The Learning Outcome in Higher Education: Time to Think Again?

As a head of an academic development and practice unit it is with some trepidation that I set out to write this critique of learning outcomes. For the learning outcome has become the bed-rock of the infra-structure that determines quality assurance processes in higher education in the UK and elsewhere. In theory, they should be used to design courses, determine appropriate learning opportunities, measure the level of courses and provide the standard against which students‟ achievement can be measured. In this article I will argue that the learning outcome is a false god, to whom too much attention is paid and probably by the wrong people. It is important to say, that I am not the first to make this case, but do so in the hope of raising a greater level of critical discourse on what has become a hegemony within higher education.

[1]  Patrick Smith,et al.  The Trouble with Learning Outcomes , 2002 .

[2]  Allan Davies.  Effective Assessment in Art and Design :writing learning outcomes and assessmentcriteria in art and design , 2000 .

[3]  David Boud.  Work as the curriculum: pedagogical and identity implications , 2001 .

[4]  David Megginson.  Planned and Emergent Learning , 1994 .

[5]  G. Gibbs,et al.  Conditions Under Which Assessment Supports Students’ Learning , 2005 .

[6]  J. Carroll.  A Model of School Learning , 1963, Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education.

[7]  Sally Brown,et al.  Grasping the TLRP nettle: preliminary analysis and some enduring issues surrounding the improvement of learning outcomes , 2005 .

[8]  F. Marton,et al.  ON QUALITATIVE DIFFERENCES IN LEARNING: I—OUTCOME AND PROCESS* , 1976 .

[9]  P. Black,et al.  Alternative perspectives on learning outcomes: challenges for assessment , 2008 .

[10]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation , 1991 .

[11]  F. Marton,et al.  On qualitative differences in learning , 2013 .

[12]  Planned and Emergent Learning , 1996 .

[13]  Peter W. Airasian,et al.  Mastery Learning: Theory and Practice , 1971 .

[14]  Mantz Yorke,et al.  Assessment Learning and Employability , 2003 .

[15]  M. Osborne,et al.  The social and organisational mediation of university learning , 2009 .

[16]  David James,et al.  Importance and impotence? Learning, outcomes and research in further education , 2005 .

[17]  J. Biggs.  Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment , 1996 .

[18]  Benjamin S. Bloom,et al.  All Our Children Learning , 1982 .

[19]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

[20]  A. Sfard.  On Two Metaphors for Learning and the Dangers of Choosing Just One , 1998 .

[21]  Competency and the Pedagogy of Labour , 1991 .