Ever since the industrial revolution, one of the greatest desires of humanity has been to achieve economic growth through increased effectiveness. Adam Smith (Smith, 1776) and Frederick Winslow Taylor (Taylor, 1911) tried to achieve this through advocating for standardised work processes and the creation of economies of scale; Henry Ford by introducing the first moving production line (Ford, 1926); Japanese post-WWII manufacturers by inventing “Just in Time” management (Hutchins, 1999) and other lean manufacturing techniques; Daniel T. Jones and J. P. Womack by creating techniques to identify and eliminate non-value-adding activities; Steve Blank (Blank, 2020) and Eric Ries (Ries, 2011) by applying the same approach to the start-up environment.
However, many experts believe that despite all these advances in management thinking, one of the greatest problems that still remains unsolved is that of underutilised human potential (Sen, 1999). As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Abhijit Banerjee puts it: “poverty leads to an intolerable waste of talent (…) [it] is not just a lack of money; it is not having the capability to realize one’s full potential as a human being” (Banerjee, 2011).
An effective way to attack this problem of wasted talent is to design optimised educational initiatives. Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen argues: “through education, learning, and skill formation, people can become much more productive over time, and this contributes greatly to the process of economic expansion” (Sen, 1999).
How to design better educational initiatives?
I propose a three-step approach that answers the following three questions:
- Why do students learn? Answering this question helps students to increase their motivation to learn.
- What will they learn? Offering clear answers here allows for the development of better educational materials.
- How will they learn it? Answering this question involves finding ways to deliver teaching materials in a more effective way and creating learning-boosting environments.
First, lack of motivation among students is a serious problem even in developed countries. (Ford, 2013) (Legault, 2006). Learning expert Ulrich Boser argues that the starting point of teaching should be to make knowledge and skills more personally significant for the student (Boser, 2019). Finding personal value and meaning in what we learn can be a powerful motivator: “purpose and relevance serve as the fuel for our drive to learn.” Experts call it “utility-value intervention” (Hulleman, 2009) (Harackiewicz, J. M).
Secondly, based on the concept of “Creating Shared Value” (Porter, 2011), we can initiate partnerships between the business sector and educational institutions. Synchronising the demand for knowledge workers with a large pool of people eager to learn could be a great way of developing mutually beneficial relationships (Hyslop, 2009).
Thirdly, we can design a better, science-based approach to delivering materials, in particular through greater appreciation for how memory works (Willis, 2007). The latest findings in memory research should be leveraged in replacing various outdated but still widely used approaches (Boser, 2019). Here are a few discoveries that hold out the possibility of making a significant difference.
- Designing personalised learning environments (Leung, 2007) can be a more effective way of teaching than traditional classrooms.
- Replacing passive learning techniques with active retrieval can significantly boost long-term memory (Soderstrom, 2015).
- Using flashcards (Kornell, 2009) to enable “spaced repetition” retrieval technique can significantly increase memory performance (Brown, 2014).
There are many such techniques that might be deployed in this manner to optimise learning. Indeed, the possibilities here are virtually limitless.
In implementing these methods for the elimination of underutilised human potential, it is hoped that some contribution can be made to the cumulative efforts of previous pioneers in the field of maximising economic effectiveness. By asking three simple questions (“Why lean?”, “What to learn?” and “How to learn?”), we can make progress towards creating more effective educational initiatives that help people to develop and better utilise their talent.
This is our responsibility. I believe that talent can be made (Gladwell, 2002) (Dweck, 2006) and that every individual has the right to reach his or her full potential. If we empower people, we can build a better world. Together.
