Trees for the forest

One of two initial observations (forest-for-the-trees being the other) of an education system's attempts to improve learning and teaching at scale. Both are side effects of using a standardised, top-down, reductionist approach to a complex problem (see also ateleogical-versus-teleological)

Nascent definition

Being unable to see the trees for the forest suggests that design focus is too far up the abstraction layer. Too divorced from context to truly engage effectively. Suggesting that it's a flavour of the reusability-paradox for many of the same reasons

A top-down, reductionist approach - especially when its being prescriptive (e.g. IT systems development; or institutional policy) simply cannot engage with all contextual realities. It has to abstract away certain specifics for the designers to be able to work with.