Outcome-based Instructional Management: A Sociological Perspective

During the past decade, a series of related instructional concepts and approaches has been refined and implemented which requires major adjustments in traditional patterns of instructional management and delivery. These approaches are known by names such as ‘mastery learning’, ‘individually programmed instruction’, ‘competency based education’, and ‘learner-responsive instruction’, and they often produce impressive improvements in the learning achievement of whole groups of ‘average’ and ‘poor’ students. While understood and implemented in a variety of ways, they share a set of common underlying principles and operational features identified here as ‘outcome-based’. In describing these outcome-based philosophical principles and program characteristics, this paper focuses on changes in the management of time, students, instructional resources, and testing required of both teachers and administrators by such programs. In brief, the paper develops the thesis and framework that outcome-based approaches require an instructional management system that is assessment driven rather than assignment driven. Among other things, assessment driven systems rely on the existence of time-flexible instructional delivery, student grouping, and testing/assessment conditions in order to assure that virtually all students reach publicly acknowledged and operationalized learning goals. This mode of management represents a major departure from the clock, schedule, calendar, and age-grade based assignment structure within which conventional instructional systems operate.