Aligning teaching and assessment to curriculum objectives John Biggs

Aligning teaching and assessmentto curriculum objectivesJohn BiggsPurposeThis Guide, one of a series produced by theImaginative Curriculum project, provides anintroduction to how teaching and assessinglearning outcomes might be aligned tocurriculum objectives.AudiencesThe Guide is written primarily for: teachers looking for ways to improvethe quality of their students’ learning; course leaders/coordinators who leadwhole course curriculum design and/orwho help other academics to develop thecurriculum; staff developers and others who helpacademics to develop their knowledgeand skills about curriculum design, forexample, Tutors for PG Cert HEteaching and learning courses; LTSN Subject Centres who are growingdisciplinary knowledge of practice. university administrators and othersengaged in quality assuranceThe AuthorJohn is Honorary Professor of Psychology atthe University of Hong Kong, previouslyProfessor of Education at HKU, and is aneducational consultant, now residing inHobart, Tasmania. His research interest is instudent learning and tertiary teachingAnd he has authored many books and papersin these areas. His work with portfolioassessment crystallised his thinking aboutlearning and teaching, by taking the form ofconstructive alignment, which is outlinedhere and explained in detail in hisbook,Teaching for quality learning atuniversity, shortly to be released in itssecond editionIntroductionThe expansion, restructuring, and refinancingof the tertiary sector that began in the 1990shas meant that universities are severely underresourced.Classes are not only larger than theywere a few years ago, but much morediversified in terms of student ability andmotivation. Yet market forces demand qualityteaching. Teachers have difficulty inmaintaining standards, let alone improving them.They are stressed.Teaching and learning take place in a wholesystem, which embraces classroom, departmentand institutional levels. In a poor system, inwhich the components are not necessarilyintegrated and tuned to support learning, only‘academic’ students spontaneously use higherorderlearning processes. In an integratedsystem, on the other hand, all aspects ofteaching and assessment are tuned to supporthigh level learning. Constructive alignment (CA)is such a system. It is an approach tocurriculum design that optimizes the conditionsfor quality learning.Something very like CA was proposed over 50years ago by Tyler (1949), but the time was notripe, partly for reasons alluded to in theassessment sections below.An example of a poor systemHere is what a psychology undergraduate saidabout his teaching:I hate to say it, but what you have got to do isto have a list of ‘facts’; you write down tenimportant points and memorize those, thenyou’ll do all right in the test ... If you can give a

it of factual information -- so and so did that,and concluded that -- for two sides of writing,then you’ll get a good mark. Quoted in Ramsden(1984: 144)If the teacher of this student thought that acritical evaluation of psychological theoriescould be handled by selectively memorizing,there would be no problem. But surely theteacher didn’t think that. I hope not! As ithappened, this particular student graduatedwith First Class Honours. He liked writingextended essays, and held these quick andsnappy assessments in contempt. He made astrategic decision to memorise, knowing that itwas enough to get him through.The problem here? The assessment was notaligned to the aims of teaching. So often therhetoric in courses and programmes is all thatit should be: students will graduate with a deepunderstanding of the discipline, and the abilityto solve problems creatively. Then they are toldabout creative problem solving in packedlecture halls, and tested with multiple choicetests. It’s all out of kilter, but such a situationis not, I strongly suspect, all that uncommon.A good teaching environment is consistent.Teaching and assessment practices are alignedto the aims of teaching.So what does a goodsystem look like?Problem-based learning (PBL) is a very goodexample of aligned teaching. PBL is mostcommonly used in professional degreeprogrammes, such as architecture, medicine,and nursing, but it is also used on more‘academic’ programmes. The idea is thatgraduates should be able to performdifferently in the area of study on graduation,for example to solve professionally relatedproblems. In PBL, the main teaching method isto get the students to solve professionalproblems themselves (carefully selected as todifficulty and content), while the assessment isjudging how well they have solved them. Thereis alignment all the way