continuous improvement in education
I have been an educator for the entirety of my professional career- now a little over ten years. I’ve been teaching literature most of this time and have an undergraduate degree in the humanities. My bookshelf is full of novels and poetry, and I used to think I’d be a fiction writer. Now, can I be honest? The world of business and management has a great deal to offer educators. Yes. I also recognise that the thought of using structures and insights from the business world can be met with resistance and scepticism among front-line teachers.
Students, after all, aren’t products. For-profit educational institutions are suspect, so mixing these two worlds must be dangerous against the more noble ambitions of teaching and learning.
On the one hand, this view is understandable. After all, for-profit educational institutions are suspect. I’m distinguishing between running a school as a business and understanding how research-based leadership and management perspectives can be used as tools for academic development projects. Many lessons about leadership, project management and developing change initiatives from the business world offer essential strategies for the educator. Since I started the MBA degree last academic year, I’ve been thinking about ways to incorporate research-based approaches to team-building inside the classroom, for instance. So much of the work at the secondary school level is collaborative – but few teachers and even fewer students clearly understand what makes teamwork effective. In preparation for this article, I asked a handful of final-year students how many had worked in teams or groups for school assignments and how often. Not only was it frequent, but the group of ten also had more than one collaborative assignment ongoing in at least one class. I then asked what lessons, tools or strategies they had been given in any part of education that taught them how to work in teams. None had a single example.
This is too bad. There are many resources and tools for educators to learn from, but it comes from a domain underexplored in most educational institutions. The world of leadership and management is rich with ways to manage the processes and operations within the classroom, throughout the school organisation, and in the even more comprehensive school systems. For example, principles and frameworks like lean offer ways of streamlining unnecessary actions to better focus on improving the time spent on teaching, learning and relationship building. Efficiency in the classroom doesn’t mean robots; it means less time spent on actions and activities that don’t matter
Lean thinkers believe that they should not waste customers’ (i.e. students’) time, as that annoys and distracts them, and can result in the loss of future business. They believe that people left to guess about desired outcomes are not using time effectively and that ambiguity and variation in interpretation obscure expectations. Clarifying expectations, succinctly in writing and emphasised verbally, helps both student and teacher do a much better job. Smaller, more focused assignments are given weekly to smooth the workflow, with a balance between individual and team-based assignments. (Emiliani, 2004, p. 181)
Most critical, interventions like lean offer a line of inquiry into exploring what works in the classroom and help formulate an honest appraisal of the continuous learning process.
A lean approach to value and the value stream in education would aim to precisely specify the value of each learning experience and identify how it fits into the broader value stream, so that every step in the educational supply chain delivers value to the learner. To follow this approach, questions have to be continually asked, such as: Does this part of the curriculum offer value? Does this form of assessment deliver value? Does this step in the enrolment process deliver value? The constant focus should be on how the educator delivers value to the learner (Parsons & MacCallum, 2019, p. 13).
This view toward continuous improvement shifts the ways that educators might think about innovations in education and also help educators articulate whether new technologies and techniques might bring meaningful value to the students in a classroom. I wrote previously about the challenges educators and educational leaders sometimes face in developing and defining a strategic direction for teaching and learning activities. A lean focus on value might provide an additional perspective for educators to engage with practice – and offer a simple litmus test as to whether an initiative, project or process should be carried forward. Simply put, how does it add value and in which direction?
I still teach literature and spend many days discussing character development, poetry and metaphors. But there is room – and a critical need for educators and educational leaders to understand the knowledge and frameworks in the business and leadership domains. In earlier posts about my own innovative educational project, for instance, I spoke about the challenges I faced when trying to implement what I thought was a great idea that would help students. This project could have been constructed more appropriately – (collaboratively) with a defined aim. I could have led this initiative more ably if I had understood contemporary models of change leadership. Too late in the project, but at the exact right moment to appreciate the challenges of change management, one of the board members, a former senior consultant at McKinsey, spoke with me about the McKinsey influence model as a way of understanding the key drivers of change:
It was a casual conversation, but it meant a great deal to me . It was the first time I understood that there was a language to conceptualise these issues which has previously seemed not quite possible to grasp. Even though I was supposedly a leader in (what I later understood was) a change project, I had no understanding of the discipline that - although strictly speaking was outside the realm of education - was at the centre of what I was attempting to lead.
In these last few posts I have been attempting to explain this sort of ah-ha moment that I had in that room. There exists a great deal of resources and tools that educational leaders might investigate, but too often these tools and approaches are coming from other disciplines like change management, strategy and neuroscience.
