LESSON PLANNING

Lesson Planning

Lesson Planning

Purpose

The purpose of the Research Activity is to:

Facilitate the development of research skills including: critical thinking, writing and research skills and to self-evaluate the learning process.

Facilitate the use of multi-disciplinary research as the foundation for the applying the outcomes of research into the practical aspects of a discipline.

Facilitate the development of an area of expertise.

Objectives

Following the completion of the Research Project the learner will be able to:

Utilize research protocols in defining, researching, analyzing and synthesizing appropriate scholarly research.

Demonstrate critical thinking skills in the analysis of the content.

Demonstrate composition skills as evidenced in the quality of the report.

Demonstrate beginning research expertise.

Identify applications of the research topic to the practical applications in the future work place and major.

Evolution and Context

Approaches to strategy are many and varied and a number of tools have been developed to assist in strategic management. Rak & Patterson (2006) suggests that many approaches are based on copying ideas that work for others and whilst this seems valid it misses the fundamental issue of competitive advantage being dependant on being different. Many traditional tools actually analyse why success has been achieved rather than put forward specific strategies for action. Alexander et al (2008) outlines the historic and traditional planning processes of the 50's and 60's as being shaped by the structured and non threatening nature of the environment

Historical Background

Lesson planning has a long history in the military but was first brought to the business world by the RAND Corporation during and after the Second World War. Herman Kahn published "the Year 2000" in 1967 which attempted to develop lesson planning for business. The use of lesson planning during this period was initially an extension of the predict and control model and was essentially a probabilistic assessment of the future based on a simulation. Ronald and Nancy (2004) states that this added little to other forecasting approaches and it was not until the work of Wack at the Shell Oil Corporation that lesson planning was concerned less with predicting the future and more on qualitative causal thinking.

DeBord & Gore, (2005) singles lesson planning out from other planning methods in that it attempts to explore the joint impact of various uncertainties rather than examining the change in one variable whilst keeping other variables constant. For small changes and specific areas, single variable approaches can produce acceptable results but for large scale changes variables will not stay constant. Sagor (2006) points to lesson planning as being much more qualitative in nature than traditional models.

Issues in Lesson Planning

Earls Cairns and Mercy (2003) describes lessons as consistent sets of trend outcomes expected by a target year. The literature is in agreement in viewing as crucial the idea that the lesson planning process must differentiate between variables that can be predetermined, and are therefore predictable and those, which are uncertain. Sagor (2006) describes these as basic trends and key uncertainties. The use of the tool has according to Millet and van der Heijden two specific ...