Different contextual situations make it necessary for teachers to be innovative in the delivery process in order to achieve their objectives. These contexts may include the absence of resources in the classrooms; students with different learning styles; oversized classes; administrative demands on the teacher that are beyond his or her core functions; new technologies and the challenge of learning to use them to enhance learning in the classroom.

The industrial world has moved away from its exclusive emphasis on the manufacture of goods and services to an era of knowledge creation and application of information. This paper therefore posits that if the objective of higher education is to effectively and efficiently transfer the competencies, atitudes, and behaviour required for citizens to secure employment and satisfy the needs or demands of industry, then higher education has a role in the fostering of innovation.

This paper examines the possibility that teachers in the present teacher-education system are being prepared as "gate-keepers" and for "system-maintenance" rather than as promoters and developers of the full potential of students for change processes. It discusses the probable effects of the gate-keeping and system maintenance function when the society is assumed to be unihierarchical. 

Educators venture into the next millennium guided by a paradigm shift of changing student needs. As a consequence, literacy practitioners need to be creative in their instructional approaches, altering conventional teaching methods and embracing new innovations within the classroom. Designing multimedia classrooms developed within a theoretical framework of sociocultural constructivism is one answer.