http://alh.sagepub.com/Active Learning in Higher Education

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 DOI: 10.1177/1469787402003003003

2002 3: 220Active Learning in Higher EducationTrevor Hussey and Patrick Smith

The Trouble with Learning Outcomes  

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220

The trouble withlearning

outcomes

TREVOR HUSSEY & PATR ICK SMITHBuckinghamshire Chilterns University College, UK

A B S T R AC T Recent decades have seen an increasing stress on theneed to monitor and manage educators, and hold them to account.This article argues that, while learning outcomes can be valuable ifproperly used, they have been misappropriated and adopted widelyat all levels within the education system to facilitate the managerialprocess. This has led to their distortion. The claim that they can bemade precise by being written with a prescribed vocabulary ofspecial descriptors so as to serve as objective, measurable devices formonitoring performance, is fundamentally mistaken, and they maybe damaging to education when used in this way. After a brief sketchof the background to the notion of learning outcomes, argumentsare presented to show their vacuity and uselessness when misusedin this way, and explanations of their inadequacies are offered.K E Y WO R D S : a c coun tab i l i ty, commodi f i cat i on , c r i t i ca le va luat i on , d e s c r i p t o r s, knowl edge , l e a r n ing ou t comes,l e ve l s, management , moni to r ing , unde r s t and ing

Introduction

It is widely accepted that the major expansion of higher education in recentdecades is to be welcomed: the benefits it has brought seem both obviousand laudable. None the less there is a perception among many informedobservers that all is not well. While the general direction of the change hasbeen welcome, it has been accompanied by less admirable, even malign,developments. There are maggots in the apple.

One set of problems has arisen because it is easy for politicians to offer– and for the public to accept – a generous expansion of university places,but far more difficult for them to provide the additional resources. Reducedper capita funding, the removal of student grants, the introduction of tuitionfees and loans, and the consequent pressure on students to find employmentwhile they study, have all transformed the educational experience.

active learning in higher educationCopyright © 2002 The Institutefor Learning and Teaching inHigher Education and SAGE Publications (London,Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)Vol 3(3): 220–233 [1469-7874(200211) 3:3;220–233;028176]

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Alongside, and not entirely unconnected, there have been profoundchanges in the educational institutions. To ensure that the increased expen-diture, however inadequate, is used properly, universities and colleges mustnot only be made to adopt modern management techniques to ensure effi-ciency, they must also be exposed to the latter-day elixir for all economic ills– the rigours of the market place. Educational institutions need a bureaucracycapable of managing themselves and able to respond to the external pressuresfor accountability from the government funding body, the QAA, the ResearchAssessment Exercises, league tables, employers, a critical press and com-petition from other institutions. The new managerialism has created a situ-ation in which the economic tail is vigorously wagging the educational dog.

Changes in management bring about changes in what is managed. Ineducation there have been two major transformations. First, and in crudeterms, education has become a commodity, and the ‘products’ it offers toits ‘customers’ have had to be commodified: divided into distinct, measur-able quantities or modules each capable of being ‘bought’ by prescribedunits of assessment. Second, the processes of education have had to becomecapable of being monitored, audited and evaluated. In this situation teach-ing staff must adhere to the rubric of transparency and state clearly whatthey are going to teach, and be held accountable for their success or failure.Modularization, credit accumulation, transferable credits, vocational train-ing, NVQs, the specification of learning outcomes and transferable skillsand criteria of assessment are all, in various ways, concomitant with thenew managerial ethos.

These developments have been evaluated and criticized by numerousobservers. The changes have been seen as a manifestation of late capitalism(Barnett, 1994; Winter, 1995; Edwards, 1998; Shore and Selwyn, 1998),or as an assertion of the power of the state over education at the expenseof the autonomy of universities (Bowles and Gintis, 1986; Slater andTapper, 1994; Edwards, 1998). It has been argued that the changes distortand undermine knowledge by reducing it to commodified, decontextual-ized information (Tsoukas, 1997) and that the increasing emphasis onauditing and transparency in education has led to the decline of trust andthe disempowerment and demoralization of academics (Power, 1997).

