Education System Improvement

We are in the business of improving the way people and organizations improve.

We are a small firm that creates improvements in other companies, organizations, and individuals by shifting the way learning strategies are applied. We look at existing learning and communication systems, organizational cultures, and results/expectations before analyzing new objectives, proposing higher standards, and employing strategic paths for improvement.

Organizational Change
Utilizing change management and leadership development practices, we slowly begin altering the organization's direction and shifting its values hierarchy. The most common organizational response to changes is a pervasive fear and reticence which we overcome by inclusion and subtle changes in the initial phases.  As perceived threats are allayed and minimized, the organization become more and more willing to trust.  Building upon this trust is key for both short-term and long-term transformation.

We understand the importance of these strategies and advocate for them to be a central influence in the improvement process.
Working with education technology and improvement strategies in corporate environments have provided us with insights that could also be useful in improving school systems.  Corporate America, for the sake of increasing competitive advantages, changed the way they approach employee education.  What was once an expensive, delivery-centric training process became a measurable, ROI-justified, learner-centric process that proved its worth by:

• Lowering its own departmental costs
• Lowering overall company costs
• Increasing employee effectiveness company-wide
• Improving organizational decision making and operational efficiencies
• Increasing  market agility and customer satisfaction
• Retaining and improving the employee talent pool

Looking at our education system in the United States, specifically the K-12 public education system, we quickly saw many places where the same strategies that proved so effective in Corporate America could be successfully applied.  What we didn't expect was the cultural response.

Corporations operate on the premise of profitability. As such, all companies understand the need for competitive response.  Even non-profits that give out funding need to have enough income to sustain their operations.   Yet, public schools are not motivated the same way.  They rely on sustaining a consistent process.  They value continuity of expectations over continual improvement.  They value employee retention over improved effectiveness.  One more aspect that caused the school systems to fail to keep pace with changing times was a lack of effective leadership.

Clark Learning specializes in improvement strategies, but schools were not willing to follow new strategies.  They had no reason to change.  Leaders were brought in who wanted to improve things, but the principals and teachers were not eager to accept these initiatives.  Then No Child Left Behind and the fiscal crises began to pinch the schools and motivate them to accept changes.

Clark Learning then began working with local schools to implement change through inclusion and subtle, acceptable improvement strategies.  As schools look for ways to become regionally and globally competitive again, their need for guidance and effectiveness grows also.  We look forward to guiding schools and school leaders to find their best viable options, to continuously improve, and to serve their students with impressive effectiveness. 

Push vs. Pull Learning

Ever hear the saying, "everybody loves to buy, but nobody wants to be sold"?  Well, that's because we don't like having our freedom of choice influenced by someone else's idea of what they think we should do.  The same is true in learning.  Everybody loves to learn, but nobody likes being taught.

Push learning happens when an outside source or authority selects curriculum for a learner.  It comes with an implied understanding that "You need to learn this," or, "You have to learn this."  In a teacher-centric learning system, like most schools, the push learning methodology reigns supreme.  But, it also goes against the natural course of a mind's learning process.

The human mind is designed to learn on an opt-in basis.  The person controls motives and reasoning for learning.  When the person is genuinely interested in learning, they learn faster, retain the information longer, and are more likely to integrate the knowledge into their overall knowledge base, creating stronger cognitive connection points for future learning.  When the student is not actually interested, the information is pushed on them the same way a new food is forced on a child before they want to try it, the same way an in-law pops in for an unexpected visit and stays too long.  When pushed, the person naturally resists the experience and decides to minimize their time and depth with the process. 

Pull learning is based on the Adult Learning Theory.  It centers on the learners' decisions and preferences about learning, their relationship to the meaning of the content, and the ultimate value of the curricula.  In organizations that have evolved their learning strategies from mandated training classes toward becoming a "learning organization" the employees drive the learning content and the delivery methods most commonly offered.  These organizations realized that providing learning opportunities as a means to greater job success, and associate relationships that value the exchange of knowledge as a means of increasing overall company performance, gave them an increased ability to compete.  It also drove employee performance and retention numbers through the roof as people found greater esteem, respect, and satisfaction as added benefits of working there.

