Eureka! Institutional Repository

The present paper addresses the issue of the innovative European program Erasmus+, integrating it into the wider context of innovation, in particular educational innovation. It is a European Union flagship program upon which have been invested, in addition to material resources, many hopes for its contribution to the achievement of European integration. We first examined perceptions about the content of similar concepts such as change, reform and innovation, and proceeded to conceptual clarifications with the help of theoretical approaches. We then went through the history of the Erasmus+ program looking for its origins and its evolutionary path to its present form. We then studied the subject of program evaluation. After exploring the meaning and significance of evaluation, we presented various theoretical models for evaluating innovation and specifically educational innovation, and focused in particular on the forms and stages of evaluation of Erasmus+ programs, with reference to the criteria adopted by national assessment authorities. Following the above theoretical framework, we proceeded to investigate teachers' perceptions of schools in 5 European countries that have implemented Erasmus+ programs. We sought the opinion of teachers who are directly involved in the implementation of relevant programs through participation in the program's pedagogical support groups, as it is the testimony of those who develop an activity that highlights strong points and potential weaknesses aiming at improving it. Using a questionnaire we recorded the views of teachers on the meaning and importance of innovation in the field of education, their perceptions of the program and the actions they implement in relation to it, and completed by capturing and recording their perceptions of the Erasmus+ projects they implemented in their schools and what the results were. The present work is the first to address in a broad way the issue of recording teachers' views on both educational innovation and the Erasmus + program at a pan-European level, as we addressed, in addition to Greeks, to teachers from 4 European countries, who participated in the research. In addition to the perceptions and attitudes towards the program investigated in a previous research effort, we record, for the first time, estimates of program results, a critical element in evaluating the program, as the views we have recorded are not in strict agreement with the results of similar institutional research carried out by European Union bodies. At the end we recorded the conclusions of the research and made proposals for further investigation.