Accompanying these changes and their consequences there is an uneasysense of déjà vu. Holt (1981) described the ‘climate of doubt’ he identifiedin relation to accountability in schools and suggested that ‘The feast ofaccountability celebrates the death of trust’. Twenty years later Strathern(2000: 314) stated that:

The language of indicators takes over the language of service. Or, to return tothe audit process, the language of accountability takes over the language oftrust.

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One is reminded of Santayana’s dictum concerning those who fail to learnfrom their own history.

However, although these kinds of criticism are significant and may beseen as damning by many, they will not impress those who favour the free-market or who feel that making academics accountable and subject to therigours of modern management techniques is long overdue. Consequently,a better approach may be to try to show that some of the central featuresof the changes are simply mistaken: they are distorting education becausethey are based on a misunderstanding and misuse of some central concepts.

In this article we will focus on learning outcomes because they have becomea vital component of the new managerial regime. Their use is now widelymandated within the educational system, being employed at primary,secondary and tertiary levels; they are lauded by managers and insistedupon by the school inspectorate and the QAA: they are clearly seen as agood idea. However, we will argue that, while learning outcomes havelegitimate uses, they have been misappropriated for managerial purposesand that this misuse has led to their distortion to the point that they arepresently ill-conceived and incapable of doing what is claimed for them.Learning outcomes, and the ideas related to them, are in danger of becom-ing little more than spurious devices to facilitate auditing at the expense ofthe educational process.

This critique must not be misunderstood. We are not denying the needfor educators to indicate to, or discuss with, their pupils what is to becovered in a teaching session or what they are expected to learn, but weare claiming that the use of learning outcomes, as currently understood,can be damaging to education. Learning outcomes have value when prop-erly conceived and used in ways that respect their limitations and exploittheir virtues, but they are damaging to education if seen as precise pre-scriptions that must be spelled out in detail before teaching can begin andwhich are objective and measurable devices suitable for monitoring edu-cational practices. Nor are we denying that education has to be managed:the debate is about how not whether.

Learning outcomes

The process that has led us to our present conception of learning outcomescan be traced back at least to the rapid expansion of secondary and tertiaryeducation in the mid-20th century. The greatly increased public expendi-ture encouraged the feeling that educators had to make their practices more‘scientific’ and accountable. Opaque and woolly ideas about education hadto be made precise; what was implicit must be explicit and the subjectiveintuitions of educators must be replaced with objective, measurable criteria.

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Education was not only to be improved it was to be made more manage-able, even – or preferably – by non-academics.

There followed attempts to analyse the nature of education and the edu-cated person (Peters, 1966, 1967; Dearden et al., 1972); the concept of anideal and an aim (Dearden, 1968; Langford, 1968), and to the distinctionbetween aims and objectives (Hirst, 1974). However, it was soon recog-nized that such broad topics, important though they were, could not offerprecise guidance to those who stood in front of students. We might specifyaims and objectives with exactness, but they still seemed to be tainted withsubjectivity and interpreted as statements of what teachers or lecturerswant, hope or aspire to achieve. For the sake of objectivity we needed tobe able to specify observable products of the activities of the educators: i.e.learning outcomes. These can be seen as the products of the learning processwithin the pupil (Gagne, 1974; Ing, 1978) and can be directly related toassessment. Our objectives can be identified with our expected learningoutcomes, but what we observe in our assessments are our actual learningoutcomes. At last we appear to have something that is precise, explicit andobjectively measurable.

Little wonder that learning outcomes have become very fashionableamongst educational theorists and now feature in the guidance of schoolinspectors and the QAA (Moon, 1999). They are used to specify preciselywhat a student shall know or understand, and what skill or capacities theywill have at the end of a specific period of learning. Generally they are usedto specify the minimum standard of performance acceptable but, if this isso, there seems no reason in principle why they cannot also be used tospecify what is required to achieve the different grades to be awarded. Nowthe way is open to distinguish between generic, specific, basic, transferableand non-transferable skills; different kinds of knowledge and understand-ing and so on: all specifiable as outcomes and hence available for objectiveassessment.

