There has been a concern for some time throughout America regarding the quality of public education. Students are graduating from highschool without adequate knowledge of the three R’s. Universities are recruiting a multitude of incompetent pseudo-scholars. Employers don’t understand why the new generation of workers do not possess the basic skills to perform the job. It would appear that American students are not learning as much as their parents did. And yet, teachers are still teaching, taxes are still being paid, and more funds than ever are being appropriated for public education.
What’s going on in America’s lassrooms? Up until the 1980’s most schools used a standards based curriculum. In the traditional classroom setting, educators focused on the input side of education, teaching a specific body of knowledge. Students were graded against predefined standards and passed or failed based on their ability to meet those standards. This method of teaching produced a graduate with a well rounded education, and prepared him for further development of career skills. With the exception of those who did not apply themselves, the system worked.
Today America’s educators take a new approach in the classroom. The ocus of education has moved to measuring what students can do, rather than what they understand. This is the core principle of Outcomes Based Education (OBE). An outcome, by definition, is something that follows as a result or consequence. So OBE then, is an approach to education where the end result is the most important factor. This is very important in understanding what OBE is, and what it intends to do. In the OBE classroom, every aspect of the curriculum is geared toward achieving a small group of specific goals.
To gain an insight into OBE, it is necessary to learn something about its origins and those promoting it. B. F. Skinner, a psychologist and learning theorist, developed the techniques of learning (operant conditioning) based on conditioning phenomena first analyzed scientifically by Pavlov. Skinner called his technique his “teaching machine. ” Skinner thus developed the principles on which “Mastery Learning” was developed by Benjamin Bloom. Mastery Learning was the original name for the process known today as Outcome Based Education, also known as Performance Based Education, or Restructuring.
Educational theories used in OBE are based on Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. A curriculum, according to Bloom, “… may be thought of as a plan for changing student behavior. ” (p 14 of Ron Sunseri’s book OBE: Understanding the Truth about Education Reform, Questar Publishers, P. O. Box 1720, Sisters, OR 97759) Bloom called it “Mastery Learning. ” Techniques for his new style of education, based on Skinnerian behavioral psychology, focus on stimulus-response conditioning. Bloom said the mission of education is to change the thoughts, actions and feelings of students.
He held that the desired outcome is “… formulating subjective judgment as the end product resulting in personal alues/opinions with no real right or wrong answer. ” With no absolutes, the goal of teaching is to modify the “thoughts, feelings and actions” of the stude nt to some replacement system supplied by the educational system. William Spady, Director of the High Success Network and Director of the International Center on Outcome-Based Restructuring, is the “father” of OBE. He works with the federal government, foundations, states and school districts helping them implement OBE.
According to Spady, we are faced with “a fragile and vulnerable global environment that requires altering economic consumption patterns and quality of ife standards, and taking collective responsibility for promoting health and wellness. ” The goal of education, Spady says, has to be to prepare students for that future. Learning results are what is important, and his premise is that all students can learn. It is not important how long it takes, as long as the desired learning takes place. Since all will learn, grades are irrelevant in the new system.
All get an “A”. Competition in schools in his estimation is a negative influence impairing learning. Spady’s definition of an outcome is “the acceptable culminating demonstration of a significant learning behavior. Subject knowledge and concepts are not valid outcomes. In 1982 he observed that one of the four main goals of Mastery Learning is a “system of supervision and control which restrains behavior of kids. The outcome of the hidden agenda should be the fostering of social responsibility and compliance. ” These goals “transcend academics,” and deal with attitudes and feelings.
However, Spady rejected the term “Mastery Learning” because of its monumental failures, renaming it so that the system of OBE would not be rejected out of hand. But how exactly does OBE work? In OBE, a student must demonstrate an pproved behavior defined by the state as the required outcome of the educational process. The state: 1. Sets a standard for “mastery” of a specified goal. 2. Tests to verify that the goal has been achieved. 3. Remediates a student who fails to meet the standard until he does. The required outcomes are attitudinal, not academically based.
They set outcome attitudes towards and behavioral capacity for adaptability to change, ethical judgment, family living, environment, understanding and appreciating others, and good citizenship (defined as active participation in and support of civic government). The rhetoric of OBE says that children will proceed at their own pace and not be judged by “seat time. ” In practice, because of emphasis upon group learning strategies, all children in a group must achieve the goals before the group may move on, which puts tremendous pressure on a non-conformist to conform.