With the policy of developing a, transparent and competitive European higher education sector learning outcomes (LOs) are attributed a foundation stone role in policy and curriculum development. A premise for the implementation of LOs is that they bear fundamentally similar, meaning across national, institutional or professional/disciplinary contexts. In contrast detractors, suggest that LOs cannot communicate precisely across programmes or national boundaries. With this as a backdrop, this investigation analyse how LOs are used to communicate what students are to learn and the extent to which the use of LOs drives standardisation. The analysis is based on a case study of how LOs are formulated in study programme documents in two professional education programmes in Norway and the UK. The findings of the study indicate that LOs can be considered to drive standardisation through the same presentation using bullet points and therefore on the surface being presented in a standardised form. The study also finds that LOs are framed in varied ways in the two countries and within the different study programmes and in a web of interconnected documents, this ‘local’ structural usage of LOs disrupts the ‘foundation stone’ role of the LO as a vehicle for standardisation and weakens the establishment of sameness across institutions and nations.
Prøitz, Tine S.Havnes, AntonBriggs, MaryScott, Ian
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences\School of Education
Year of publication: 2017Date of RADAR deposit: 2017-03-31