REFERENCES
Smith, A., The Wealth of Nations, BookRix, 2018, Originally published: 9 March 1776
Taylor, F. W., The Principles of Scientific Management, New York, 2006, Originally published: 1911
Ford, H., Today and Tomorrow: Commemorative Edition of Ford’s 1926 Classic, Taylor & Francis, 2019, Originally published: 1926
Ford, H., & Crowther, S., Henry Ford Classics: My Life and Work, Independently Published, 2020, Originally published: 1922
Roser, C., Faster, Better, Cheaper in the History of Manufacturing: From the Stone Age to Lean Manufacturing and Beyond, Taylor & Francis, 2016
Hutchins, D. C., Just in Time, second edition, Gower Publishing, Ltd., 1999
Cheng, T.C. & Podolsky, S., Just-in-Time Manufacturing: An Introduction, Springer Netherlands, 1993
Pinto, J. L. Q. et al., Just in Time Factory: Implementation Through Lean Manufacturing Tools, Springer, 2018
Ohno, T., Toyota Production System on Audio Tape: Beyond Large Scale Production, CRC Press, 1988, Originally published: 1978
Shingo, S., Dillon, A. P., Study of ‘Toyota’ Production System from Industrial Engineering Viewpoint, Productivity Press, 1989
Roos D., Jones, T. D., Womack, J. P., The Machine That Changed the World, Simon & Schuster UK, 2008, Originally published: 1990
Blank, S., The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win, John Wiley & Sons 2020
Blank, S., Dorf, B., The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company, Wiley, 2012
Ries, E., The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Crown Publishing Group, 2011
Sen, A., Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press, 1999
Banerjee, A., Duflo E., Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, PublicAffairs, 2011
Ford, V. B., Roby, D. E., “Why Do High School Students Lack Motivation in the Classroom?”, Global Education Journal, 2013, Issue 2
Legault, L. et al., “Why Do High School Students Lack Motivation in the Classroom? Toward an Understanding of Academic Amotivation and the Role of Social Support”, Journal of Educational Psychology, 2006, Vol. 98, No. 3, 567–582
Boser, U., Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, Or How to Become an Expert in Just about Anything, Rodale, 2019
Hulleman, C. S. &. Harackiewicz, J. M, “Making Education Relevant: Increasing Interest and Performance in High School Science Classes,” Science 326, no. 598, 2009
Harackiewicz, J. M et al., “Helping Parents to Motivate Adolescents in Mathematics and Science: An Experimental Test of a Utility-Value Intervention,” Psychological Science 28, no. 8, 2012
Chai, C. S., “Surveying and Modeling Students’ Motivation and Learning Strategies for Mobile-Assisted Seamless Chinese Language Learning”, Technology & Society
Vol. 19, No. 3 (July 2016), pp. 170-180 (11 pages)
Porter, M. E., Kramer, M. R. “Creating Shared Value: How to reinvent capitalism—and unleash a wave of innovation and growth”, Harvard Business Review, 2011, Link here
Hyslop, A., “Fostering Partnerships between Education, Business and Industry”, Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), 2009
Barton, P. E., Partnerships Between Corporations and Schools, National Commission for Employment Policy, 1983
Bowie, N. E., Cahn, S. M., University-business Partnerships: An Assessment, Rowman & Littlefield, 1994
Steiner-Khamsi, G., Draxler, A., The State, Business and Education: Public-Private Partnerships Revisited, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018
Franco, M. et al., “Partnerships between higher education institutions and firms: The role of students’ curricular internships”, Industry and Higher Education, 2018
Kisner, M., “Building Partnerships”, New Directions for Community Colleges 1997(97):23 – 28, 2002
Willis, J. MD, M.Ed, “Review of Research: Brain-Based Teaching Strategies for Improving Students’ Memory, Learning, and Test-Taking Success”, Childhood Education Volume 83, 2007
Anderson, J. R., Learning and Memory: An Integrated Approach, Wiley, 2000
Maloof, M. A., & Michalski R. S., “Selecting Examples for Partial Memory Learning”, Machine Learning volume 41, pages27–52, 2000
Han, J. et al., “A memory learning framework for effective image retrieval”, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing ( Volume: 14, Issue: 4, April 2005)
Soderstrom, N. C., Bjork, R. A., “Learning Versus Performance: An Integrative Review”, Perspectives on Psychological Science 10(2):176-199, 2015
Leung, E. W. C., “An Experimental Study of a Personalized Learning Environment Through Open-Source Software Tools”, IEEE Transactions on Education ( Volume: 50, Issue: 4, Nov. 2007)
Martinez, M. Ph.D., “Key Design Considerations for Personalized Learning on the Web”, International Forum of Educational Technology & Society, 2001
Tian, F. et al., “Personalized Learning Strategies in an intelligent e-Learning Environment”, International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design, 2007
Papanikolaou, K. A. et al., “A Connectionist Approach for Supporting Personalized Learning in a Web-Based Learning Environment”, Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 1892)
Yao, C., “Constructing a User-Friendly and Smart Ubiquitous Personalized Learning Environment by Using a Context-Aware Mechanism”, IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies ( Volume: 10, Issue: 1, Jan.-March 1 2017)
Kornell, N., “Optimising learning using flashcards: Spacing is more effective than cramming”, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2009
Golding, J. M., “The Use of Flashcards in an Introduction to Psychology Class”, Society for the Teaching of Psychology, 2012
Wissman, K. T. & Pyc, M. A., “How and when do students use flashcards?”, Memory, Volume 20, 2012 – Issue 6
Lasry, N., Clickers or Flashcards: Is There Really a Difference?, The Physics Teacher, Volume 46, Issue 4, 2008
Brown, P. C. et al., Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, Harvard University Press, 2014
Gladwell, M., “The Talent Myth: Are smart people overrated?”, The New Yorker, Dept. of Human Resources, July 22, 2002 Issue, Link here
Mindset, C. S., Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Random House Publishing Group, 2006