Claims vs. practicalities: lessons about using learning outcomes

Abstract

The idea of learning outcomes seems to increasingly dominate education policy internationally. Many claims are made about what they can achieve, for example, in enabling comparison of qualifications across countries, improving the recognition of prior learning and improving educational quality. The claims made for the role of learning outcomes rest on the assumption that outcomes can be transparent, or that they can capture or represent the essence of what a learning programme or qualification represents. But in practice, either learning outcomes are open to dramatically different interpretations, or they derive their meaning from being embedded in a curriculum. In both instances, learning outcomes cannot play the roles that are claimed for them. I draw on insights from South Africa, where learning outcomes were a major part of curriculum and education policy reform. I suggest that outcomes cannot disclose meaning within or across disciplinary or practice boundaries. They did not enable the essence of a programme to be understood similarly enough by different stakeholders and they did not facilitate judgements about the nature and quality of education and training programmes. Learning outcomes do not carry sufficient meaning, if they are not embedded in knowledge within a curriculum or learning programme. But if they are thus embedded, they cannot play the roles claimed for them in assisting judgements to be made across curricula and learning programmes. The notion of transparency (or even, a more moderate notion of sufficient transparency) which proved unrealisable in practice is the basis of nearly all the claims made about what learning outcomes can achieve. In addition, the South African experiences demonstrated how outcomes-based approaches can distort education and training programmes, and lead to practical complexities, which are a direct consequence of the need for transparency, and its impossibility, and not (although this was probably also the case) the product of ‘poor implementation’ in South Africa.

Keywords:

• outcomes-based education
• standards
• national qualifications frameworks

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was published in Bohlinger, Sandra and Muenchhausen, Gesa, eds. Validation of learning outcomes/Validierung von Lernergebnissen. Bielefeld: Bertelsmann.

Notes

1. All three reports are published by Umalusi, and are available at www.umalusi.org.za.

2. The courses were titled: situated communications NQF level four (including Language for Early Childcare Development and General Business Administration Practitioners), and Situated Mathematics Literacy NQF level four (Mathematics for Hairdressers) respectively.

3. Typically the unit standard titles (a unit standard title contains the main outcome of the unit standard) are formulated as in the following examples: Read/view, analyze and respond to a variety of texts’ (119469 NQF Level 4). Write/present/sign for a wide range of contexts (119459 NQF Level 4). Specific outcomes are then added to each of these main outcomes which are supposed to further explain the different kinds of skills involved in reading or writing, while the range statements and assessment criteria address various features and functions of language with which the learners need to engage.

4. For example, unit standard 7451 ‘Collect, analyse, use and communicate numerical data’ was worth two credits at level 1. This unit standard expired on 3 December 2006. The newly registered unit standard 119364 ‘Evaluate and solve data handling and probability problems within given contexts’ was worth 5 credits at level 1. A close comparison of the two unit standards showed that although they appeared different (the later version provided far greater detail), they specified more or less the same mathematical content. One could make a case that material from one of the courses designed against the first unit standard ‘covered’ the second one just as well. Is it then worth five credits or two?

5. This made ‘business sense’ for the providers, as they were contracted to provide against different combinations of different unit standards.

6. The discussion below draws from a paper presented to the Higher EducationQuality Council in South Africa by Allais and Shalem (2005).

7. Of course specifications of content are also open to interpretation, and do not necessarily lead to similar standards. The difference is in the claims made for learning outcomes, and it these that I am addressing in this paper.