Evaluating learning outcomes: in search of lost knowledge

Abstract

This paper examines the concept, pervasive policy and practice of learning outcomes, as increasingly adopted and officially supported in third-level educational institutions. It begins by outlining the context and development of learning outcomes from European and Irish educational policy perspectives. We go on to explore how learning outcomes present and legitimate new knowledge forms through a particular ideological construction. The main theoretical insights that appear to inform the epistemic and pedagogical rationale for learning outcomes are critiqued, revealing hidden assumptions behind their conception, organisation and delivery. Managerialism is shown to act as a significant technology of governance in the ensuing process of cultural change. An authoritative presentation of knowledge remains central to this reconstruction of educational culture, though this is challenged by experiences of third-level teaching and learning. Specifically, critical discussion draws attention to significant gaps in knowledge domain, learning and teaching quality. Engagement with teacher colleagues, and experiences of working with third-level learners, provide a concrete object of study in which to ground our analysis. It is hoped that the theoretical and empirical insights presented will help frame and contest, within a European-wide perspective, current ideological debates on learning outcomes in education. In particular, we wish to highlight what appears to be the central paradox of learning outcomes – the pervasive presence of what we call ‘lost knowledge’, that is to say, significant epistemological and pedagogical insights that remain hidden and inarticulate in the learning outcomes paradigm. In finding a value and place for such ‘lost knowledge’, the validity of this paradigm is seriously questioned.

Keywords:

• learning outcomes
• ideological construction
• managerialism
• authoritative knowledge
• lost knowledge

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the contribution of Professors Denis O'Sullivan and Kathy Hall; Dr Paul Conway and teacher colleagues in education, art and design, and adult education; and the anonymous reviewers of this article who have helped bring more clarity to our position – thank you.

Notes

1. As a concept, managerialism was first developed in relation to the impact of marketisation (notably, Thatcherism) on formal post-primary schooling. We see its relevance extending to third-level education and broader social arenas, particularly health provision.

2. Taylorism remains open to contestation, with post-Taylorists claiming a break from (and rejection of) the past and others supporting a neo-Taylorist interpretation. The former claims new management models that emphasise positive effects on worker skills, autonomy and status relations. The latter argues that the predicted break is no more than superficial change with automated production, fragmentation of tasks and control of workers at its core. We see the learning outcomes approach, in its present form, as closer to this neo-Taylorist position and acknowledge that Taylorism (and the ‘right to manage’) remains both enduring and resilient (for further discussion see: Pruijt 2000; Lomba 2005).

3. By way of illustration, we point to positive knowledge contributions, such as: the rejection of logocentrism through the practice of deconstructing texts and ensuing undecidability (Derrida); contextualising discourse, ‘genealogy’, in terms of knowledge and power relations (Foucault); identifying ‘catastrophic consumption’ and ‘the simulacrum’, or the destruction of reality at the hands of consumer society (Baudrillard); and highlighting problems with metanarratives, of messianic history, of truth, emancipation, and human agency necessary to produce it, with the introduction of Lyotard's concept of différend.

4. Reflecting on this point, we question what happens to learning outcomes once they are written and collated – if, when and how they are to be reviewed. Their ‘fitness of purpose’ is questioned not only in their own right, but also in the context of the overall development of an educational institution.

5. Such ‘transparency’ is epitomised by the common use of the learning outcome phrase, ‘On successful completion of this module, students should be able to …’. This phrase dismisses important curriculum theory insights, particularly difference between planned and received notions of the curriculum.

6. Teachers handing out assessment guidelines to students will be familiar with the kinds of enquiry that centre on such concerns as: ‘what is the right way to argue such a point?’ and ‘what do you expect by way of an answer?’. This insight into criticality behoves teachers to look beyond curricular substance and learning outcome objectives to engage in continuous conversations about ‘good learning’.

7. The term ‘deskilling’ is associated with the ‘proletarianization’ concept adapted for education from Marxism. It is specifically used to refer to: the increased division of labour; the separation of conception from the execution of tasks; the proliferation of workload demands; and, despite ‘official’ devolved powers, the reduction of teachers’ autonomy and use of skills in the workplace. It is claimed that the resultant combination of these factors serves to ‘deskill’ teachers’ work, thus rendering teachers less professional, not more. For a more extensive treatise of the origins and development of this concept, see: Ozga and Lawn (1981, 1988); Apple and Weis (1983); Apple (1986); Densmore (1987); and Ozga (1987).

8. Freire (1998) refers to this phenomenon as the ‘witness potential’.