Constructive Alignment (CA) is neither the panacea, nor the unalloyed evil depicted in the majority of higher education discourses. But rather, the theory is a heuristic and accessible representation of commonly agreed upon aspects of modern curriculum and educational theory, designed explicitly to support learning and teaching. However, when imposed top-down for accountability purposes, or used as a quality assurance tool, the seemingly step-by-step simplicity that gives it an administrative potential can also diminish or even destroy its relevance as an educational tool. For these reasons CA and particularly learning outcomes are often vilified amongst academic staff as a pernicious influence on learning and teaching. It has been argued that the mechanistic use of alignment and learning outcomes for validation and audit purposes can create an illusion of quality control which bears little relation to the reality of teaching practice and student learning. This paper explores the tensions that have been created as constructive alignment has journeyed and expanded from an educational theory into Higher Education teaching policy and practice. The purpose is to reclaim its original perspective as a tool for professional academic teaching.
The aim of the Bologna Process is to make higher education systems across Europe more transparent. It is crucial for this purpose that confusion concerning the characteristics of the systems should be replaced by conformity. But, as we will show, conformity brought about at one level may create confusion at another. The curricular aspect of the Bologna Process focuses on a shift to outcome-based and student-centred programmes. Syllabi should now be based on intended learning outcomes (ILOs) and should be adjusted to general level descriptors for qualifications. However, the Bologna documents give no explicit recommendations about the use of grading scales. In Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the reforms of higher education induced by the Bologna process included a change of grading scales and referred to the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS). Through these three case studies, we describe and analyse the political process and argumentation underpinning the decisions to change the grading scales in each country. This includes the problems, both experienced and perceived, with the old grading scales, the various national assessment traditions and the new grading scales. The purpose of the change was not the same in each country, but the ongoing adaptation to a seven-step grading scale was thought to ease the international recognition of the national grades, making mobility easier. Though a seven-step grading scale was implemented in both Danish and Norwegian higher education and also by an increasing number of Swedish higher education institutions, the translation of grades only works on a superficial level. The grading scales designed are fundamentally different as classification systems; they attach different numerical values to grades with identical labels and they relate differently to norm- and standards-referenced judgements of learning outcomes. The information condensed in similar grades from the three countries cannot be equated. The vision of simple transparency turns out to be an illusion.
This case study of large-class teaching at a UK university focuses on the place of large-scale lectures in academics’ approaches to teaching, their use by students in their studies, and their relationship to institutional quality assurance policies. The case is a second-year module comprised of 180 students, and it includes two-hour lectures as the primary mode of teaching. The data is drawn from a range of sources including observations, interviews, focus groups, institutional documentation, and a student survey. Observations revealed largely transmissive lectures with little student interaction. The analytic framework of constructive alignment and outcome-based education is used to examine the promoted educational values and the practice experienced by students. The results are further explored in relation to two texts celebrating 50 years since publication: Donald Bligh’s What’s the Use of Lectures and Benson Snyder’s The Hidden Curriculum, Both highlight the dissonance of espoused approaches to teaching, and the realities of large-class environments. While the institutional literature foregrounds student-centred, ‘active learning’ approaches, the teacher-centred practice observed would have been very familiar to Bligh and Snyder; the principles of constructive alignment were visible only at the policy level. The implicit reward mechanisms of the hidden curriculum ensure that the majority of students succeed and are satisfied with the educational offering. The students who attended the lectures appeared to enjoy them and indicated that the primary benefits are the structure offered by live lectures and the support of the peer networks which develop as a result of attendance.
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