Educational innovation has become considered the keystone for leading the adaptation of education to 21st century societies and economies (Greany, 2016; Hallgarten & Beresford, 2015; Hargreaves, 2003). It has been proposed as a suitable solution to very different school systems and societies’ needs (Lubienski, 2009), and in many contexts has even been advanced by means of large-scale reforms (Fullan, 2009; Glazer & Peurach, 2013; Sotiriou et al., 2016). Despite the widespread policies that have promoted innovation in education, the scarce evidence points out that (1) innovation is an umbrella term that includes many different approaches and meanings (Pedró, 2023); and therefore (2) is being used to promote―and sustain―different agendas and policies such as diversifying the teaching-learning processes, improving students’ academic performance or promoting inclusion within the schools, to name the most explicit (Serdyukov, 2017). One of the main concerns about this is that it might be subtly extending the use of technologies or enhancing the presence and participation of the private actors within the public education systems (Saura et al., 2023). Another concern refers to a false dichotomy built through educational discourses that faces educational innovation against traditional innovation as if both were homogeneous movements (Brailovsky, 2018). The lack of a comprehensive approach to educational innovation leads us to argue for the need of a deeper analysis of (a) the meanings associated to the concept of innovation in education; and (b) the uses of the concept, to what ends is being used and by who. Meanings and uses of educational innovation are the two key research questions that this research aims to give answer to.

Due to the broadness of the research aims, we have carried out a scoping review aiming to capture the different meanings that are being adopted, in academic literature, under the term educational innovation, and the various uses linked to them. The scoping literature review has been conducted of English and Spanish literature including peer-reviewed articles and reviews from Scopus and Web of Science databases since 2000. A necessary refinement of the search syntax, due to the extensive use of the term ‘educational innovation’ outside the education realm, reported 1243 documents. Based on the title and keywords we conducted a first screening that reported 458 results; a second screening focusing on the abstract reported 412 documents. A third screening is being carried out based on the content of the documents.

The greater part of the reviewed literature consists of descriptive empirical studies, what reveals a lack of theoretical discussion on the foundations and implications of innovation in education, as well as analytical or (explicitly) critical studies. Teachers are the key receivers of the educational innovation discourses, but not its makers. Despite an important part of the literature explores their motivations, attitudes or oppositions to the development of educational innovation initiatives, research tend to place them as implementers of externally introduced innovation projects rather than enactors or developers of them. Plus, innovation is quite often not only associated with, but reduced to, technological use, what implies the reduction of the teaching-learning processes to its means, therefore emptying its content.

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