through, fromobjectives through teaching method, toassessment: all involve focusing on studentsdoing what they should be doing, solvingprofessional problems. Telling them the historyof architectural problem solving, or giving themmultiple choice tests on the knowledge neededto solve problems, or learning the principles ofproblem solving, might be interesting anduseful, but they are not the central issue. Thecentral issue is putting knowledge to work.PBL is an excellent example of an alignedsystem, probably the purest example, but mostapproaches to teaching can be aligned moreeffectively than they are already.What is constructive alignment?CA has two aspects. The ‘constructive’ aspectrefers to what the learner does, which is toconstruct meaning through relevant learningactivities. The ‘alignment’ aspect refers to whatthe teacher does, which is to set up a learningenvironment that supports the learningactivities appropriate to achieving the desiredlearning outcomes. The key is that thecomponents in the teaching system, especiallythe teaching methods used and the assessmenttasks, are aligned to the learning activitiesassumed in the intended outcomes. The learneris in a sense ‘trapped’, and finds it difficult toescape without learning what is intended shouldbe learned.In this Guide, let us focus on aligning asemester length unit or course. There are fourmajor steps.1. Defining the intended outcomes (theobjectives)2. Choosing teaching/learning activitieslikely to lead to attaining the objectives

3. Assessing students’ learning outcomesto see how well they match what wasintended4. Arriving at a final gradeDefining the objectives:the intended outcomesWhen we teach:a. we must have a clear idea of what wewant our students to learn.b. on a topic by topic basis, we must havea further idea as to how well we wanteach topic to be understood.As to (a), we should distinguish betweendeclarative knowledge and functioningknowledge.Declarative knowledge is knowledge that we can‘declare’: tell somebody, read about. Librariesare full of the stuff. It is the basis ofacademic disciplines. But it is usually only thefirst part of the story. We don’t acquireknowledge only so that we can tell other peopleabout; more importantly, we need to putknowledge to work, to make it function. Toreally understand something, you see the worlddifferently, and behave differently towardsthat part of the world. This is obviously thecase in professional faculties; we want lawyersto make good legal decisions, doctors to makeaccurate diagnoses. But we also want physiciststo think and behave like physicists. Aftergraduation, all our students, whatever theirdegree program, should see a section of theirworld differently, and to behave differently,expertly and wisely. Thus, if these are ourobjectives, then simply telling our studentsabout that part of the world, getting them toread about it, and then getting them to tell allthat back to you – in their own words, ofcourse! – is not likely to achieve our intendedoutcomes. Not for the majority of students.The good ones, the ‘academic’ ones, willthemselves turn declarative into functioningknowledge in time, but most will not if they arenot required to.We have to require them to. We have to stateour objectives in terms of what we wantstudents to do. We should require them toperform their understanding, not just tell usabout it.As to (b), our curriculum is usually listed intopics to be covered. Once you’ve told themabout it, that’s it: topic covered. But sometopics are more important than others, theyrequire a deeper level of understanding.Students only need to know about some topics –they know where to go to look it up in future ifthey have to – while other topics must beunderstood at a level that allows them to putthat topic to work, perhaps in a new contextthey haven’t experienced before. So, again,those topics need to be stated in terms of whatthe students are required to do, not what youthe teacher have to ‘cover’ in class, or set asrequired reading.Overall objectives, and topic objectives, arethus about what the student has to do. Thinkverbs.Following are four levels of understanding, withsome illustrative verbs for each level. Ofcourse, each discipline will have its own verbs aswell, and remember that each verb has a topicobject. The following is a general framework,based on the SOLO Taxonomy (Biggs, 2003).Minimal understanding, sufficient to deal withterminology, basic facts: Memorize, identify,recognizeDescriptive understanding, knowing aboutseveral topics: Classify, describe, list.Integrative understanding, relating factstogether and understanding basic theory: applyto known contexts, integrate, analyse, explainthe aetiology.

