I really enjoyed reading this draft. I especially thought this question was interesting:

“Do the academic professions police those (Cummings, 2005) who would innovate outside of normal structures? If so, what can activist scholar/educators do to provide support for adventurous young pioneers of new learning methods and fields?”

It got me thinking about Bertrand Russell. He spoke of pedagocial challenges well in his book titled Unpopular Essays especially the chapter titled The Functions of a Teacher. The following are a couple quotes that especially ring true for me:

“Teaching, more even that most other professions, has been transformed during the last hundred years from a small, highly skilled profession concerned with a minority of the population, to a large and important branch of the public service. The profession has a great and honourable tradition extending from the dawn of history until recent times, but any teacher in the modern world who allows himself to be inspired by the ideals of his predecessors is likely to be made sharply aware that it is not his function to teach what he thinks, but to instill such beliefs and prejudices as are thought useful by his employers. In former days a teacher was expected to be a man of exceptional knowledge or wisdom, to whose words men would do well to attend.”

“Institutions such as universities largely remained in the grip of the dogmatists, with the result that most of the best intellectual work was done by independent men on learning.”

“The function of the teacher, however, is not merely to mitigate the heat of current controversies. He has more positive tasks to perform, and he cannot be a great teacher unless he is inspired by a wish to perform these tasks. Teachers are more than any other class the guardians of civilisation….Nations have been brought to ruin much more often by insistence upon a narrow-minded doctrinal uniformity than by free discussion and the toleration of divergent opinions.”

Hmmm…yes, I do believe that very often academic professions police innovation, for, it threatens the very structure the institutions were build upon. Regarding support for innovators, I believe that virtual communities hold much promise.

Mechelle