The IKEA Effect

Hey

Happy birthday (for whenever it is)! Here’s a little snack for you…

Big idea 🍉

There's power in planning together. When we pool our time and expertise and lean on strong shared resources, we can build better learning experiences than any of us would manage alone, in a fraction of the time.

However, as a profession, our default seems to be to resist this. Despite how wild it looks on paper, we've spent decades reinventing units, assessments and knowledge organisers. Why?

Part of the reason is a cognitive bias called the IKEA effect. The more effort we put into making a curricular artefact, the more we value it, regardless of how good it is. And we assume everyone else rates it just as highly. The work becomes the worth.

This is compounded by the sunk cost fallacy. Because we've poured effort in, our brain insists it must have been worth it. Otherwise... we'd have to admit we might not have spent our time all that well.

None of this means we shouldn't prepare for lessons. It just means we probably shouldn't start from scratch. Our time and expertise are better spent finessing an already strong lesson than reinventing it.

Because reinvention has a cost, to us and our students. Every hour we sink into rebuilding what already exists is an hour not spent on what would serve them more.

So, we need to counteract our own biases. When the urge to build from scratch strikes, pause and ask whether a strong version already exists. If so, start there, and put the effort where it pays: adapting it to our class and context.

When we do this, we get the best of both: the quality of pooled time and expertise, and the finesse that only we can add. Importantly: we don't need to build it to make it ours.

(just don’t tell IKEA)

🎓 For more, check out this paper on shared planning & workload.

Summary

• We often build lessons from scratch rather than develop strong existing resources, costing us considerable time and effort.

• The IKEA effect means we can overvalue materials simply because of the work we invested in creating them.

• A better approach is to refine great lessons for our own classes, saving time without losing our judgement or expertise.

Little updates 🥕

• Research on self-study → suggests learners can benefit when self-study comes before peer discussion.

• Paper on class-ranking feedback → suggests showing students their class position can improve outcomes for lower-performing learners.

• Article exploring parental influence on goals → suggests high standards can support mastery goals but may also contribute to perfectionism.

• Review of maths-teacher knowledge → suggests reflection can support planning & task design; however, contextual & technological gaps remain.

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