Agile Scrum Pedagogy: Leveraging Collaborative Corporate Practices to Enhance Engagement

Abstract

Accountability legislation such as No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds Act ushered in an era of right-answer based reforms. Teachers, students, parents as well as community and corporate leaders lament the legislation’s negative impact on critical and creative thinking skills. Recent educational reform proposals focus on reversing the accountability trends. The change is propelling instructors at all levels to consider making contextually relevant pedagogical modifications. Business entities increasing resolve to adopt Agile Scrum principles offers educators an intriguing, authentic teamwork learning strategy. This article presents a business professor’s journey from content-driven to Agile Scrum’s context-embracing classroom instruction. Results from this action research affirm Agile Scrum principles that suggest engagement increases when instructors provide students flexibility, fast-paced opportunities to absorb content.