Program Overview
Led by Professor Glenn Savage from the University of Melbourne, the AISWA Teaching Innovation Fellowship (The Fellowship) is an exciting new professional learning program designed to empower educators as innovators and leaders of classroom change. Fellows will imagine, design, prototype and test an innovation in their classroom, addressing an opportunity or problem of practice with creative and contextually responsive strategies.
Open to all Educators and Leaders in WA Independent Schools, the Fellowship aims to:
- Strengthen teacher-led innovation and leadership
- Deepen evidence literacy and strategic evidence use
- Enhance student outcomes through strategic design, and
- Build powerful collaborative learning communities.
The Fellowship will be structured across four terms, with one in-person session per term and two 90 minute online participant sessions between term 2-4.
Benefits for Participants
By completing The Fellowship, participants will achieve a rich and diverse set of professional learning outcomes that are strongly aligned with the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and the newly released Australian Professional Standards for Middle Leaders. Participants will:
Lead an innovation project
Participants will identify a problem or opportunity in their classroom practice and design an innovation to address it. They will apply their professional expertise, act as change agents, and develop the skills to interpret, analyse and communicate the outcomes of their project.
Build evidence literacy
Participants will use strategic design and research methods to trial new strategies and evaluate impact on students in your classroom. They will collect, gather, analyse and interpret evidence to inform decision-making and strengthen their innovation.
Enhance student outcomes
Participants will use strategic design methods to develop an innovation focused on improving student outcomes such as engagement, wellbeing, and/or academic achievement – all within their own classroom context.
Harness the power of collaboration
Participants will actively engage in collaborative learning with peers as part of a sustained Community of Practice. They will strengthen professional networks, deepen collaborative skills and build the relational foundations essential for leading change.
Strengthen leadership capabilities
Participants will enhance leadership skills by designing a project from conception through to implementation. They will build skills in strategic planning, stakeholder engagement and change management, while cultivating leadership dispositions such as open-mindedness, resilience and reflective judgement.
Places are limited and will be offered through a selection process based on an Expression of Interest. This approach allows us to ensure a diverse mix of schools from across the state, giving a broad range of communities the opportunity to benefit from this wonderful support opportunity.
If you are interested in this Fellowship, please visit the event listing and complete the EOI by Friday 6 March, 2026.
About Glenn Savage
Glenn Savage is Professor of Education Futures and a leading policy sociologist, known for his work at the crossroads of education policy, system change, and strategic design. He’s collaborated with organisations such as AITSL, ACARA, VATL, Orbis, and the International Baccalaureate, and secured four ARC projects, including a current Discovery Grant focused on collaborative national reform. Glenn partners with school leaders to tackle educational challenges through participatory design, co-creating initiatives like the Teaching Impact Fellowship. As Co-Editor-in-Chief of Critical Studies in Education and author of The Quest for Revolution in Australian Schooling Policy, Glenn’s history in music journalism and teaching shapes his innovative approach.
Innovation in education isn’t about importing solutions — it’s about designing the conditions for practitioners and researchers to solve problems together, creating value that scales through networks rather than mandates (Savage, 2026).