Responding to Rol's comments on LO0807
1. Paradox: Unfortunately, there *is* a paradox in many educational
institutions: saying one celebrates the creativity of the individual,
then forcing students into the same old cookie cutter mold. I am sure we
all have war stories showing this paradox.
Why? Saying "we" celebrate the individual is like mom and apple pie - it
is an expected tradition -- but it requires no work. Sincerely
recognizing individual differences in interest, ability, and creativity is
somewhat more difficult. Truly teaching to a diverse population is very
difficult - *especially* in today's educational system. (Most of which
have little understanding of Deming or Senge).
2. Standards: The same is true of standards. Educators are becoming
more and more held accountable for meeting standards. So, like the
ill-fated MBO process, the tendency is to set lower standards - to hedge -
to minimize work. I think this is where real systems thinking has to
enter the pictyure to examine the systemic impact of such artificial
standards.
3. Measuring which standards? There is an educational futurist named
Bill Daggett who challenges the traditional roles, standards, and
measurements of the educational system. Similar to the Quality Function
Deployment process, he contends that educators need to be driven by the
needs, skills, and competencies of the "community" receiving the student.
In my case as a community college employee - that community is most often
business and industry. To me this is a simple adaptation of Deming's
"production cycle" It is this community (I am trying to avoid the baggage
that comes with the customer/supplier model by using community as a
collective term) that must set the competencies and the standards - and
not us (or ACT, or NET, or SAT, or EIEIO)
4. How to measure? If the educational system (at least in my case) is
accurately driven by Deming's Voice of the Customer - then we *will* have
a set of competencies against which to assess both our programs and our
students. Unfortunately, this usually requires us to learn new assessment
tools. I am converting my quality courses to use competency matrices
(ala' David Lankford). This allows consideration of both the desired end
and individual learning.
5. Deming's win/win - Rol asks for more explanation on my statement:
"... we educators understand that learning differences and diversity are
part of Deming's win/win process." I do not expect each student to learn
in the same way or the same speed. I do not expect each student to have
the same motives for education. So I must create a classroom learning
system that consider's these differences and allows for variable
definitions of success.
Using the competency matrix as an example, each student is required to
reach a certain level of learning on a certain number of competencies to
make it -vs- do well -vs- excel. Each level has specific and stringent
standards... specific outcomes determined by the Voice of the Customer.
6. Goals - education -vs- factory Rol also asks if education *can* or
*should* have specific goals and outcomes like a factory. Yes and no.
Imagine a education system that has a quantitative goal for headcount and
retention. Can I suboptimize the system to meet those goals - but provide
terrible learning? Yup - just like a quota system in a factory - you tell
me how many units and I'll find a way to meet the goal, irregardless..
That is why Deming was against quotas. Among other things, they breed
competition and suboptimization.
OTOH - I can have specific and measureable goals based on student
learning, on competency based outcomes, etc. *IF* the system supports
such a measurement system.
Thoughts?
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