Extended understanding, being able to gobeyond what has been taught, deal creativelywith new situations: Apply to novel contexts,hypothesize, reflect, generate.The first step in designing the curriculumobjectives, then, is to make clear what levels ofunderstanding we want from our students inwhat topics.Once we have done that, we need to decide howwe are going to get them to do it. Those verbs,and others that suit your own discipline,become the markers throughout the system.They need to be embedded in theteaching/learning activities, and in theassessment tasks. They keep us on track.Choosing teaching/learningactivities (TLAs)We usually take TLAs for granted. The defaultTLAs in many courses are lecture and tutorial:lecture to expound and package, and tutorial toclarify and extend. However, the verbs thesecontexts elicit are not necessarily high level ifthe student is not so inclined. Students can getaway with being passive, whereas high levellearning requires them to be active in theirlearning.There are many options for creatingappropriate learning contexts (Chapter 5, Biggs2003) but even the large class allows a widerange of relevant student activity – if only thelecturer stops talking now and then, andrequires students to question each other aboutjust taught content, to reflect, to swap notes,to do exercises, to self-test, and so on (seeChapter 6, op. cit.). Then of course there is arange of activities that can be scheduledoutside the classroom, especially but not onlyusing IT (Chapter 10, op cit.). In fact, problemsof resourcing conventional on campus teaching,and the changing nature of HE, are coming tobe blessings in disguise, forcing learning to takeplace outside the class, with group and peerteaching, independent learning and work-basedlearning, all of which are a rich source ofrelevant learning activities.Assessing students’ learning outcomesIt is no exaggeration to say that faultyassumptions and practices about assessment domore damage than any other single factor. AsRamsden (1992) puts it, the assessment is thecurriculum, as far as the students areconcerned. They’ll learn what they think they’llbe assessed on, not what’s in the curriculum, orwhat’s been ‘covered’ in class.The trick is, then, to make sure the assessmenttasks mirror what you intended them to learn.That pre-empts the sort of cynical gameplayingwe saw in our psychology undergraduate,above, with his ‘two pages of writing’.But there’s a much broader problem, whichmust be addressed full-on. The fact is, themost common assessment practices make suchalignment all but impossible.Two approaches to assessmentTwo approaches to assessment underlie currenteducational practice. The first is thetraditional model. We teach, then we test.Next, we order students along a quantitativescale, usually a percentage scale, which is doneby the familiar process of ‘marking’, and thenwe allocate grades. Grading can be carried outby stipulating arbitrary cut-off points: 75+becomes an A, 65 – 74, B, and so on. A commonalternative is to grade on the curve or to normreference.That is, the top 15 per cent, say, areawarded A; the next 25 per cent B, and so on.In either method of grading, the commonfeature is that the students’ performanceshave to be quantified. Quantification isachieved in one or both of two ways. First,knowledge is broken down into units that areclassified as correct or incorrect, and thecorrect units are added or averaged. Second, a

performance, such as an essay or a problemsolution, is reduced to independent components(such as content, style, originality, etc.), whichare then rated on separate rating scales, themaxima of which are frequently chosen to addup to 100. The final performance is thenassessed as the sum of the separate ratings. Itis then assumed that we have a clear,‘objective’ scale along which we can comparestudents’ performances.The second approach to assessment iscriterion-referenced. That is, the score anindividual obtains reflects how well theindividual meets preset criteria, those beingthe objectives of teaching. This is what I amtalking about here: alignment betweenobjectives and assessment. But before I dealwith this, let me outline some of the problemswith the traditional model.What’s wrong with the traditionalapproach to assessment?Underlying the quantitative approach toassessment is what Taylor (1994) calls the‘measurement model’, which derives fromindividual differences psychology. Psychologistswere concerned about how individuals differedfrom each other on fixed traits. They createdsophisticated test procedures, which relied onseveral assumptions. For example, traits arenormally distributed, and so therefore testscores should be too. Thus, an ability test isconstructed on the assumption that very feware really bright, most fall in the middle and afew really dull, in the familiar bell shape.Unfortunately, the educational fraternitypounced on psychometric-type tests, wateredthem down, and used them inappropriately inthe classroom.There are many problems