The Agile Education Manifesto
Gunter Dueck is one of my favorite voices on (and off, I guess) the internet. Also on Twitter and YouTube. In a recent blog article he observes that while we1 have embraced the paradigm of agile software development, we have not thought to transfer the ideas to an arguably more critical application: education.
He proposes the Manifesto for Agile Education: Translation mine, using the original.
We are uncovering better ways of developing people by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
Individual development as a human over moving up grades according to standards.
Activating feelings of self-efficacy over documenting exams and reports.
Piquing and following curiosity over following curricula.
Ensuring education is fit for the future over maintaining vintage beliefs.
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
Now that’s a nice thought.
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Read: a non-trivial subset of the people in this area of work. ↩