Once all this is done, it seems, teaching can be tied to the assessmentwith unprecedented precision. Our assessment tasks can be derived fromour learning outcomes: we can design them to measure what our studentscan do. Not only that, we can now draw up assessment criteria which canthen be distributed to assessors and assessed alike. The whole process, beingexplicit and transparent, can now be audited and performances of bothteachers and students can be evaluated. The situation has been reached inwhich what happens in the classroom and in the minds of the students andtheir teachers is wholly conducive to systematic monitoring, auditing andmanagement.

However, there are complications. First, to achieve this advance, learningoutcomes must be specified with precision. Second, learning outcomes, like

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objectives before them, must differ according to the level of teaching andlearning concerned. Furthermore, if we use learning outcomes to specifyquality of work, at any one of these levels we need to be able to distinguishbetween the different grades. Even more important from a managerialviewpoint is that we need consistency and uniformity: a shared language.

The solution of these problems, it is argued, lies in the wording of thelearning outcomes: we need a vocabulary of precise descriptors to enable usto specify the outcomes exactly and to distinguish clearly between the levelsand perhaps even grades. For example, we might specify that, at one level,the child or student must be able to describe, recall, name, and repeat; whileat the next they must be able to define, comprehend, understand andexplain; and at a third level they must be able to analyse, evaluate, criticize,compare, integrate, organize, infer and deduce.

The overall thrust however remains the same: armed with learning out-comes written in this precise language we can, at last, state clearly what willbe learned during a given unit of teaching, and exactly how it can beassessed. In designing our courses or modules we now have a useful guideto what is expected from a learning activity, both for the teachers and thetaught. The progress of the student, the suitability of the teaching methodand the effectiveness of the teacher, can all be determined objectively: theentire enterprise can be ‘tracked’ and audited, even by someone completelyignorant of the discipline concerned.

Some criticisms of learning outcomes

A preliminary point to notice is that, while it is obvious that learning out-comes are strongly favoured by the managers of educational institutions,by Ofsted and the QAA, it is not so evident that they are either favoured orused willingly by teachers, at least at the tertiary level, and possibly at otherlevels of education. We know of no empirical evidence to substantiate thisclaim, but anecdotal evidence suggests that, while some academics haveembraced learning outcomes, many design their courses or modules byconsidering the content of the syllabus, the contact time allotted, the levelor year, the appropriate texts to be used and the best mode of assessment.They may state their expected learning outcomes if obliged to do so, butthis is seen as a chore, rather than a useful exercise. Once the QAA visit isover they will hardly be looked at again. If learning outcomes are sopractical and useful, why is there this resistance?

There may be several explanations for this lack of enthusiasm for learn-ing outcomes amongst many academics. It is possible that they are just lazy,or that they are reluctant to specify precise and ascertainable outcomes forfear that this will expose their poor teaching. However, it may also be that

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academics are not convinced by the virtues of learning outcomes recitedearlier. We suggest that they may have good reasons: there are severalimportant problems worth exploring.

Learning outcomes are claimed to be precise and specific statements,which can be objectively assessed. This may be true if they are simpledescriptions of the learner’s behaviour that specify the content of theperformance, for example ‘Will count to ten without errors’; ‘Will reciteEdward Thomas’s Adlestrop’. But, apart from the fact that even these can bedone well or hesitatingly, with or without understanding and so forth, suchlearning outcomes are of questionable value even at primary school leveland almost entirely irrelevant to higher education. To make them applicableand useful, they need to specify knowledge, understanding, skills andabilities, rather than simple behavioural responses, and to indicate thequality or standard of these. However, this is where the troubles begin.

The first objection to learning outcomes is that their clarity, explicitnessand objectivity are largely spurious. They give the impression of precisiononly because we unconsciously interpret them against a prior understand-ing of what is required. In brief, they are parasitic upon the very know-ledge and understanding that they are supposed to be explicating.

