Time Table vs Agile Education
When I was in school my time table was fixed in every class in which I studied. We had the weekly schedule known in advance for the full academic year. My research reveals that time tables are common in all parts of the world. The forms of time table are different in different parts of the world. The school timings and school calendar is also different in various schools around the world but most schools have some form of fixed schedule although schools following Montessori method do not have a rigid time table.
Fixed time tables are good for managing logistics at a scale. My school had more than 2,000 kids. So obviously they needed a system to coordinate everything. The only issue is that mind of kids do not follow a static schedule. The school schedule causes conflict with the natural rhythm of the child’s mind.
Generally we presume that managing kids at scale requires us to curtail an individual’s freedom. I think we can use agile processes which generally give more freedom. One day I was attending a meetup on Agile software development. Agile software development process is followed by top software companies like Google and Paytm. A person sitting next to me told how he was using agile system for teaching his daughter. He and his daughter used to set goals for a week and then the daughter had full freedom to plan her day as long as her weekly goals were met. She got rewarded if she completed weekly goals. Non completion of goals just meant that no rewards will be given. No punishment was given to her.
World over companies like Toyota have perfected lean manufacturing techniques to manage the flow of production. Even software companies have taken inspiration from such lean techniques of physical manufacturing and adapted it in form of agile software development processes.
Agile processes provide flexibility and autonomy while at the same time they also provide accountability. My thoughts are only to give a direction for research on ground. I have never experimented with agile education myself in a school. Although I have found it useful for managing my life and professional work.
Agile education can take many forms since their are many kinds of agile processes. The most famous ones to emulate are Kanban, Scrum and Extreme Programming. Scrum can become too heavy for teachers and kids to follow so I am focusing on the use of Kanban in education and some best practices of Extreme Programming (XP).
Kanban is the easiest system to implement in a school or at home. Software companies or for that matter any services company just makes 3 columns on a board to follow Kanban. The first column is labeled DO, the 2nd column is labeled DOING and the 3rd column is labeled DONE. All tasks are written on post it notes. All tasks start their journey on the leftmost column i.e. the DO column. At one time only a few tasks (generally 1 or 2) are taken to be done in parallel. These are called work in progress. The post it notes with the names of these tasks are moved from DO column to DOING column. Once a task is finished it’s post it note moves from DOING to DONE column. Thus a team can keep track of tasks which are pending, which are in progress and ones which have been completed. Even software can be used for this but I generally prefer post it notes.
If their are multiple types of work than the board can be divided into rows which are generally called swim lanes. Every swim lane defines it’s own work in progress limit.
The teachers can put all the concepts in the curriculum in a Kanban board. Every subject can have it’s own swim lane. The goal is to take all concepts to the DONE column. The teacher just focuses on one concept at a time like the traditional way. So we will say that work in progress at any one time will be just 1 concept. Now the teacher should only take a concept from DOING to DONE when all kids have learnt a concept. In case a few kids are finding it difficult to grasp a subject then the teacher should take help of kids who have understood that concept properly to provide them additional help. Agile processes are about teamwork. This way all kids who learn fast will have a vested interest to teach kids who are slow because otherwise the whole class will have to stop.
This will seem slow but this is the best method according to agile principles to contain defects. A kid who does not learn a concept can be equated to a defect in the code from an analogical point of view. Software developers the world over have found that the cost of rectifying a bug immediately is the lowest in the development lifecycle. If the bug is rectified later on or is not rectified at all then the cost is much higher.
I heard Salman Khan of Khan Academy telling in a video that all kids whether they are academically good or bad fail to understand at least something or the other. After a few years these confusions or failures of understanding accumulate and they stop a kid from learning further. This Kanban approach will help to solve this problem. In case some kids needs a lot of time than the teacher can call parents and recommend them to show Khan Academy’s or other YouTube videos to the kids to clarify things. Extra classes can be arranged for such kids. In the worst case at least the teacher and friends of that student will know the problem area and will be able to help in a much better way.
Extreme programming is a also a type agile software development. It tells that software programmers should pair program i.e. 2 programmers should sit side by side on 1 computer. Many people think that this leads to half the productivity. Extreme programming on the other hand tells that this leads to better quality and more ultimate speed of development since there are less defects. In education if the teacher makes 2 kids sit together and solve things then the output will be more for both. Also they will learn teamwork and both combined will become better than each alone. In Extreme Programming it is generally advised that 1 person in the pair should see high level stuff i.e. the complete forest and the other should see the lower level stuff i.e. the trees in the forest. This way the pair will be able to keep track of all aspects.
I have personally found this aspect of extreme programming very useful in my work. I have observed people whose effectiveness increase many times when they work with a partner. Thus kids can be paired based on seating arrangements and their 2 kid teams can be given tasks to solve.
Extreme programming talks about test driven development and continuous small releases of the software product. In education this will mean that the tests should be weekly or monthly instead of a semester. I had weekly tests in school. They were a cause of constant stress but did keep kids on their toes for learning. Informal weekly tests may be better than semester or term wise highly formal tests.
Extreme programming also talks about team effort and shared responsibility. This is a very important concept in 21st century work. Students should be working in teams from school so that they can work in team later on in professional life. I have met hundreds of people in corporates who want to work in bureaucratic institutions instead of teams because they have not been trained to work in teams from the childhood. These people indulge in unnecessary office politics and hinder progress of a company.
Most agile processes talk about sustainable pace of working. Sometimes school teachers and college professors finish the curriculum in a hurry. Following agile processes will help in having a more sustained pace. This will help in better student understanding.
I have founded an open education project called Fun2Do Labs. To know more about it visit : http://fun2dolabs.org . Subscribe to me on Medium to read my posts on education and technology.
