Lean thinking in lean times for education (Q2675666)

The article is an in-depth study of published research of the lean thinking approach to contemporary challenges of education. Lean thinking methods are a proposed solution to finding alternative solutions for relieving the current educational problems (in particular, finding cheaper solutions using fewer resources). It has only recently been found that lean thinking processes cannot only be applied to business problems, but also in education. In this paper, the authors describe the results of their systematic literature review for this topic. They not only present a full list of 47 research publications on this topic from the last 20 years, but also organise their findings with respect to journals and publishers, timeline, number of authors, geographic base, methods and techniques used in research, keywords, \dots\ They pay particular attention to maturity and evolution of lean thinking in education over time, and finish the paper with several specific directions for future research in this area.