Implementing the Balanced Scorecard as an Integrated Tool and an effective Teaching Management Strategy at Classroom Level
By Lydia Le
"Any idea can bring some certain value”-Miller Hoa"Strategy is actually about beliefs. Beliefs will drive choices. Choices will drive initiatives."
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The Balanced Scorecard tool was originally designed for business management in measuring business performance.
In 1992, Dr. Robert Kaplan and Dr. David Norton developed, and delivered the concept of the balanced scorecard that focuses on measuring the drive performance of businesses.
In 1996, the authors published a book called ‘The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy Into Action’. The balanced scorecard strategy, also called the Kaplan’s method or tool was successfully implemented in business management by a range of different businesses/services, both for profit and not-for-profit organisations, including public schools, in order to measure the operating performance towards the organisation’s objectives and goals.
It is believed that if you cannot measure the business/service performance, you cannot manage and improve it (L.Kevin as cited in Kaplan 2010) for the sustainable and developmental business/service as a whole.
Interestingly, the Balanced Scorecard strategy is used for not only to measure past performance but also to assess how well the business/service is positioned for the future (The Wallace Foundation, 2010). For that reason, Balance Scorecard is considered as a powerful tool that can be used for any workforce sectors. This tool encompasses the perspectives of four components or driven forces for a sustainable business that need to be analysed: Finance, Customers, Business Processes, and Learning and Growth. See Figure 1.
Figure1- The Balanced Scorecard components used to measure business performance
Original source from Dr. Kaplan and Dr. Norton, 1992
Notes
-The Financial Perspective: focuses on the performance in financing and using the business' available resources effectively that bring the positive benefits to all stakeholders of employer/s, employees/workers, customers and the business itself. In business, this perspective is also known and referred to as the business terminology of Stewardship.
-The Learning and Growth Perspective: focuses on using the organisation's human capital [its people]- such as employees' satisfaction and value, implementing and improving the organisation's infrastructure technology to achieve its own value and culture.
-The Business Process Perspective: focuses on the internal process targeting the quality and efficiency in controlling the business.
-The Customers Perspective: focuses on the customers' satisfaction, customers' retention, customers' disciplines and the common value.
For analysing the business performance, the relevant informative data of all components must be collected. According to the Investopedia (n.d.), the collections of a variety of data for the analysis of all driven forces of a business are crucial to providing quantitative results which are interpreted and used in making better long-term decisions.
Balanced scorecard in teaching at the classroom level
At the classroom level, for a number of years, the balanced scorecard strategy has been utilised in my teaching sessions. I found this method is an effective teaching strategy and an integrated tool that meets students’ and teacher’s needs and wants in terms of students’ learning achievements and teacher’s teaching satisfaction - the teacher's teaching growth.
As mentioned, this tool has been used in the measurement of teaching and learning performance towards the student self-discipline and inspiration, and satisfaction degrees of teacher's learning and growth. Therefore, it is also considered as the tool of motive measurement (Kaplan & Norton 1996, as cited in Kaplan 2010) of students’ learning and teacher’s teaching-objectives/goals through achievements, and implementing teaching methods into classrooms. In practice, stemming from the original Balance Scorecard introduced by Kaplan and Norton, the following introduces a modified Balanced Scorecard model to measure teaching and learning performance at the classroom level. See Figure 2 below.
Figure2-A Modified Balanced Scorecard model: can be used as an integrated tool at the classroom level
Why should the Balanced Scorecard tool be implemented in teaching at the classroom level?
In terms of complying with teaching standards, the necessary changes for the better of teaching are crucial to making positive differences in education. The changes are often confronted with resistance. However, the resistance may result in individuals [students, teachers, and non-teaching staff] becoming more accountable for their actions (Charter Global Management Accountant, 2014) that improve learning and teaching performance.
In regard to accountability, although running or conducting training (learning and teaching) sessions at the classroom level is not to run a profit business - in reality, like operations of any business or service, the teaching job requires a series or process of hard work in which trainers/teachers/educators are considered as workers to get the job done properly. In business or service operations, all works need to be managed or controlled and evaluated for business or service improvement, sustainability, and development. To strongly sustain teaching, teaching work needs to be measured because from the Kaplan’s concept mentioned, if you cannot measure teaching performance, you cannot improve it. As discussed, the Balanced Scorecard tool has been successfully implemented for the measurement of business performance in a range of businesses and services including the performance in training at school level. Further, the Balanced Scorecard at the school level refers to implementing a powerful measurement technique for school activities. Understandably, these include learning and teaching activities that are performed within classrooms; therefore the Balanced Scorecard can be used to measure learning and teaching performance at the classroom level.
By implementing the Balanced Scorecard tool in classrooms, it allows the teacher to look ahead, with leading indicators [they measure outcomes of early value-chain teaching activities], rather than always looking back with lagging indicators [they measure the results too late] (Kaplan& Miyake, 2010). This pushes and pulls the teacher to act and create value-added in teaching toward student learning and academic outputs.
In order to create teaching value added, at the classroom level having differentiation and multilevel learning, to satisfy student learning outcomes, the internal and external driving forces [such as experience, updating knowledge and skills, new technologies, and compliance with new teaching standards] push the teacher to improve all aspects of teaching. As a consequence, with the intrinsic teaching value, the teacher needs to make the right decisions for his/her actions that positively and effectively contribute towards shifting quality teaching and achieving dynamic requirements that directly benefit our students in terms of achieving their learning outcomes.
In order to create teaching value added, at the classroom level having differentiation and multilevel learning, to satisfy student learning outcomes, the internal and external driving forces [such as experience, updating knowledge and skills, new technologies, and compliance with new teaching standards] push the teacher to improve all aspects of teaching. As a consequence, with the intrinsic teaching value, the teacher needs to make the right decisions for his/her actions that positively and effectively contribute towards shifting quality teaching and achieving dynamic requirements that directly benefit our students in terms of achieving their learning outcomes.
See an illustration of implementing the Balanced Scorecard at the classroom level on my Google site
References
Charter Global Management Accountant (2014). Balanced Scorecard. Retrieved from
Kaplan, R. (2010). Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard. Working Knowledge. Harvard Business School. Retrieved 3 October 2014 from
Kaplan, R. & Miyake, D.(2010). The Balanced Scorecard. For a strategy-focused school district, it’s a route for driving systemwide performance measurements, as Atlanta’s experience suggests. Retrieved 6 October 2014 from http://www.aasa.org/SchoolAdministratorArticle.aspx?id=11784
The Wallace Foundation (2010). “Balanced Scorecard:” A Tool For Better Education Planning. Retrieved 6 October 2014 from http://www.wallacefoundation.org/view-latest-news/InTheNews/Pages/Balanced-Scorecard-A-Tool-For-Better-Education-Planning.aspx
Related links
Performance Management
Measurement and Rewards
Support for teachers
Harvard Business Review
Balanced Scorecard Institute (BSI-Strategy Management Group: Balanced Scorecard Basics
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