YTK® analysis - history

The initial idea for the method came from the planning of an educational programme commissioned by UNESCO. After it had become evident that problems related to learning and training in third-world countries could not be solved with traditional western methods, new solutions had to be found. The aim was to design an educational programme that would increase innovation among politicians and officials in charge of education in these countries. As the work advanced, it was noticed that an increase in innovation requires first a change in the person's information processing methods, and this change can be achieved more easily if the person's initial methods are known. Since there were no indicators available for measuring information processing, they had to be created. The now presented and completed method is the result of years of hard work by the late professor Jukka Lehtinen.

The method is an application based on the work of the American neurologist Ned Herrmann, the Swiss psychiatrist and father of analytical psychology, Carl Jung, as well as the studies of Gordon Pask, F. Marton, R. Säljö and N.J. Entwistle, researchers of learning strategies and styles. In addition the research carried out by Seligman on the nature of optimism and pessimism has affected the development of the method. Profile indicators have been designed on the basis of extensive factor-analytic research conducted on different types of people in Finland, and on categorising the analysis results of more than one thousand people.