The Learning Outcomes movement has swept the globe.  Heralded as the means to raise vocational education and training standards, and establish parity with academic qualifications, the Outcomes assessment model has been at the vanguard of Vocational Education and Training reform.  These bold claims derive from the particular characteristics of Outcomes design: micro-performance curricular statements, the aggregate credit system, and exhaustive sampling (Newton and Lockyer 2022).  The architects of the Outcomes movement claim that these attributes provide the transparency, flexibility and learner motivation that classical assessment design apparently lacks (Jessup 1991). 

Yet, the Outcomes assessment model has attracted criticism, particularly from academic quarters.  Critics find that Outcomes-based assessment fails to account for holistic curricular knowledge (Allais 2014), and is therefore not fit for purpose (Winch 2023).  However, there is scant recent empirical research to verify these arguments.  This study seeks to investigate these theoretical claims empirically.  Can Learning Outcomes qualifications account for holistic knowledge?  And are they fit for purpose, especially for quasi-vocational subjects, whose de facto function in the UK is increasingly to qualify progression to Higher Education (Herbert 2019).

This study uses the concept of Subject Procedural Knowledge (SPK) to investigate how the Outcomes model operates in its environment.  The concept of SPK is drawn from Ryle’s work on know-that and know-how (Ryle 1945), Disciplinary literacy (Shanahan and Shanahan 2012) and Genre (Tardy and Swales 2008).  Focusing on how teachers of Outcomes-based qualifications interpret SPK, this study aims to investigate the impact of the outcomes model on curricular and pedagogical practices.  Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model (Bronfenbrenner 1979) is used to explain how multiple, mutually reinforcing factors impact teachers’ mental models and practices.

It is argued that the outcomes model produces curricular atomism and a culture whereby assessment consumes curricula and pedagogy; the tail wags the dog.  Unfortunately, this results in compositional fallacy whereby more critical aspects of know-how, for example, ‘Evaluate’ and ‘Analyse’, are omitted from the curriculum.  This is of particular concern for qualifications whose purpose is to prepare students for Higher Education.  Although these claims relate to the particular conditions of the Further Education landscape in England, the Outcomes model likely reacts similarly to comparable conditions elsewhere. 

The Learning Outcomes template was designed to raise standards in vocational education, and promote parity with academic knowledge domains.  Yet this study finds that the Outcomes model unfortunately fails to achieve its design intentions. 

This study draws its data from a broader doctoral research project. Set in one Further Education college in England, the project aims to uncover the what and how of vocational subject literacy: what it is, how it can be taught, and how in-service teachers can be supported to embed it effectively. The project’s practitioner-researcher (and author of this present study) acted as a literacy-coach with seven vocational subject teachers over the course of one year, collecting data from lesson observations, dialogic coaching sessions, teaching materials and students’ work. During the course of the doctoral fieldwork, it was identified that ‘element by element’ assessment is a prevalent practice despite recent reforms in England to increase the rigour of vocational education. A literature review reveals that this practice was identified twenty-five years ago with similar Learning Outcomes qualifications in the United Kingdom (Garland 1998; Ecclestone 2002; Carter and Bathmaker 2017). The current study sets out to explore this ‘element by element’ phenomenon. It uses two student scripts to investigate the impact of this piecemeal approach on the teaching and learning of Subject Procedural Knowledge (SPK). Drawn from Genre and Disciplinary Literacy principles, the category of SPK represents text-related thought and action in the subject. By coding the students’ scripts line-by-line, this study conducts a close analysis of how propositions are combined. In doing so, the students’ achievement of genre and epistemological function can be assessed. Dialogic data are then incorporated to analyse the teachers’ mental models of ‘Evaluate’ and ‘Analyse’, and the reasons for their ‘piecemeal’ assessment practices. The final analysis addresses the fitness for purpose question by exploring how the various factors in the vocational education ecosystem interrelate (Bronfenbrenner 1979).

This study finds that Learning Outcomes is not a suitable assessment model for all vocational qualifications, particularly those which qualify progression to higher education. It is argued that the Learning Outcomes attribute of exhaustive assessment produces a ‘tail wags dog’ culture in which continuous assessment consumes curriculum and pedagogy. The other Learning Outcomes attributes coincide with accountability pressures and low expectations of student ability to promote atomistic assessment practices. This piecemeal assessment approach prevents teachers from perceiving their curricula holistically. This leads to misconceptions about what higher-order activities such as ‘Evaluate’ and ‘Analyse’ mean. As a result, the curriculum is reduced to the bare minimum of know-that content knowledge. The more critical pedagogies required for higher-order know-how become redundant. Subject Procedural Knowledge drops off the curriculum, which ultimately undermines the quality of the educational experience. The study concludes by agreeing with the critics of Learning Outcomes (Brockmann, Clarke and Winch 2008; Allais 2014; Winch 2023). It is claimed that the Outcomes Model produces a compositional fallacy in which the sum of the parts (curricular atomism) does not equate to the whole (holistic teaching and learning). The Outcomes template, it would appear, fails in its two broader remits, that of promoting parity between academic and vocational knowledge domains, and of raising standards in vocational education.

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