare different kinds of social media
forms in-depth, although it does use a content analysis process, as do other studies reported
in the business literature (Aaker and Smith 2010; Smith, Fischer, and Yongjian 2012).
Additional work could examine one form of media in greater depth, a larger quantity of
documents, or educators’ critique process. Social media, in particular, has become an increas-
ing area of investigation in the business literature: for instance, in examining how companies
use it to market their products. Investigating, in-depth, how different kinds of social media
(for example, social networking sites and wikis) may facilitate the spread of popular educa-
tional ideas (perhaps by building on frameworks developed from the business literature) is,
it is suggested, a potentially valuable approach that could be built upon in studies of
education.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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