It is generally acknowledged that the quality of an educational system depends upon the quality of its teachers. In focusing on the importance of pedagogies it is possible to argue that to help students meet new educational challenges, teachers need to reflect upon and update their repertoire of practices.

Preparing young people to meet new contemporary challenges means reviewing and updating the pedagogies teachers use. Innovation at the level of practice must be seen as a normal response to addressing the daily challenges of a constantly changing classroom. Change is not an extra, but a pedagogical problem-solving process that builds on the creative, intuitive and personal capacities of teachers.

The new OECD publication, Teachers as Designers of Learning Environments: The Importance of Innovative Pedagogies, aims to help teachers navigate the huge number of promising practices and new approaches within the innovation landscape. It builds on the analysis of six clusters of innovative pedagogies and the insights of networks of innovative schools to offer a baseline from which teachers can innovate themselves.