Higher education has undergone major changes in price and competition, yet the status quo prevails when it comes to teaching. Long-used pedagogies are losing their appeal among students, payers, and employers. They want and deserve better. Lean Teaching is a practical guide for college and university professors who are interested in becoming better teachers. It shows how to apply Lean principles and practices through the use of detailed examples. Readers will also learn the results of applying the Lean teaching pedagogy for more than 15 years, and how they too can achieve similar results. Whether you are new to teaching or a 30 year veteran, you will find in Lean Teaching many new things to learn and put into practice.
This book explores the application of agile and lean techniques, originally from the field of software development and manufacturing, to various aspects of education. It covers a broad range of topics, including applying agile teaching and learning techniques in the classroom, incorporating lean thinking in educational workflows, and using team-based approaches to student-centred activities based on agile principles and processes. Demonstrating how agile and lean ideas can concretely be applied to education, the book offers practical guidance on how to apply these ideas in the classroom or lecture hall, as well as new concepts that could spark further research and development.
The current way of organizing education is not tenable in the coming decade. We need to address how we teach, how we organize schools, how we increase the effectiveness of learning, how we construct classrooms, and how we deploy new technologies. Lean management philosophy has been successfully applied across many industries – from manufacturing to healthcare, financial services, and construction. Recently, interest in Lean has steadily increased in the education sector, as it was originally introduced in that area’s administrative and support processes. Currently, the introduction of Lean and its potential in education is gaining wider exposure because of massive looming changes – for example, the introduction of technology in education (as EdTech within the traditional system and as MOOCs), demographic changes, budget pressure, new pedagogies, the entrance of more and more private providers, and changing demands of society and industry on the curriculum. What is missing is a joint framework that will allow schools, teachers, directors, and boards to harness the potential of these developments and then execute a strategy. Lean Education (LE) offers the potential to streamline the execution of strategy and teaching. It accelerates the development of new courses and studies that are closely aligned to the needs of students. It supports the integration of new technologies without overburdening teachers and staff. Lean in the Classroom brings all these elements together into a coherent framework so schools can make necessary changes in one concerted effort. Teaching, professional support, managing the daily work, and changing the way schools function are brought together as a schoolwide strategy to organize learning in a way that serves our students by making the most of their talents. This book is the first to define LE in all its aspects: course design, actual teaching and learning processes, school management, and the organization of supporting processes. It is firmly based on the Lean management philosophy in conjunction with pedagogy. The book draws on both scientific research in the field of Lean management in general and Lean education in particular. In addition, it is predicated on many years of hands-on experience applying Lean both inside and outside the education sector.
The global expansion of education is one of the greatest successes of the modern era. More children have access to schooling and leave with higher levels of learning than at any time in history. However, 250 million+ children in developing countries are still not in school, and 600 million+ attend but get little out of it – a situation further exacerbated by the dislocations from COVID-19. In a context where education funding is stagnating and even declining, Arran Hamilton and John Hattie suggest that we need to start thinking Lean and explicitly look for ways of unlocking more from less. Drawing on data from 900+ systematic reviews of 53,000+ research studies – from the perspective of efficiency of impact – they controversially suggest that for low- and middle-income countries: Maybe pre-service initial teacher training programs could be significantly shortened and perhaps even stopped Maybe teachers need not have degree-level qualifications in the subjects they teach, and they might not really need degrees at all! Maybe the hours per week and years of schooling that each child receives could be significantly reduced, or at least not increased Maybe learners can be taught more effectively and less resource intensively in mixed-age classrooms, with peers tutoring one another Maybe different approaches to curriculum, instruction, and the length of the school day might be more cost-effective ways of driving up student achievement than hiring extra teachers, reducing class sizes, or building more classrooms Maybe school-based management, public–private partnerships, and performance-related pay are blind and expensive alleys that have limited influence or impact on what teachers actually do in classrooms. This groundbreaking and thought-provoking work also identifies a range of initiatives that are worth starting. It introduces the Leaning to G.O.L.D. methodology to support school and system leaders in selecting, implementing, and scaling those high-probability initiatives; and to rigorously de-implement those to be stopped. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in education.
