Constructive alignment in Pacific tertiary education: building the waka with nails

ABSTRACT

Constructive alignment as a way of framing curriculum has wide appeal in many tertiary education contexts. At one Pacific regional tertiary institution, it has recently been embraced as a means toward greater program quality. Its unquestioned acceptance, however, raises the need for critical reflection. This reflection critiques constructive alignment from a number of perspectives, including its resistance to complex educational realities and its technical rationality in the face of organic aspects of a decolonised Pacific education.

KEYWORDS:

• Constructive alignment
• Pacific
• critique

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Greg Burnett

Greg Burnett is Senior Lecturer in the College of Arts, Society and Education at James Cook University in Australia. His research and teaching emphases include: a broad sociology of education with a Pacific focus; the influence of cultural and other social difference on schooling; and an exploration of critical and postcolonial theory as a basis for teaching, learning and researching in teacher education.