Learning outcomes approach and quality assurance – how can these two benefit from each other?
Learning outcomes have centred in discussions at European level more or less since 2004 and it is a topic which is overarching and which links together a range of different European education initiatives. What is now known as the learning outcomes approach is where learning outcomes are at the centre of developments in the field of education. The shift to learning outcomes approach has been gaining speed since 2009 and is now seen for example in several National Qualifications Frameworks of education. However, learning outcomes, as the name suggests, focus on the “final product” of education, what the learner needs to know and be able to do after finishing education. Another process, the quality assurance, focuses on the entire process of education, and on 28th and 29th of November the European Commission organised a peer learning activity (PLA) to find out how quality assurance can support the learning outcomes and vice versa.
The PLA gathered around 40 quality assurance experts from different Member States, some working with Vocational Education and Training (VET) and others from Higher Education (HE) to learn from national examples and experiences in quality assurance and learning outcomes and to find synergies between learning outcomes and quality assurance in VET and in HE.
The PLA was opened by Jens Bjornavold from Cedefop, who gave an introduction to the topic as well as to different expectations, concerns and challenges at both policy level as well as that of practitioners of learning outcomes and quality assurance. The biggest challenge in the learning outcomes approach he mentioned is the transition from the expectations, including better transparency, more flexible educational pathways and integration of non-formal and informal learning, to actual outcomes. The monitoring of the implementation of the learning outcomes approach is also a big concern at policy level, together with the legitimacy of learning outcomes implemented at different levels, the risk of reducing the scope of learning and many others. In future the challenge of writing and defining the learning outcomes will arise, where we have to make sure they are legitimate as there is no one right way of writing these outcomes. The learning outcomes must be agreed upon by all stakeholders involved from high-level policy makers to the educational institutions and practitioners, and cannot therefore be imposed in a top-down manner.
In order to open the debate in plenary, and to provide input to the smaller workshops following the plenary session two case studies presented by experts. During the workshops participants of the peer learning activity discussed for example of the following questions through national examples:
- How quality assurance arrangements in VET support the implementation of the learning outcomes approach?
- What are the success factors of the various national approaches?
- What are the challenges of the various national approaches?
Two of the most commonly recurring success factors of national approaches were the consistent involvement of a wide range of stakeholders as well as regular feedback, and a review of the quality assurance arrangements and the learning outcomes.
The second day of the peer learning activity was devoted to the results and conclusions of what was discussed the previous day. One of the most important conclusions was that quality assurance should not only be a tool to check whether the learning outcomes were reached or not, but instead learning outcomes can act as guidelines for quality assurance taking place throughout education. Quality assurance should focus on the overall learning process instead of just the final ”product”. The participants of the PLA also agreed on the fact that students especially in VET should be involved in the quality assurance arrangements and learning outcomes processes more than they currently are.
Recommended reading: “Why do we rank?” – an article on outcomes and ranking in schools published in the framework of the OBESSU campaign “Education, we have a problem!”
