Learning Outcomes

This study aims to illuminate the phenomenon of learning outcomes. Although a wide range of studies in education have examined the phenomenon in various ways, few have investigated how scholars themselves conceive of it. To provide insight into this issue, the paper explores the following questions: How is the term “learning outcome” defined? By whom? When? Where? The investigation is based on a document analysis of a selection of 33 scholarly written documents in which the concept is discussed. Findings indicate that there is a dominant established definition of the term learning outcome. However, a wide range of alternative definitions are also identified. These assert that learning outcomes involve more than what can be described in pre-specified and measurable terms.

National and transnational qualifications frameworks are an increasingly present feature of the education and training landscape. The United Kingdom can be regarded as one of the pioneers of qualifications frameworks, with partial frameworks appearing from the mid‐1980s onwards. However, approaches in England if not in the whole of the UK have remained fragmented compared with the best examples from other countries. The recently‐introduced Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) introduces partial innovations particularly in enabling credit for smaller achievements and allowing employers and practitioner communities to contribute content into the framework. However, the framework is largely limited to vocational qualifications outside of universities; it is not particularly well integrated with the higher education, professional, and at present, school sectors; and it lacks responsiveness to innovations in qualification design. The QCF has been described as a ‘strong’ or regulated framework, although a more apposite term might be ‘brittle.’

This paper examines how economics imperialism (the increasing colonization of other disciplines by neoclassical economics) has affected contemporary education policies. I suggest that an increasing preoccupation with education meeting the needs of the economy, together with the prevalence of economic concepts outside of economics, have contributed to the development of education policies which mimic economic ideas. The specific policies which it considers are outcomes-based qualifications frameworks, which are becoming increasingly prevalent internationally. I argue that in the main, outcomes-based qualifications frameworks can be seen as tools for creating or regulating education markets, and that their underpinning logic is the logic of neoclassical economics. I further argue that the educational ideas that are invoked in association with outcomes-based qualifications frameworks, and which have often been seen as progressive, or empowering, or anti-elitist, have commonalities with the tools of analysis of neoclassical economics. Specifically, ideas about knowledge and the curriculum which have traditionally been seen as progressive have an overemphasis on individuals, and underemphasis on structures. These underlying similarities have facilitated the process whereby education policy has been rewritten using the tools of neoclassical economics, enabling the description of neo-liberal policies in progressive terms.

In a pilot study, a 2X2 experimental design was used to explore the effects of external representations (concept map versus text) and animation (animated versus static) on learning. Twenty four undergraduate students were assigned to one of four groups, each presented with the same audio narration combined with a different visual presentation on the digitization of sound: static text, animated text, static concept map, or animated concept map. A questionnaire was designed to evaluate thirteen cognitive processes involved in meaningful learning. An interaction between presentation format and animation was detected, where animation benefited to participants studying text, and hindered participants studying concept maps. These results are not consistent with previous studies and highlight the need to develop more complex assessment tools that encompass the diversity of learning processes supported by external representations.