Can performance-related learning outcomes have standards?

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Description/Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to explain the distinction between educational standards and learning outcomes and to indicate the problems that potentially arise when a learning outcomes approach is applied to a qualification meta-framework like the European Qualification Framework, or indeed to national qualification frameworks.
Design/methodology/approach – The methods used are documentary, political and conceptual analysis, with some reference to empirical work carried out in relation to other projects.
Findings – It is found that there are substantial differences between learning outcomes and standards with large educational and political implications. Furthermore, the “pure” form of learning outcomes approach contains a design flaw, which makes its coherent implementation problematic.
Research limitations/implications – The stimulation of further research on learning outcomes based approaches to qualifications and the problems that arise in their implementation.
Practical implications – The EU needs to think carefully about the fitness for purpose of the current descriptors for EQF and whether or not it is desirable to move away from a pure outcome-based approach to qualification frameworks and meta-frameworks.
Originality/value – As far as the authors are aware, this is the first paper to draw attention to this
distinction.