Consider factual knowledge (‘knowledge that’ or ‘propositional know-ledge’): it would seem that the relevant descriptors are such terms as‘describe’, ‘name’, ‘recall’, ‘define’, etc. But knowledge allows of degrees; itcan be detailed and precise or crude and vague. Given the learning outcome‘Will describe the structure and function of the human ear’, if a studentwrote ‘The ear is a hole in the head where the sound goes in’, this wouldundeniably fit the descriptor, but it is unlikely to be acceptable at first-yearundergraduate level. To make the descriptors precise we have to interprettheir meaning and this involves adding an understanding of what qualityor standard is appropriate at the relevant educational level, but this is whatthe learning outcome is supposed to be specifying. To qualify ‘describe’ byadding ‘fully’, ‘in detail’, ‘accurately’ and so on will not achieve the desiredprecision because the meanings of these terms are just as relative to thesituation, subject matter or level. For reasons to be explained in the nextsection, as a general rule, it is neither practical nor useful to try to specifylearning outcomes with the kind of precision that is being sought: they willremain ambiguous whatever descriptors are used. If learning outcomes areused to specify grades for work at a given educational level, then mutatismutandis the same argument applies.

Similar problems arise concerning understanding (Biggs, 1999). Herethe appropriate descriptors might be such words as ‘explain’, ‘exemplify’,‘defend’, ‘argue’, ‘infer’, ‘interpret’, ‘illustrate’ and so on. However, we canunderstand the processes of fossilization or the causes of the Second World

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War in detailed and subtle, or shallow and superficial ways and, in turn, themeaning of these terms will depend upon whether we are writing an A-level answer or an undergraduate essay. Since understanding can be pro-found or superficial, sophisticated or naïve, the descriptors, and hence thelearning outcomes in which they are used, can only be interpreted in aprecise way if we already know what they must signify at each level orgrade. Again our claim is that this knowledge cannot be made explicithowever careful we are with a prescribed vocabulary of descriptors.

The same arguments apply to the specification of analytical and evalu-ative skills. If the learning outcome for a third-year teaching session on anEnglish Literature degree specified that students will be able to evaluatecritically Thomas Hardy’s At Castle Boterel, we might be impressed by astudent who made an elaborate attempt to employ Heidegger’s notion ofDasein and a feminist interpretation of guilt, but would fail a student whosimply said that the poem was old fashioned rubbish. However, both arecritical evaluations and we praise one and dismiss the other only becausewe know roughly what is to count as a critical evaluation at this level: thedescriptors themselves do not tell us this. Both teacher and student needthis knowledge to interpret the learning outcomes. The student has to judgewhat is required by reference to the levels set by the teaching, seminar dis-cussions, reading and so on. The learning outcome itself indicates only thegeneral nature of what is expected.

This suggests that a reply to these criticisms might be that we can at leastuse learning outcomes to give a general guide to learners and teachers aboutwhat is expected at the different levels. That is to say, even if the descrip-tors are as vague and imprecise as has been claimed here, they can still beused to distinguish between the different kinds of performance that aredemanded as the student progresses. For example, at degree level we mightsay that in the first year learning outcomes would be written using suchdescriptors as ‘describe’, ‘contrast’, ‘compare’, ‘summarize’, ‘illustrate’,‘demonstrate’ and ‘present’; while for the second year they would employsuch descriptors as ‘understand’, ‘explain’, ‘elucidate’, ‘solve’, ‘show’ and‘deduce’. At third-year level we might require students to ‘analyse’, ‘evalu-ate’, ‘criticize’, ‘examine’, ‘synthesise’, ‘resolve’, ‘construct a coherent view’and ‘design’. In this way students can be given a general idea of how theirassessed output must change as they progress through their degree.

At first sight here is something quite plausible about this response. Surelywe would, for example, accept that undergraduates might reasonably beasked to show that they can explain a theory or show understanding of amathematical formula, while we would expect much more at masters level.The difference may not be stated as precisely and explicitly as we mighthope, but it is still useful.

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However, this leads to our second main criticism of learning outcomes:they can be insensitive to the requirements of different disciplines. Thepattern of learning and the skills appropriate at different levels vary fromsubject to subject. It may be that in, say, the physical sciences and medicine,it is quite appropriate for most first-year degree work to be descriptive, withcritical evaluation of alternative descriptions and theories left to the thirdyear. But even here this would not be appropriate in, say, discussing theresults of case studies or experimental work, where some explanation andcritical thinking would be required even in the first year. In a literaturedegree, students would be expected to evaluate and criticize from level oneand, in philosophy, if students spent the first year simply describing whatPlato or Russell said, they would not be doing philosophy, since it is by itsvery nature a critical, analytic activity. The sequence identified by thedescriptors ‘describe’,‘understand’ and ‘analyse’ may well represent a seam-less progression in cognitive terms, but it remains at odds with the empiri-cal knowledge of practitioners and suggests a uni-directional movementthat distorts the real process.