(Basford & Schaninger, 2016, p. 2)
There are gaps in the ways that most teacher and principal training programs frame the practice of education and I'll argue that a great number of the competence models which emphasise “learning to learn” as a focus for student development projects should also be part of the ways teachers themselves approach professional development . Instead of hiring speakers and hosting workshops about tools and techniques, professional development might mean fostering an orientation towards. continuous learning . This is challenging work, no doubt. One place to begin teacher competence development might be to reorient and reframe our understanding of what fits inside the box of professional knowledge. There are answers and, more importantly, good questions about the scope of education and learning that go beyond the walls of the educational institution.
As I think about the research done in business and how we have adapted it to education, I am struck by how relevant it is—especially in the beginning. We can take the business concepts and apply them to our education world. However, as time passes we know intuitively that the research is incomplete and awkward to handle. Often over time, similar research is done within the context of education and it fits naturally. The research now belongs in the educational framework. We have made it ours. The development of the concept of organizational culture is an example, and it opens the possibility that education and the values it imparts will shape the cultures of business in the future (Klinck, 2007, p. 23)
five ways educational leaders promote continuous development:
• Institute a clear strategic position for teaching and learning activities which establishes actionable mechanics to define, evaluate and continuously develop learning programs. A successful strategic position should clearly define broader beliefs about learning and articulate concrete principles of how these beliefs are put into practice. Educational institutions should use these articulated educational principles to further develop metrics of impact for learning and guide decision-making throughout the organisation. This strategic position must be co-created inside the organisation and backed by thorough research. Where possible, affiliations external agencies might provide expertise for this type of development project to ensure the strategic measures are operationalised.
• Review organizational structures to prioritize leadership for learning. The curriculum of both national top-tier international schools is shifting towards a model where emphasis is placed on transversal skills beyond subject areas. Many current curricula do not reflect the scope and aims of these contemporary educational moves. To fully investigate these models and to build, assess and develop a globally competitive curriculum, schools need senior-lever dedicated leadership role(s) for the development of its learning program.
• Leverage middle and emerging leaders to support learning impacts. In addition to senior leadership roles ,organisations should also consider ways of supporting middle and emerging leaders to promote initiatives focused on learning impacts and bringing teaching practices in line with the contemporary state-of-the profession. These middle roles can help train, develop and support teaching and learning through coaching and mentorship initiatives, research based projects for sprint improvements and knowledge-management protocols to build clarity, commitment and capacity to the school's vision of learning.
• Develop and implement a continuous improvement model for the learning community. Shifts in global trends and local operating conditions mean that independent schools must be capable of ongoing development in its structures, programs and practices. Thees institutions can integrate members of the faculty and staff on this project by identifying its core value proposition: to provide impactful learning. There are already strong feedback mechanisms such as the 360 feedback review for the senior leadership team and the performance review cycle for all members of staff. These feedback measures can be more systematically integrated in practice and aligned with a broader learning strategy as early components of the continuous improvement model.
• Commit to cultural transformation. Critical to the ongoing success of educational institutions is the ability to develop and nurture the learning culture and orientation towards development throughout the organisation. The right cultural conditions are the essential ingredients for all other operational improvements. These will undoubtedly take time, energy and concerted efforts on the parts of leadership and change-makers inside the organisation. Small wins and process improvements can help empower teachers, equip them with strategies to develop instructional practices and facilitate a transformative mindset. Innovative initiatives and school transformation processes need careful and considerate change management at all stages and this skill set in particular should be part of the hiring considerations on the leadership team.
Basford, T., & Schaninger, B. (2016). The four building blocks of change Four key actions influence employee mind-sets and behavior. Here’s why they matter.
Emiliani, M. L. (2004). Improving business school courses by applying lean principles and practices. Quality Assurance in Education, 12(4), 175–187. https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880410561596
Klinck, P. (2007). Observations on Leadership: Linking Theory, Practice and Lived Experience. In J. M. Burger, C. F. Webber, & P. Klinck (Eds.), Intelligent Leadership: Constructs for Thinking Education Leaders (pp. 13–25). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6022-9_2
Parsons, D., & MacCallum, K. (2019). Agile Education, Lean Learning. In Agile and Lean Concepts for Teaching and Learning (pp. 3–23). Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2751-3_1
ongoing developments (and half-formed ideas)
One of the rather absurd things about being a teacher is this recognition that at least some part of what we are doing in education is about preparing students for the world of work, yet what we are doing doesn’t prepare students for the world of work in a way that is particularly transparent or comprehensible. What I mean is that the things that are directly transferable to personal and professional development seem to be added in between the formal content. It’s like that cheesy youtube video where the professor fills a jar with stones and asks if it is complete. The students say yes, but he adds rocks, sand and water to fill the gaps further. The metaphor is the day will get filled no matter what, so we’d better put the important stuff in first.
