CROSS-SECTOR PROJECTS AS A TOOL FOR DEVELOPING TEACHERS’ INNOVATIVE COMPETENCE

Abstract

The article describes the role of cross-sector projects as a tool for developing teachers’ innovative competence. The focus is on the Ukrainian experience of cooperation between education, the state, the public sector, and international partners during the challenges of the full-scale war. Special attention is given to how such initiatives help teachers adapt to difficult conditions – relocation, distance learning, psychological stress, and breaks in the educational process. The main advantages are defined: improving teachers’ professional mobility, increasing motivation for innovation, building interdisciplinary teams, and raising the quality of teaching in a crisis. The article also explains key challenges in implementing such projects: unstable funding, limited cooperation between sectors, staff shortages, security risks, and emotional burnout of teachers during the war. Based on the analysis of Ukrainian educational projects and international research, the article shows how cross-sector approaches can become a systematic resource for developing teachers’ innovative competence. These practices are important for researchers, education managers, and practitioners who work at the intersection of education and social change, as well as for making decisions about integrating cross-sector models into teachers’ professional development in Ukraine. Given the challenges of modernity, the innovative competence of a teacher is a necessary requirement that ensures the quality of the educational process and contributes to the formation of critical thinking, an active position, and self-realization in students. This not only increases pedagogical skills, but also contributes to the formation of a new educational culture of partnership, which ensures sustainable changes in the education system.