Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow TES USA on Twitter and like TES USA on Facebook.

As a society, we place a premium on innovators and entrepreneurs. They are admired and some in business, politics and even education are revered.

The reason for that bias is that innovators and entrepreneurs are scarce commodities. Most people are employees and not entrepreneurs. There is nothing wrong with that. Most people follow trends; they don’t start them. There is nothing wrong with that. Few people lead while most people follow. Again, there is nothing wrong with that.

On the surface one would expect that in consideration of their rarity and with all of this reverence for innovation and entrepreneurship, that support would abound to propagate and spread innovation within any system, especially one like education that should model what is the very best in what is expected of its learners.

The problem with innovation in any system, however, is the same problem with innovation in regard to individuals. Everyone wants change to occur and people even pay great lip service to having change happen, right up to the point where change becomes real.

That is the point when the individual MUST change, and when it comes to this personal commitment, people do not want to change. Everyone wants change to occur for the system, but very few people want to change themselves personally to have that occur.

There are many great ideas in education that are being discussed in the connected community of educators, but not necessarily the education community at large. It is not realistic to expect educators to accept new ideas in their profession if they have not yet discussed them enough to understand them.

Of course the role of leadership should include introducing and discussing these ideas within the framework provided by the system. Leaders should be involved in the discussions of problem-based learning, the maker movement, inquiry based learning, and the flipped method, connected collaboration, and design based learning just to mention a few.

If these latest ideas could be discussed and considered building by building as part of an ongoing professional development strategy, it might prepare educators with more tools to move education away from the status quo. If every teacher was encouraged, enabled and supported in trying at least one new form of methodology within an academic year to the extent they were comfortable, we might stand a chance in evolving education. This should be a goal of every administrator within the education system.

The innovators within the system are already involved and they would need less attention. The bulk of educators however, may be less open to change and more in need of a structured change that would require less, if any self-motivation.

We have assumed that this was being accomplished through the Professional Development policies and strategies in place for centuries. Talking with a wide variety of educators across the country I have found very few who are supportive of the professional development they have been offered by their schools throughout their careers in education.

Several national polls of teachers have listed PD as a major concern and a disappointment for educators. We may need to innovate a new and more supportive PD system for educators that meets their needs, respects their experiences, provides them a voice, schedules collaborative time with colleagues and enables teachers to experiment without a fear of failure. In short treat them as adult learners and respect them for being professionals. We need to innovate a strategy for personalizing Professional Development.

Change will only happen if it is supported. Support for change will only happen if people are comfortable moving from the safety of the status quo to the insecurity of the unproven new idea.

Many people need to be assured of a safety net before they will move to change. Unless our leaders themselves become more innovative and active about innovative Professional Development, the change we all want to herald in will be long in coming.

Innovative new ideas in education are not enough by themselves. We need innovative strategies to implement those new ideas.

In the words of Frank Zappa,” Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible”. In my words, “If we are to better educate our kids, we need first to better educate their educators”.

Tom Whitby is an author, teacher, blogger and founder of #Edchat. This article first appeared on Tom Whitby’s website My Island View.