I feel like the opposite is valid on most days. The excellent stuff in the classroom, like collaboration and the sense of discovery, rigour and idea generation, is happening in the spaces between the formal assessed curriculum. In addition to an add-on, a nice-to-have. The absurdity comes – at least for this teacher because the excellent stuff is happening to help facilitate learning of content, but (I sure hope none of my students is reading) most of the content for mandated assessment doesn’t seem particularly vital for success in life or broader society – personal or professional. My perception in reading research, blogs from pedagogical leaders and professional social media sites is that I am not alone in feeling this absurdity. And the feeling is not new:
During the twenty-five years from 1945 to 1970 educational systems and their environments the world over were subjected to a barrage of scientific and technical, economic and demographic, political and cultural changes that shook everything in sight. The consequence for education was a new and formidable set of tasks, pressures, and problems that far exceeded in size and complexity anything they had ever experienced. They did their heroic best to cope with these, but their tools of planning and management proved grossly inadequate in the new situation (Coombs, 1970, p. 20).
Oof.
The COVID pandemic shifted the ways that educators work and support students. It is unclear what the lasting impacts of these shifts might be. Still, I argue that one of the fundamental mechanisms for the status quo – external exit examinations – has shown at least some flexibility. The International Baccalaureate cancelled end-of-program examinations last year and calculated the grades based on coursework, teacher grades and a logarithm. True, there was criticism of how the grades were calculated, but I think this news coverage about widespread frustration missed the real significance – the examinations were cancelled. This year the end-of-program examinations have been modified to reduce to instructional and revision load for teachers and students. After these steps are taken in response to the shifting context, how can we ever argue again that there is no other way? My argument is not that there must be a revolutionary change to the global educational system (I’m sceptical about revolutionary innovations, after all). Still, the current context provides a meaningful opportunity for reflection and exploration of ways to integrate shifting technologies and needs into educational practice. In crisis response, we have found many adjustments and adaptations that could be made if the reasons were compelling and urgent. Although a meaningful policy change is most certainly not the same thing as a crisis response, the adjustments in domains like final assessment and university entrance procedures demonstrate, I think, that educational systems can adapt. This flexibility can provide a pathway for planned policy changes and pedagogical innovations in the proper context.
There is no shortage of research and protocols about how current realities in economics, shifting world populations and technological pressures demand a reorientation of global educational systems. Likewise, many pedagogical projects provide insights into what that reorientation might include. A recent report from the World Economic Forum explores how skill and competence development programs shape educational institutions worldwide. The report highlights several models of what a future school might include by investigating innovative schools already in operation.
(World Economic Forum, 2020)
Reports like this are not rare. There are many similar models about the future of education and the shifting need for education at all levels to place focus on skills and competence development as well as soft skills and learning how to learn. But how will these insights be put into practice?
One of the reasons I joined the MBA program in Tampere University of Applied Sciences was because I had heard so much about the success of the Finnish educational system. Most teachers will have at least a few statistics or soundbites about what makes the Finnish system so special. Most of these observations are wrong or at least fundamentally misunderstood. In my visits to educational institutions in Finland – both inside my own university and to also the various regional schools – it became quickly clear that there was nothing in terms of ideas, techniques or technologies that could be easily exported and result in major transformation of an educational organisation or system. The talking points often presented on social medial or praise of any particular element of the Finnish educational system (usually to support a particular ideological position about what education could be if only) does a major disservice to the truth of why the Finnish system works: it has been a real priority (not a political one) for several generations. There is widespread participation in the continuous development of the educational system and an honest recognition about the ongoing work required in making sure that education remain a priority in the country. What works in the Finnish educational system is that the stakeholders seem to recognise the complexity of the system – not a quick fix.
Coombs, P. H. (1970). What is educational planning? United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
World Economic Forum. (2020). Schools of the future: Defining new models of education for the fourth industrial revolution. World Economic Forum Reports 2020, January, 1–33. www.weforum.org