Innovative teaching is a crucial pathway for enhancing classroom teaching quality, cultivating students' innovative teaching capabilities, and promoting the high-quality development of education. Against the backdrop of Education 4.0 and 5.0, innovative teaching has increasingly become a focal point of educational research. However, existing studies have primarily focused on its practical application and influencing factors, while reviews and comprehensive analyses remain limited. This paper employs a conventional literature review method to summarise and analyse representative domestic and international studies on innovative teaching. It discusses conceptual connotations, theoretical foundations, key influencing factors, and current research status of innovative teaching, while summarising the major achievements and existing issues in the field. The review indicates that innovative teaching, as a multidimensional teaching practice, has become an important topic in educational research. Nevertheless, discrepancies remain regarding the development and evaluation of teachers’ innovative teaching capabilities in basic education, its conceptualisation as a distinct teacher-specific competency and the insufficient integration of individual and situational factors in explaining innovative teaching.
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