Do less and get more! This revolutionary approach to education marries tried-and-true success principles from Lean Manufacturing to classroom practices. Students perform better and teachers work less. The book models the quality and efficiency of Lean Think in schools so education personnel learn how to optimize student learning within contract time. The driving question, "Does this add value?" emboldens educators to remove waste and sharpen processes across multiple areas in education that affect student learning. Developed by Julie Laub, a master teacher and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Lean Think has been applied successfully at the state, district, and local levels, resulting in measurable student improvement and increased teacher job satisfaction.
Winner of a Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research Training Within Industry, by Donald Dinero, explores a crucial piece of a Lean initiative that has been overlooked throughout U.S. industry. The Training Within Industry (TWI) program developed by the United States during World War II has
Lean Thinking was launched in the fall of 1996, just in time for the recession of 1997. It told the story of how American, European, and Japanese firms applied a simple set of principles called 'lean thinking' to survive the recession of 1991 and grow steadily in sales and profits through 1996. Even though the recession of 1997 never happened, companies were starving for information on how to make themselves leaner and more efficient. Now we are dealing with the recession of 2001 and the financial meltdown of 2002. So what happened to the exemplar firms profiled in Lean Thinking? In the new fully revised edition of this bestselling book those pioneering lean thinkers are brought up to date. Authors James Womack and Daniel Jones offer new guidelines for lean thinking firms and bring their groundbreaking practices to a brand new generation of companies that are looking to stay one step ahead of the competition.
Higher education (HE) is amongst the hardest sectors in which to apply lean. Universities resist change, their organizational cultures being far from the manufacturing environment where lean was born. The way HE organizations are structured, funded, and function globally is idiosyncratic; one size is unlikely to fit all. However, the sector is also dynamic and a mature understanding of lean, as a philosophy, led by principles, suggests there are many ways HE could grow through lean. This collection of work reflects the state-of-the-art in the global practical application of lean for higher education. It aims to demonstrate the diverse applications of lean in universities inspiring others to deeply engage with lean thinking in their own unique context and to drive successful, sustainable, lean work. Contributors are both well-known experts in lean HE and up-and-coming practitioners. Authors live globally, in countries such as Australia, Canada, Malaysia, Poland, the UK, and the USA. They represent higher education environments from applied teaching institutions to research-focused universities from 50 years old to more than 800 years old. The collection focuses on lean applied across universities as a whole, often addressing the administrative support or professional services side of how these institutions work. The application of lean is not limited purely to the administration of such organizations but is applied to the primary purpose of universities: teaching and research. This volume is not focused on lean theory. Instead, it discusses how HE institutions have taken lean forward and the lessons learned that others can share and learn from. It is composed of six sections: Starting out, People, Projects, Technology, Sustaining Lean, and Culture. The rich and wide perspectives in this book will enable the reader to understand the many ways that lean thinking is applied in higher education globally. More importantly, this book will help the reader better understand and apply lean in the context of their own work.
This book is for any teacher who's interested in improving their lesson planning and practice. It outlines a set of mindsets and habits you can use to help you identify the most impactful parts of your teaching, and put them centre stage. It's about doing less to achieve more. But it's also about being happier and more confident in the classroom. Building stronger routines around the essentials will give you more time and space to appreciate and think creatively about your work. Lean Lesson Planning draws on the latest evidence from educational research and cognitive science, to present a concise and coherent framework to help you improve learning experiences and outcomes for your students. It's the evidence-based teacher's guide to planning for learning, and sits alongside books such as Teach Like a Champion, Embedded Formative Assessment, and Visible Learning for Teachers.
This edited volume presents a structured approach to a new lean education curriculum, implemented for the education of engineers, managers, administrators as well as human resources developers. The authorship comprises professors and lecturers, trainers and practitioners who educate future professionals in Lean Thinking principles and tools. This edited book provides a platform for authors to share their efforts in building a Body of Knowledge (BoK) for Lean Education. The topical spectrum is state-of-the-art in this field, but the book also includes a glimpse into future developments. This is a highly informative and carefully presented book, providing valuable insight for scholars with an interest in Lean Education.