In academic environments the same principles apply and have a similarly positive effect on the learners' successes.  Students that have chosen a college major that fits their future interests and current aptitudes end up more highly motivated and willing to do the extra work that achieves better grades.  But, there's more.  Students who are truly interested in what they are studying extend their gaze into peripheral knowledge and associated applications of theories.  Instead of just doing the minimum, they end up doing much more.  They read the whole article instead of just the point they need to find.  They call experts in the field and ask pertinent questions.  And, they get excited about the way it all comes together.  They are reaching their thoughts out into the field of knowledge and pulling information into their minds. This way of learning greatly increases their preferred knowledge base, which in turn increases their associative knowledge and correlative relevance.  For example, we may be able to easily learn the stitching pattern on a baseball, but when we learn more about the game and the dynamics that occur between an experienced pitcher and an experienced batter, we then understand the use of the stitches for aerodynamics and competitively changing the ball's trajectory from pitcher to plate.   Associative knowledge and correlative relevance create fuller understanding and enhance context.

Pull learning is learner-driven and therefore becomes an extension of the internal composition of the person.  Their identity becomes vested in "getting what it wants" and owning their destiny.  Being able to choose what path to follow gives students confidence they are able to go anywhere they want to in life.

The push learner becomes resistant to the process and will actually shut down their own sense of interest.  The game of power and control (especially in young children) becomes about minimizing their submission to the imposition of authority.  There is no inner satisfaction without an inner decision to "want to" learn the material.  Without the "want to" as a source of empowerment, looking for the extra ways to apply the lessons and learn peripheral material don't even come up.  Without the interest that comes from a desire to learn the material the learner's inner goal becomes escape, vacation, and just getting it over with.

We need explorers.  Children are natural explorers, but our dominant push-learning academic environments soon teach them that learning is not about exploring.  We need adults who believe learning is fascinating.  But, our system drives them into years and years of being conditioned to see learning as a sacrifice of their freedom to choose, a submission of their thinking to another's idea, and accepting the belief that what they find interesting doesn't lead anywhere valuable or useful.  We are teaching our children to hate learning.

You can see it in your own experiences. Figuring out an answer to your own question is satisfying, isn't it?   How often do you like being taught something you didn't decide to value?  When we push learning onto people we push learners away, and when we allow them to reach out and pull learning towards them, they end up excited about pulling new knowledge into their minds for the rest of their lives.

Learning Strategies

In a capitalistic society, the primary decisions are driven by corporate objectives to maximize wealth for their owners.  For the ones who make these decisions this means "increase profits or we'll find someone else who will."

The ubiquitous presence of global competition - including current competitors, future ones, and even the imagined ones that keep us awake at night - drives decision making to maximize revenues and decrease costs to extremes.  “What customers can we reach today?  What expenses can we get rid of today?  However, the best organizations keep their eye on being competitive, not just for today, but for years to come.

During a recession the market has less money to split up between competing companies and the weaker ones will struggle to stay in business.  Quite often we see these weaker companies abandoning their training and development strategies, seeing them as a luxury and not critical to their survival.  When their boats start leaking (contracts lost, stock price dropping, top talent jumping ship) they don't see much point in teaching their employees.

However, hindsight has proven that the companies who not only survived the recession, but also raced ahead soonest when the economy rebounded, were the companies that taught employees better ways to reach customers, save money, and keep their top talent.  By developing better employees they became stronger competitors.  These companies are the ones everyone else is now chasing, and they did it through strategic learning processes.

It's not enough to simply hold a few training classes.  Strategic learning is based on continuously improving the improvement process.  These strategies usually center on finding faster and more effective ways to:

• develop the training
• deliver the training 
• reduce employee learning time
• assess training results 
• maximize knowledge usage

The strongest competitors know that better decisions come from better informed employees.  And, in hyper-lean market conditions it becomes imperative to keep your best talent from leaving, or worse, going to work for your competition.  The strongest companies know this, having learned that employees who learn more are happier, more effective, and loyal.  So, is employee development really a luxury?

Explorers Needed
Improved learning strategies also enable quicker, more agile responses to market changes.  When teenage girls in Thailand catch a retro fad and want bobby socks and saddle shoes, who will be the first company to respond well?  Who has a learning system in place that can help a product manager to change direction, a marketing manager to cross language and cultural barriers, and a supply chain manager adapt to new distribution channels?  Many decisions will need to be made at the loading-dock and in-store level of operations.  To have people who are ready to make decisions that are good for the customers, good for the strategic partners, and good for the company is crucial.

Learning strategies build contextual awareness, contingency preparedness, interpersonal dynamics, and improved communications.  Learning strategies drive revenues up through smarter marketing, better product design, and improved distribution.  Learning strategies drive costs down through better operational efficiencies, fewer mistakes and accidents, and improved supply chain leveraging.

The question isn't whether a company is better off with improved learning.  The question is whether they will realize it, admit it, and take action to improve their learning function.