Lean Pedagogy

In this book, the author introduces the academic world to the concept of Lean Thinking. Although Lean is popular in industry and commerce, having brought tremendous improvements in product and service quality as well as reducing costs and process times, it has barely made inroads into schools. The author takes readers through a journey of why it is important to consider Lean as an alternative to resolving the current issues in classrooms. A case study that was done over a several years within a school environment to test the principles and tools is detailed, including the results and the inferences made out of them. A checklist to asses a school's preparedness for a Lean roll-out as well as a typical implementation plan and models is included.

In this book, the author challenges the status quo in schools with an emphasis on students' results, and the associated costs, and curriculum lead times for achieving these results. Policy and curriculum changes, as well as funding initiatives, have been the most common interventions for the prominent systemic issues faced by schools. However, these have proven neither effective nor sustainable in the long term . In addition, education reforms have barely considered the very processes that influence the classroom outcomes. In this book, the author proposes a process focused pedagogy based on tried and tested Lean principles and tools in order to achieve the elusive classrooms outcomes. Lean is a process-focused methodology, which considers any expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of customer value as wasteful, and thus targets it for elimination. "Value" is described as any action for which a customer would be willing to pay for. Lean Thinking has roots in the automotive industry although it is now widely used in both the private and public sectors. In spite of Lean's successes in industry, it has barely made inroads into education and thus this inspired a case study to test it application in a classroom. Through the application of such, improvements were achieved in both the student's results and the time it took to complete the curriculum. The role of this book is to show why Lean Thinking in schools is an important alternative in the pursuit for improving results, costs, and curriculum lead times. This book will appeal to different groups of readers including educators, students, school governing bodies, parent's school improvement specialists, Lean practitioners, general readers, as well as schools which are ready to pursue excellence through continuous improvement tools. A simplified version of the checklist used to assess a school's status in its readiness for a Lean intervention is in provided. A typical timeline for planning purposes for schools wishing to pursue this Lean journey is also provided . Further, more detailed implementation manuals are available through Lean Fundo

Benjamin Chibaira is an industrial engineer with extensive experience in the implementation of Lean Thinking in corporate. He has consulted for top global consulting firms, across private and public sector. Before writing this book, he spent three years in classrooms implementing Lean to teaching and learning processes. After experimenting with Lean to improve his son's mathematics performance at home, the author realised that within two years, not only had his son's performance improved, but he had progressed with his curriculum much further than the normal class at school. This motivated Benjamin to start experimenting with the application of Lean in classrooms as part of his Master's thesis to test if the benefits that have been realized in industry and commerce would also be achievable in the classroom. Pilot test results indicated that the application of Lean Thinking is possible in a classroom environment and can result in improvements in student results while simultaneously optimizing costs and curriculum lead times. Benjamin has founded Lean-Fundo; an enterprise focused on using Lean Thinking in schools as a dynamic tool for improving educational outcomes. This concept has been presented to Lean experts at the Lean Global conference in Orlando, Florida, USA and Lean Africa conference in Cape Town where the concept was well received and described as possibly the next "game changer" in education. The concept has also been well received at various educator conferences.