Imagine the indignation of someone who has their proposed mastersdegree in evolutionary psychology rejected because one of their learning out-comes required students to understand modern Darwinian evolution theory.‘Understand’, they might be told, is not a masters level descriptor. But therequirement to understand such complex things as quantum field theory,relativity theory or biological evolution is enormously demanding: suchunderstanding is possessed by very few people. Similarly, to describe themechanism of transmitting sounds across the middle ear is not of the sameorder of difficulty as describing the mechanisms involved in the release ofinsulin from the � cells of the islets of Langerhans. These difficulties in speci-fying descriptors are not just confined to science: it would not be unreason-able to ask a masters student to demonstrate understanding of Eliot’s The WasteLand, or of the significance of his pacifism in the music of Robert Simpson.

If the proponents of learning outcomes reply that, of course, the wordingof the outcomes must be appropriate to the discipline concerned, then theymust concede that a prescriptive list of descriptors is of little use to us. Thespecification of learning outcomes at different levels will have to bedifferent for different subjects, and for different topics within a subject.Again the vital point here is that, whatever wording we choose, we can onlyinterpret it in the light of a prior understanding of what quality or stan-dard is appropriate in a given subject at a given level – yet this is what thelearning outcomes are supposed to be stating with precision.

However, the advocate of learning outcomes might reply that these criti-cisms miss the point. Of course the teacher must formulate his or her learn-ing outcomes with reference to their background understanding of their

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subject and their experience of teaching and marking at the various levelsand, of course, they will be merely spelling out in precise terms what theyalready know. However, the students do not have this expertise and so needthe learning outcomes and assessment criteria as a precise guide to what isexpected of them.

This reply is mistaken for two reasons. First, as argued above, the ‘preciseterms’ are only precise if interpreted by means of the background under-standing and experience. Without this they are largely vacuous. This is trueeven if we try to show appreciation of the different disciplines and topicsin our choice of descriptors. Second, it is because the students do not havethis expertise that the learning outcomes will be of little use to them if usedin the formulaic ways prescribed by their advocates and supported by thetechnologies of audit and review. It is useful to have the topic of a lectureor teaching session specified at the outset, and this involves indicating whatthe students are expected to learn, but the depth and detail of the know-ledge, or the level and sophistication of the skills, will be established by theteaching session itself, the learning activity involved and the kind of readingor exercises recommended.

Similarly, a student may benefit by being advised to be more critical andless descriptive, or more original and less derivative, but this advice onlyhas meaning within the context of their previous performance and withreference to the level at which they are studying. The above mentionedterms ‘more’ and ‘less’ used in giving the advice to students gain theirmeaning by being relative to the student’s past performance in the specificactivities concerned. Once again, learning outcomes are only precise andinformative when interpreted by means of the experience of the audience.The idea that learning outcomes can be framed in advance so as to exactlyspecify what is to be achieved is profoundly mistaken.

A third argument against the employment of learning outcomes is thateven if students are enabled to interpret them in the ways indicated above,thus giving a clear sense to their meaning, they may actually restrict thesubsequent educational outcomes. There are two main ways in which thismay happen. First, if they are used to specify the pass/fail threshold (Moon,1999) then students may aim merely to achieve that level, thus purchasingtheir credit points at the lowest price. Although this is rational behaviourin a market place it is not a sensible or proper approach to education. Thedangers of focusing on thresholds or on what might minimally be achievedhave long been recognized (Whitehead, 1929).

