Efficiently Ineffective

Why efficiency and powerful learning do not go hand in hand

In the back of many teacher’s minds, and in the forefront of many teacher’s daydreams, is a perfect utopia where students efficiently accomplish exactly what needs to be accomplished. Where students get through the process flawlessly, creating high-quality products while reaching deep understandings. And while we know that this utopia will never be realized, this dream often informs our actions, orients our goals and gives us a standard against which we constantly judge ourselves. So, what would happen, what would the consequences be, if that utopia was actually bad for our students?

The Experiment

I first started thinking about this topic a few months ago. It wasn’t one of those moments of insight that just comes to you one bright morning as you are waking up. No. This topic punched me square in the face, and while I can still feel the sting, I am glad it did. The story starts out pretty boring. I was in the middle of a nice project, teaching a nice bunch of kids and everything was going nicely. Entertained yet?

But, because I am a bit odd and I never do the same thing twice I decided to set up a little experiment. Right in the middle of this quote unquote “nice project”, I intentionally removed all extrinsic motivators and stopped structuring the classes time. I met with each student and discussed their next steps and metrics for success. Then I slowly stepped back and told the students I was here as a resource if needed. What happened next truly caught me off guard. My students were not able to make decisions about what to do next. About whether X was more important than Y, about what questions to ask and which answers to seek. Many of them were highly engaged with the project but their actions were paralyzed. This group of students who were so productive, so efficient just two days prior, were now rudderless.

The experiment went so poorly, that after two weeks when I surveyed the class, upwards of 85% wanted to move back to a teacher-directed setting. Students who were effectively getting free time with no consequences asked me to return to telling them what to do. So, we followed our democratic principles and switched back to a dictatorship. Sure enough, the next day with my instructions on what to do and when to do it, they began producing high-quality work in a highly efficient manner.

I was perplexed. Was this the same group of students I taught yesterday? How could a group of people be so efficient in one setting and so inefficient in another? This became my guiding question and thus began my journey into the rabbit hole of efficiency vs effectiveness.

Defining Efficiency and Effectiveness.

Untangling these two terms is like trying to pull gum out of your hair with a hammer. You can do it, but it is going to take a long time and frustrate the hell out of you. While this will definitely hurt your head (as it did mine) the importance of understanding this difference is crucial in education. So, let’s take this one level at a time and expand from there.

Level 1

Stated most simply; efficient people know what, effective people know both why and what.

Level 2

These definition’s by Jeff Harden may be the next easiest to digest.

• “Efficient people are well organized and competent. They check things off their to-do list. They complete projects. They get stuff done.”
• “Effective people do all that … but they check the right things off their to-do list. They complete the right projects. They get the right stuff done.”

Level 3

Let’s go a little bit deeper…

Efficiency refers to the way in which you carry out a process. It is often quite easy to measure and is based on inputs and outputs. In an efficient process, there is no room for mistakes, no room for errors. And therefore, in all truly efficient processes, there is no learning involved. In an efficient process you just have to follow the prescribed system which tells you exactly WHAT to do. The logic leading to the WHAT, the why behind the what, has already been taken care of by someone else.

Let’s contrast this with effectiveness. According to Google, to be effective means to be “successful in producing a desired or intended result.” This implies that you are not only able to figure out the what, but you are guided by, and understand the why. An effective person can be successful in producing a desired result, even when they do not initially know what to do to get to that result. Effective people are masters of trial and error. They are not afraid to take risks and not afraid to make what most people would consider “mistakes”. Making choices on your way toward a goal with no established path requires risk, requires failure and requires rapid learning. Effective people can do this. They understand how to make the “what”, not simply just how to follow it.

Level 4

Let’s take this and make it a little more concrete. Pretend for a moment that we are in a world consisting of cars, roads, forests and people.

In this world:

• Cars are faster than people
• Roads get you from A-B faster than running through the forest.
• Most people like roads.
• Most people are a little bit scared of the forest.
• People try to get to places called destinations.
• Everyone's destination is different

In this world:

• Efficiency is how fast you are going, your speed.
• Effectiveness is how much closer you are getting to the correct destination, your velocity.

Scenario #1 — One can be highly efficient while being highly ineffective. Racing your car in the wrong direction.

Scenario #2 — One can be highly efficient and highly effective. Racing your car towards your destination.

Scenario #3 — One can be both highly inefficient and highly ineffective. Bushwhacking your way through the forest in the opposite direction of your destination.

Scenario #4 — One can be effective while being highly inefficient. Bushwhacking your way towards your destination.

Based on this, effectiveness can be defined as three things:

1. The rate at which you improve and learn in unknown environments. Your rate of trailblazing through the forest.
2. Your ability to question and change direction. Your ability to navigate and way-find your way through the forest and on the roads.
3. Your ability to evaluate your current destination in light of other options. Your ability to change your destination is need be.

I think we would all love to find ourselves in Scenario #2, racing our way towards our destination down a path that somebody else built. But, scenario #2 is less common than you might think. The problem is that most destinations that are worth pursuing do not have roads already built to them. If that paved road to your destination exists then take it! Don’t stand next to the road and walk through the forest. Enjoy it while it lasts, but know that sooner of later you will find yourself back in the forest.

