Our story of innovation: reforming the traditional approach to ELT in China’s hinterlands

ABSTRACT This paper investigates four teachers’ efforts to innovate during a semester of English language teaching at a university in China. At the end of a mentor-facilitated action research cycle, the teachers wrote their ‘Story of Innovation’ in order to construct deeper understandings of their experiences. These stories were examined for themes and are retold here as a collective story in order to show what ‘innovation’ means to the four teachers and the benefits gained from innovating. Although the teachers’ understandings of innovation converged with government policies and other top-down expectations, the individual emphasis of each suggests that different teachers view innovation from the perspective of their particular context. Moreover, although each of the four saw benefits for self and their students, what emerged from their stories was how they grew from the innovation process which may best be described as gradual restructuring.