Second, the emphasis on planned learning outcomes ignores, and mayeven squeeze out, the emergent learning outcomes that can be so reward-ing (Megginson, 1994, 1996). Indeed, it may be argued that the most fruit-ful and valuable feature of higher education is the emergence of ideas, skills

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and connections, which were unforeseen, even by the teacher. Such eventsare rare enough without the additional restrictions of specified outcomes,imposed upon those involved in the learning process. Entwistle et al.(2000) point out that, in practice, unplanned diversions from the intendedfocus of classroom activities account for over 60% of changes that occur:good teachers seize on such moments. In brief, the commodification ofknowledge and the attempt to define learning outcomes precisely are anti-thetical to good educational practice.

If these arguments are sound they show that it is unjustifiable for thosewho manage, validate or assess courses designed by academics, to insist thatsuch courses should have learning outcomes written in certain ways, usinga prescribed set of descriptors. There are no formulas for writing course ormodule outlines; no substitute for the experience and expertise of the edu-cators, and no way of giving students exact and useful instructions withoutpresupposing their ability to interpret them appropriately. At best, learningoutcomes can only be statements about what topic or fragment of the syllabus is to be covered by a teaching session, and what kinds of skills andcapacities students will be expected to display in respect to it. The contentcan be stated more or less precisely; the quality of the skills and capacitiescan only be grasped from the context. Perhaps this explains the afore-mentioned prejudices of the academics in their resistance to learning outcomes.

An explanation of the problems

If we accept that the purported precision, objectivity and measurability oflearning outcomes are largely mythical, it is tempting to explain this byretreating into a mist of holistic waffle about professional experience andthe ineffability of the intuitive wisdom of academics. However, we suggestthat there are better explanations. One is obvious: the meaning of the evalu-ative terms used to specify the quality of knowledge, understanding oranalyses are always relative to a context and so cannot be used to specifyabsolutes. But, there is another more fundamental explanation.

Education is a social practice that has developed in a largely piecemealmanner over many years and differently in different cultures. Some of itsevolution has been the result of planning and intentional action, includingpolitical policies; some has emerged by unreflective happenstance. What wesee as being worth including in education and what we perceive to beappropriate methods and levels of teaching have evolved in similar ways.Overwhelmingly, the most common way for someone to know and under-stand the intricacies of this social practice is to be socialized into it bypassing through it and by working within it. By doing, say, a history degree,a person has the opportunity to learn what is currently seen as worthy of

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inclusion in a history degree; what kinds and levels of knowledge, under-standing and skills are required and how they are to be assessed. In additionthey can acquire values, beliefs and attitudes. By entering the teaching pro-fession this knowledge is enhanced and supplemented by experience of theprocesses that bring about changes within the practices. Comparisonsbetween institutions and the system of external examiners helps to spreadnew practices and share standards.

In specifying what is acquired by a person who engages in education itis convenient to recall Ryle’s (1949) distinction between ‘knowledge that’(knowledge of facts expressed in propositions) and ‘knowledge how’(learned skills and abilities). Some of what is learned is ‘knowledge that’:this would include much of the content of academic syllabuses, rules ofprocedure, facts about practice and professional duties and so on. However,the bulk of what is acquired would be ‘knowledge how’. This wouldinclude such things as teaching skills, and the ability to judge the level atwhich to pitch a lecture; the suitability of teaching materials, how muchmaterial to put into a teaching session; pace of delivery; the standards ofperformance of a student; the level of attention in a seminar and so on. Alecturer may know that his or her students need to be more critical and lessdescriptive in their responses, but this is based upon the lecturer’s know-ledge how to judge performance at that level, and what he or she does tochange their behaviour will depend upon his or her ability to teach.

The relationship between ‘knowledge how’ and ‘knowledge that’ iscomplex. Some skills and abilities can easily be described in propositionalform: for example the ability to change a car wheel or operate an overheadprojector. Many other kinds of ‘knowledge how’ can be translated intopropositional form, but the result is so cumbersome and complicated thatit is worthless. It may be possible to describe in words how to tie up a shoelace, ride a bicycle or use a spokeshave, but no one would think of learn-ing these skills in this manner: they would learn by being shown and bysubsequent practice. There are other skills and abilities which probablycannot be translated into ‘knowledge that’: either in practice – as in a fullaccount of how a native English speaker generates a full range of gram-matically correct sentences – or perhaps even in principle, such as ourcapacity to devise mathematical proofs.