with this approach.Underlying them all is that there is no essentialalignment between what outcomes are intended,what is taught, and what is assessed. Any quickand dirty test with a modicum of face validity(‘two pages of writing’, for instance) can beused to produce an ordering of students.Here are only some of the particular problems:1. Expressing performances as percentages isassumed to create a universal currencythat is equivalent across subjects areas,and across students. This assumption iscompletely unsustainable. How can 50% inEnglish be equivalent to 50% in History?How then can scores on these differentscales be averaged? Think about it.2. A high average in most components of acourse covers failure in other components.The reasoning here – that the studentclearly had the ability to pass, so an overallpass is justified – is also unsustainable. Thelogic of awarding a pass to a student on asection of the course in which that studenthas already failed is difficult to grasp.3. Tests should be unidimensional, and have ahigh test-retest reliability. Complexperformances are however notunidimensional, and teaching is supposed toproduce change in what is being measured,a change usually called ‘learning’. Measuringchange, using a model that assumes thatwhat is being measured is stable, seemssomewhat peculiar.4. The effects of quantitative assessments onstudent learning (‘backwash’) negative.Quantifying sends the wrong messages tostudents. For example: Ideas are equally important Individual trees are more importantthan the wood You can skip or slack on certain areas ifyou are doing well elsewhere Written tests make declarativeknowledge more important thanapplication Verbatim responses must gain somecredit Grading on the curve makes successand failure depend on uncontrollablefactors such as relative ability and luck

As there is no intrinsic connectionbetween the curriculum andassessment, just focus on what will getyou through the assessment.For a further treatment of this controversialtopic see Biggs (2003, Chapters 8, 9).So what’s the alternative?The alternative is an assessment system thattells you how well each individual student’sassessed performances match what is required.Surely this is the aim of all teaching. Itrequires teachers to state desired outcomes inthe form of standards or criteria thatstudents are to attain. How well they attainthem, minimally or beyond reasonableexpectations, is reflected in the gradingsystem. Most students should be able to reachthem at an ‘acceptable’ level.Matching individual performances against thecriteria is not a matter of counting marks butof making holistic judgments. And this is whereteachers start to worry. Judgment is‘subjective’, isn’t it?, while quantitative markingis precise and objective. In case of dispute youcan point to a number, a score: You didn’t getenough marks, sorry. Isn’t that much easierthan justifying a holistic judgment?No. Those ‘marks’ are themselves anaccumulation of mini-subjective judgments. Theresidual error is probably greater than that inan holistic judgment that can be justified byargument and reference to the criteria.Rather, I would ask you to justify why 75 andover should be an A. Why not 70? Or 90? It isalmost universally accepted that getting halfright, 50 per cent, should be a pass. Why?Numbers, and arbitrary cutting points, onlyappear to make the process objective andprecise. It is not at all.So we come back to holistic judgment.Teachers should be able to justify theirjudgments. And this is so much easier if thecriteria to be met are spelled out in the initialobjectives. Dealing with student disputes thenbecomes a seminar on the nature of goodlearning, not a demeaning quibble over a markhere, a mark there.An example: Arriving at a final gradeLet us look at an example of qualitative grading.The following were the grading criteria I usedin a unit in a Master’s programme foreducational psychologists.CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTIONCourse Objectives and Grade CriteriaGrading will be based on your attaining the followingobjectives:1. demonstrate that you correctly understand andcan apply the principles of good teaching andassessment to chosen contexts.2. demonstrate a knowledge of selected aspects ofcurriculum design and management and how theyrelate to the educational system in Hong Kong.3. show how the content and experiences in thiscourse may enhance your effectiveness as an EP.4. show evidence of reflective decision-makingFinal grades will depend on how well you candemonstrate that you have met all objectives:A: awarded if you have clearly met all theobjectives, displaying deep knowledge of thebase content, original and creative thinking,perhaps going beyond established practice.B: awarded when all objectives have been met verywell and effectively.C: awarded when the objectives have beenaddressed satisfactorily, or where the evidenceis strong for some objectives, weaker butacceptable in others.F: less than C, work plagiarised or not submitted.

