What's Wrong with Outcomes? Spotter planes, action plans, and steerage of the educational workplace

Educational outcomes have descended on schools with a ferocity unimaginable a few years ago. We have reached the point where outcomes rhetoric is so deeply embedded in the official discourses of schooling that it appears to be ‘the only game in town’. This paper outlines the economic rationalist origins of outcomes orientations, and uses an Australian background to expose the pervasive myth about the relationship of outcomes to aspects of teaching and learning.