We suggest that the demand that teachers and academics formulateprecise learning outcomes, amounts to the requirement to translate ‘know-ledge how’ into ‘knowledge that’ – into a set of statements – and that thisis largely either fatuous or impossible. It may be both possible and usefulto specify the content of a teaching session or the general kind of skill, ability or capacity that will be required of the student by the end ofit, but this is not what learning outcomes are restricted to doing. They are

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supposed to specify precisely what quality of knowledge, understanding,skills etc., the student will acquire. However, as we have argued above, tobe able to judge what is to count as appropriate knowledge, the level ofunderstanding, the quality of analysis, the degree of skill and so on, requiresskills based on experience which do not lend themselves to translation ofa useful kind.

For example, a sociology lecturer may have to judge the level of analyti-cal abilities required from a final-year student in an evaluation of Marx’stheory of alienation, or a craftsman may have to assess the skills of a second-year student in cabinet making. These judgements have to be based on theirrespective experience: it involves, primarily, ‘knowledge how’. This abilityto judge may either be impossible to capture in propositional form or mayrequire such lengthy and convoluted language as to be pointless. What isimportant is that the teacher knows how to recognize the required qualityof performance; can give examples his or herself of that standard of work,and can get the student to see how to do the same.

When designing a module, a lecture or a lesson plan, the academic canspecify the content and the level (first year, second year, etc.) and even thegeneral nature of the knowledge or skills to be displayed – such as descrip-tive, analytic, evaluative and so on – but the quality of these can only beleft implicit in the level specified. We cannot dictate that certain descriptorsshall apply at certain levels because this will differ from content to content,and we cannot specify the degree of skill or quality of understandingwithout referring back to the level, since each descriptor means somethingdifferent at each level. The way to give guidance to students is to specifythe content, level and type of skill and to indicate the quality by compari-son with what they have already achieved and with what is taking place inthe teaching they are experiencing. This is precise, explicit and objective,but in the way appropriate to skills and abilities, rather than in pseudo-scientific jargon.

Conclusion

As we sketched briefly in the introduction, learning outcomes are only onecomponent of a huge and complex body of changes that have been intro-duced into our education system in recent years. They have been mis-appropriated to serve in the development of a system that is more suited tomodern management techniques, and to survival in a competitive marketeconomy. Learning outcomes have become a central component of the newapproach because they are essential to the commodification of learning andhence to the desire to audit and monitor the performance of those involved.

Despite their supposed importance, we have argued that the idea of

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learning outcomes as promulgated throughout the educational system inrecent years, is profoundly mistaken. Their alleged explicit clarity, precisionand objectivity are largely spurious. Those academics and teachers whohave had to use them have overcome this vacuity either by merely feigningcompliance or by implicitly (and perhaps even unconsciously) interpretingthem in terms of their existing knowledge and experience. The managerswho have insisted upon them, generally in response to the demands ofoutside agencies, have either not understood them well enough to noticetheir emptiness, or they too have unwittingly interpreted their meaning inthe light of their knowledge of the subjects concerned. We have also arguedthat even where they are given content, their effects may be undesirable ineducational terms.

However, we have not been entirely dismissive of the idea of learningoutcomes. There is some obvious use in specifying what aspects of thecontent of a subject students will be expected to learn and what generalkinds of skills and capacities they will be expected to display. The properinterpretation of these outcomes must emerge from the context and pre-vailing activities and experiences of the students: they cannot be, in them-selves, either clear or precise and do not specify objectively measurableentities.

Learning outcomes, understood and interpreted in this more flexible andpractical way, will not lend themselves to strict auditing, but they may openthe way to a better understanding of the process of education. In particu-lar we hope, in a future paper, to develop an account of learning outcomes,including those that emerge during a learning session, that is more realis-tic and conducive to educational purposes.

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Biographical notesT R E VO R H U S S E Y is Principal Lecturer in Philosophy in the Faculty of Applied SocialScience and Humanities at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College.

PAT R I C K S M I T H is Professor of Learning and Teaching in the Department of QualityEnhancement and Development at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College.

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