Exploring Evolving Education Environments

Client: Pearson Education a leading textbook publisher

Situation: Pearson Education needed to make its products more relevant to the students and teachers who used them. Advances in technology, federal policy changes including no child left behind, and the proliferation of state-mandated educational testing to standards were dramatically changing the classroom environment.  The publisher wanted a thorough understanding of the changes and the reasons behind them before developing traditional and electronic teaching materials for the coming academic years.

Strategy: Create a contextual understanding of the values and changing needs of teachers, administrators, and students in a wide range of school districts. Define the factors associated with how textbooks are used, how technology is incorporated into the teaching process, and how evolving state standards are managed.

Tactics: Innovare conducted an ethnographic exploration among students, teachers, and administrators in 13 cities and towns across the United States. A combination of in-depth interviews and classroom observations recorded using digital media allowed the clients to immerse themselves into the classroom environment.

Researchers gained valuable insights into teachers’ familiarity and comfort with technology, students’ varied needs, techniques teachers use to engage diverse student bodies, and the lengths teachers go to in their efforts to find educational materials that address state standards.

Results: Findings were used to stimulate new product and service development. This included short-term enhancements and long-term opportunities that employ new publishing and information technologies to create tools that meet evolving needs — and promise to help position the publisher as a true partner in education.

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