Theory of Constraints Handbook - James Cox Iii [531]
Small’s very simple, innovative, and highly effective application of the branch to children’s behavior has been used with millions of children worldwide. In Perak, Malaysia, Principal Hajah Ahmad Rashidi uses a kinesthetic application of it by drawing templates for branches on the playground for children to use as hopscotch of cause-and-effect consequences as shown in Fig. 26-10.22
FIGURE 26-10 Using the Logic Branch as hopscotch. (Photograph and translation by Khaw Choon Ean, used with permission.)
TOCfE was introduced in Malaysia in 2000 through the Curriculum Development Centre as part of a Ministry of Education project called the Transition Program. The program was developed to address the problem of students who enter school at age 7 with different levels of readiness. In addition to the rich diversity of language within the student population,23 early childhood education before the age of 7 is at the discretion of parents and is not publicly funded.
Khaw Choon Ean, then head of Special Projects, designed the materials and engineered a cascade of training for all first grade/year one teachers in Malaysia—30,000 of them in 8000 primary schools and all within a mere 3 months. It was reported in Ministry tracking and review of the program that, even when introduced through curriculum lessons, students began to apply the TOC tools to real-life problems with siblings and classmates.24 The use of the Cloud and Logic Branch has spread into Malaysian secondary education as a methodology to make instruction in social sciences more relevant and interesting. They have also been incorporated into civics textbooks at several grade levels as a methodology to promote responsible citizenship.25
The Ambitious Target Tree
The results of a third TOC tool, the Ambitious Target Tree, further substantiates why the TOC Thinking Processes work with students to take responsibility for their own learning and behaviors. After first articulating a goal or “ambitious target,” the next step in the process requires students to analyze the situation before deciding on a course of actions—as do the other TOC tools. Therefore, students first identify “what to change,” which are the obstacles that prevent the attainment of the target. This is followed by “what to change to”—the intermediate steps that will remove the existence of the obstacle. “How to cause the change” requires that the intermediate steps are concrete and feasible actions that are properly sequenced. The process can be used to learn subject matter through the analysis of targets, obstacles, and intermediate objectives or on individual or group targets such as one used at Maria E. Villarreal Primary School in Escobedo, Mexico.
FIGURE 26-11 Be the best students Ambitious Target. (Translation by Alexandrina Gonzalez. Souce: TOCfE, used with permission.)
Teachers Zulema Almaguer and Miquel Perez Reyes used the Ambitious Target Tree tool as, in their words, “one of several TOC tools with very problematic groups of students to change their attitudes. In one case we worked with a group on the Ambitious Target of ‘Being the Best Students.’ When the students wrote their obstacles, they blamed others, but when they thought of ways to overcome their obstacles, they took the responsibility for the solution.”
As evident in Fig. 26-11, in the first obstacle, the students characterized the teachers as “grumpy.” However, even though only of primary school age, these children were able to infer the reason that their behaviors might be contributing to the teacher’s behavior and, from that inference, realize that they themselves could remove this obstacle through their own actions. The teachers conclude, “The students are learning to value themselves. The group was very much in conflict, but now I can see they are growing up because they are using the TOC tools to think through their problems.”26
Does it make sense that most children are more motivated to implement a plan or project when they can meaningfully contribute to it? Using the tool in group projects