When effective people try to solve a problem that is unknown (in the forest) they will always be inefficient at first. But effective people can slowly, through many failures, create efficiency (a road) where it did not exist before. They can blaze a trail for others to follow, they can build the road.

Learning to be effective is not easy. You will have to bushwhack your way to many false destinations before you understand what a real one looks like. It is the inefficient process of getting lost, of being confused, of not knowing where to go next which leads to these navigational skills. If you are only obsessed with doing things fast then you will never leave the comfort of the paved path. You will follow someone else’s road when you should have been building your own.

How Science can build effectiveness in our students

Science, if taught correctly, can help you to become a highly effective person. This is because science at its core is all about navigating through the unknown (the forest). It is about trying to decide what answer (destination) has the most value and what questions (path) we will need to ask in order to get there. In a true scientific pursuit, you do not know the answer. Learning to work through something scientifically IS learning how to navigate the forest. Unsurprisingly then, when we ask students to do this, they kind of suck at it. In fact, I would go so far as to say that they really suck at it. Sadly, we see this as a problem, instead of the great learning experience it is. In the name of keeping things efficient we restrict ourselves to known destinations (known answers) and nicely paved paths (here are all the steps you need to do in order to get there). Our best chance at helping students become effective is once again squandered in the name of efficiency.

We call this abomination, the cookie cutter lab. In a cookie cutter lab, you can very efficiently get to a result with almost no thinking, no decision making, and no understanding. With a cookie cutter lab, I can get to a far away destination in a few classes.

Now compare this to an actual scientific pursuit. I would give no procedure or materials. I would ask them to justify why their question is worth asking and if it is not, what is a better question. In this case they have to make many decisions. What should I measure? How should I measure it? How many trials should I do? What volume of water should I put in the beaker? Does it matter? Their progress is painfully slow, each one of these decisions are made under conditions of uncertainty. Each one of these decisions is a slight pivot in the forest, each one often a mistake. Each mistake leads to another decision that needs to be made. Continue on or go backward? The unknown leaves them with many macro-decisions to make. Is this even the right destination? How do we know if we are getting closer or getting further away?

In this case, they are highly inefficient, but in this case, real learning is happening. They are not just blindly sprinting down a nicely paved path in pursuit of carrots or in fear of sticks. Students are learning to navigate, which decisions lead to good outcomes and which lead to bad outcomes. They are building the three core skills of effective people. They are learning to trail-blaze. Learning to navigate. Learning to evaluate their destination.

But often we say, “no, it takes too long. It is too messy and the students are all confused.” But it is not just in Science where we make this fundamental error.

How schools are efficiently ineffective.

Failure isn’t efficient. Asking yourself hard questions and self-directing yourself isn’t efficient. Blazing your own path and deciding on your own destinations are both highly inefficient. Discovering knowledge, skills, and weaknesses first hand isn’t efficient. Taking the time to dive really deep into learning isn’t efficient. When you are trailblazing through the forest you don’t cover that much ground. When you are lost in the woods, trying to figure out which destination you value, you might very well walk in circles.

The highway would allow you to cover so much more distance, but the forest allows you to make so many more decisions.

It is precisely the fact that these things are inefficient that makes them valuable. Learning to navigate the unknowns in life is not an efficient process, but it is an important one.

Maximum efficiency, by definition, requires no decisions or choices. Effectiveness, on the other hand, requires many. If you are effective you can teach yourself to be efficiency by figuring out all of the right choices and then repeating them. For the effective person, if tomorrow those choices are no longer right, then they can choose to amend them.

When the teacher directs you, when the teacher chooses your destination, when they pave your road, you become much more efficient. I can skyrocket your efficiency by telling you exactly what to do and how to do it. I can make things run smoothly. I can stoke your motivational fire with grades and praise and prizes. I can pair you in groups that I know will work out well. But in order to make you efficient, I have made all of your decisions for you. We think that students will mirror us, that by watching us be effective, they too will learn to be effective. But they don’t, they become dependent. The journey to effectiveness is a personal one. It is a slow inefficient often painful process fraught with failures and wasted time. No one can walk it for you. No one can make it easier, they can only delay it by keeping you on the nicely paved road.

Our students are at the beginning of their journeys. They have not had time to wander in the woods, to trail-blaze their own paths and to pave the ones that lead to places of value. They are not yet effective, and so they will not be efficient if left to work things out for themselves. As teachers, we will always have the power to make their lives easier, to pre-pave the path and point to what we believe to be a valid destination. But doing this is a disservice; the only way to become more effective is to make the big decisions and therefore the big mistakes. This means that for a long time our students will be extremely inefficient. But through this struggle of inefficiency, they will learn to be effective.

We learn who we are by making choices, especially bad choices. Any system which severely restricts the ability to make choices about your life restricts the ability for you to build a self.

Any system which worships efficiency will by definition minimize individual choice. If we continue to value efficiency above all else we will continue to churn out highly ineffective individuals. Individuals that only know how to drive on the paved roads that society provides. Individuals that only know how to reach the destinations of others and who have not slowed down to consider where THEY might want to go. Individuals with an impoverished sense of self. Individuals on autopilot, driving really fast, really efficiently, towards a destination that is not their own.

So the next time you daydream of that perfectly efficient class, racing down that perfectly paved road toward a destination that you have decided has value, ask yourself; is this a utopia for the students, or a utopia for me?