Outcome‐based education: a critique

ABSTRACT In Australia, the National Curriculum framework contains a national position on each of eight learning areas, and a profile indicating outcomes that students have to achieve. Thus Australia's National Curriculum involves the implementation of outcome‐based education. This term has little currency in England and Wales, despite programmes of national testing, and there is a paucity of research in Australia because of the recentness of implementation. For this reason the bulk of the theoretical and empirical literature relates to the United States. This article examines the concept of outcome‐based education focusing on the various ways it is interpreted, and its claimed advantages and disadvantages. The author concludes that the adoption of a mastery learning model involving the teaching of structured hierarchical units with frequent testing is unlikely in Australia with its constructivist ethos and the lack of a strong behaviourist tradition.

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