Innovation has become a pervasive term in contemporary educational discourse. Over the past two decades, its presence has intensified, permeating academic literature and policy discussions worldwide (Maldonado-Mariscal & Alijew, 2023). This trend has been driven by a convergence of factors, including technological advancements, globalization, and evolving societal needs (Looney, 2009). International organizations and policymakers increasingly advocate for innovation as a means to adapt education systems to the demands of the 21st century. The usual argument is that developing educational innovation equips students with skills such as creativity and critical thinking while enhancing school systems’ ability to respond to contemporary challenges (Cachia et al., 2010; Kools et al., 2020). Within these narratives, economically oriented perspectives further position innovation as a driver of growth and competitiveness within states’ strategies to enhance national productivity and address persistent systemic challenges through education. Educational innovation has thus emerged as a central topic in education-related literature, often framed as a panacea for complex educational issues.
Despite its widespread use, the concept of educational innovation remains loosely defined and is often treated as an inherently positive and taken-for-granted notion (Hodgson, 2012; Vinsel & Russell, 2020). Frequently employed as a catch-all buzzword, it suggests progress without a clear articulation of its meaning or implications (Kotsemir & Abroskin., 2013). This conceptual vagueness allows a wide range of practices to be labelled as innovative, which in turn could serve diverse, not necessarily aligned, objectives and agendas within education. For example, innovation may refer to adopting new technologies or implementing student-centered pedagogies at the classroom level, or restructuring pupils’ cohorts, schedules or subjects at the school level, each rooted in differing assumptions about what constitutes improvement (Serdyukov, 2017). Without a universally agreed-upon definition, innovation may operate as an empty signifier, with its positive and desirable connotations covering the lack of substantive consensus.
Addressing this conceptual ambiguity is important, as terms invoke broader discursive frameworks that shape perceptions of what education is and should be. As research on educational politics and policymaking has shown, buzzwords and catchy concepts are not entirely empty signifiers; they embed implicit values and visions that significantly influence educational policies and practices (Stenersen & Prøitz, 2022). Thus, it is necessary to unpack these terms to avoid overlooking underlying ideologies and neglecting the deeper challenges confronting education systems. Terms like innovation, quality, or improvement often operate as discursive tools that shape priorities, embedding specific values and agendas while sidelining alternative perspectives. Examining these frames helps reveal their implicit assumptions, the narratives they perpetuate, and the risks of oversimplifying complex educational issues.
Interrogating educational innovation is thus a pressing endeavour. This paper undertakes this task.
To achieve this, the following research questions were formulated:
What are the dominant narratives and discourses shaping the conceptualization of educational innovation?
Which discourses (e.g., modernization, equity, marketization) underpin the narratives surrounding educational innovation and school systems?
These questions are intentionally analytical and broad to allow for flexibility and refinement as the review progresses and are designed to capture a wide range of perspectives and evidence types.

Scoping reviews provide a valuable method for examining the broad and ambiguous concept of educational innovation. This study adopts a scoping review methodology based on the framework proposed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005), Levac et al. (2010), Colquhoun et al. (2014), Tricco et al. (2016), and Peters et al. (2021). Searches were conducted using Scopus and Web of Science, two of the most prominent meta-databases for educational research. Search terms were developed based on the research questions, broadly focusing on literature that addressed educational innovation. Boolean operators and innovation-related keywords were employed to refine the searches across databases. Inclusion criteria were restricted to studies published in English and Spanish, with a time frame of 2000–2024 to reflect developments of the last twenty-five years in educational research, which have seen a widening in educational innovation meaning beyond technology-based approaches (Maldonado-Mariscal & Alijew, 2023). The bibliographies of included studies were also reviewed to identify additional relevant references. Studies focused on health- and engineering-related fields, as well as those on higher and vocational education and training, were explicitly excluded before screening. This exclusion was necessary due to the prolific literature on innovation within these fields, which destabilized the search and made it unmanageable, and because this study focuses specifically on compulsory schooling education. In the initial search, 1,253 publications were identified and subjected to a two-stage screening process based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. The first stage involved reviewing abstracts, which reduced the pool to 363 publications. At this stage, only papers addressing compulsory education and referencing innovation as a broad concept, rather than labelling a specific methodology as innovative, were retained. Publications focusing on particular methodologies labelled as innovative, such as flipped classrooms or STEM interventions, were excluded unless they explicitly engaged with the concept of innovation itself. This approach prioritized studies examining innovation as a theoretical or discursive construct in education, ensuring the review captured its conceptual framing. The second stage involved a full-text review of the 363 remaining publications, further refining the selection to 78 studies. While the initial inclusion and exclusion criteria were maintained, an additional layer was applied. Papers that passed the first filter but focused on specific educational methodologies were included if they incorporated discussions of the broader concept of innovation—such as its definitions, rationale, or implications for education. The final stage of summarizing and reporting the findings is organized to address the overarching research questions.

The findings identify two dominant discourses: (1) innovation as a means of aligning school systems with social and economic demands, specified in a) innovation as adjustment to external needs, b) diversification of school offer and c) rhetoric to build pedagogical imaginaries on the basis of economic paradigms; (2) innovation as a driver of continuous improvement in teaching and learning processes, specified on a) pedagogical, b) ethical and c) change narratives. These findings suggest that the discourse of educational innovation often emphasizes adaptation and reproduction over transformation as functions of school systems, shaped by economic paradigms that prioritize efficiency and competitiveness. By identifying and unpacking these discourses, the study sheds light on the underlying assumptions surrounding educational innovation and calls for greater attention to the discursive strategies through which dominant discourses reinforce the status quo.

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