Friday, October 7, 2011

Don't forget the dumb stuff

I'm reading a really interesting book with the least interesting sounding name" The Checklist Manifesto / How to get things right.

We humans aren't very good at remembering all the little details in our daily tasks. As our tasks have become increasingly complicated (involving many steps) and increasingly complex (involving many variables that cannot be anticipated), we tend to make dumb mistakes. Dumb mistakes are when we do something wrong even though we know better.

How can we avoid dumb mistakes? In aviation it was done with pilots' pre-flight checklists. The checklists remind them to check all the little details that they knew should be checked but sometimes overlooked.

In surgery, deaths due to complications (which occur about 150,000 times per year in the U.S.!) have been reduced signficantly by applying the same simple idea: checklists. In this case, surgical nurses have the checklists and are empowered to stop the surgery if the doctor skips a step.

In building construction, ambitious skyscrapers do not fall down despite the fact that they are so complicated to build that there is no one person who comprehends all variables, many that conflict with others, that must be gotten right in order for the building to stand and function properly. How do they do it? Checklists of requirements and sequences and checklists of required discussions among the sixteen trades (architectural, structural, plumbing, electrical,...) that must occur by set dates to ensure that decisions are made on issues that arise that satisfy each of trade's requirements.

How might this apply to the continuous improvement of teaching?

• Lesson plans are essentially pre-flight checklists of how a lesson will be presented. In practice, many lesson plans, however, are sketchy at best, consisting of little more than a textbook section to be covered and a homework assignment. Those overly simplified plans often overlook some of the dumb stuff like, are the most important learning objectives being addressed? and is the lesson optimized for student learning rather than being optimized for teacher presentation?
• Behavior improvement plans and individualized education plans are typically checklists. They add organization and specificity to student interventions.

Simple checklists are the most common means for defining a repeatable process. They help us avoid overlooking the dumb little details that can often lead to failure.

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Keywords: continuous improvement