Teacher Innovation Potential in the Context of Russian Digital Policy

This year Russian policy makers have enacted a complex national policy aimed at digitalisation of Russian educational system. Since the success of any reform depends on the way it will be conceived and interpreted on the level of individual teachers, there is a necessity to investigate capacity of education professionals to embrace the upcoming innovations. The purpose of this study is to give preliminary insights into the innovation potential of Russian teachers understood as their readiness to bring a substantial change into their classroom through information and communication technologies’ (ICT) integration and to overview factors that might influence their decisions regarding the use of digital resources. Based on the analysis of nine interviews with Russian secondary school teachers, we conclude that Russian secondary school teachers have a rather low innovation potential. Results indicate that among the barriers of ICT integration are insufficient learning and a lack of support from social environment. Main opportunities of schools’ digitalisation are seen in innovative principals and teachers who would become a source for innovation and change for other schools. Implications are made for further development of educational policy in the sphere of digitalisation and teacher development.