The students were given the above, and thefinal assessment was based on a portfolio theysubmitted comprising: a paper, a report, arationale of a group presentation, and a selfevaluationin which they made their case as tohow they thought they had addressed each ofthe objectives. On an assessment sheet handedback to the students, each item was discussedin terms of what objectives it met and how well.The grade was immediately apparent. Nocounting, no arbitrary, unsustainable decisions.It took a little longer than marking a finalexam, but not much longer.There’s a postscript. The university requiredreporting in percentages, otherwise thecomputer system could not calculate finalgrades. So I simply used the existing arbitrarypercentage cut-offs, but after the event. Thatis, my qualitatively allocated grades determinedthe percentage reported, not vice versa: apercentage did not determine the grade. Thebackwash to students was thereforequalitative, not quantitative; they knew whatthey had to do to get an A,. On the other hand,knowing that they had to accrue 70 marks toget an A is not very helpful, except they had toscrabble for marks wherever they could. So, inmy case, if 70+ was an A, and I had judged theportfolio to meet the requirements for A, thenif it was a bare A, I awarded 72 of these markthings; if it was a good A, I gave 78, and so on.The final irony was that final grades werereported in? Yes, A, B, C, and F categories! So Igraded in categories, converted into marks, onlyto be converted back into categories again.Just why teachers were not required to reportin categories in the first place is one of thoseeternal mysteries of university administration.The effect on most staff was, unfortunately,to mark in percentages from the start, with allthe attendant problems mentioned above.So we can get around many bureaucraticobstacles to aligned teaching and assessment.The important thing in an aligned qualitativeapproach is that the criteria for differentiallyacceptable levels of performance are there forall to see, and the determination of a student’sperformance is completely transparent, ascriterion-referenced assessments are, orshould be. Norm-referenced assessmentscannot be transparent in the nature of thecase, because it depends on how clever theother students are as much as on how cleveryou the student are.Some might perceive a difficulty at this point.What if most of my students, say eighteen outof a class of twenty, met the criteria for A?Wouldn’t I be seen as a soft touch? Wouldn’tothers look at the results and say: Thestandard is obviously too low? Well, yes, I’msure many would say that. The important thingis how I derived those criteria for an A. If Iderived them by judging, perhaps inconsultation with the profession, that agraduating psychologist needed to meet certaincriteria, and they were those I’d adopted for agrade of A, then it’s party time, surely.Congratulations all round.What is more likely is that the Board ofExaminers would throw up their arms anddemand a regrade: No more than fifteenpercent should be A’s, twenty at absolute most!Otherwise, whatever will they think of us!This is measurement model thinking. Becauseability is distributed along the normal curve,the majority of the class must, by a law ofnature, be awarded middle grades, a few topgrades, a few low passes or fail. That argumentassumes that ability determines learningoutcomes, not that good learning is facilitatedby good teaching. My definition of goodteaching, on the other hand, is where westarted. If we can provide an environment inwhich unpromising students display the qualityof work that only good students had displayedhitherto, that’s good teaching. Good teachingbeats the distribution of ability, it does notfollow it.

Anyway, the student intake is certainly notnormally distributed with respect to ability.Even these days, we’re still only accepting lessthan half the upper ability end of the agerange.In short, there is absolutely no justification oneducational grounds for prescribing fixedproportions of grade categories. Such a policy,which is not uncommon, is adopted for cosmeticreasons: it’s good PR to show even gradedistributions across department, across years.But it cuts right across any attempt to set upaligned teaching, and must therefore beresisted.Another example:The learning portfolioWhen I first used portfolio assessment inanother unit in an undergraduate programme,the backwash took over, and in effect dictatedthe TLAs (and in fact what led me to CA). Inthis case, alignment was created bottom up.The unit in question was a compulsorysemester-long unit in the third year of a fouryear part-time evening Bachelor of Educationprogramme at the University of Hong Kong. Thestudents were primary and secondary teachersin Government schools. The general aim of theunit was not to teach students aboutpsychology (they already had completed a firstyear unit in educational psychology), but to getthem to demonstrate that they could drivetheir classroom decision-making with theirpsychological knowledge, based on reflectivepractice. Such an aim would be appropriate toadvanced units in most professionalprogrammes.Once the topics were decided, it was necessaryto define the levels of understanding that wereto be attained. This was done in terms of theverbs indicating the level of understandingrequired for each letter-grade:A. Reflect on their own teaching, evaluatetheir classroom decisions in terms oftheory, and thereby improve theirteaching, formulate a theory of teachingthat demonstrably drives decisionmakingand practice, generate newapproaches to teaching on that basis.B. Apply course content, recognize good andpoor applications of principles. ‘Missed A’,that is, had a good try at reflecting butdidn’t quite make it.C. Understand declarative; discuss contentmeaningfully, know about content topics.Also include ‘missed B’.D. Understand in a minimally acceptableway: essentially ‘missed C’, or ‘badlymissed B’.E. ‘Missed D’; plagiarised; didn’t participatesatisfactorily; didn’t hand in work.If students could unequivocally demonstrate inthe items chosen for their portfolios the levelof performance indicated by the verbs in thecategory, that category grade would beawarded, given that the other performancetasks were all satisfactory. Thus, formulatingthe actual objectives was not at allcomplicated, and the ensuing assessmentprocedures were also straightforward.In the first class of the semester, I circulatedthe above objectives and discussed them,making sure the students knew the standardsthey would have to meet. They were told thatthey had to convince me that their learning inthe unit met the objectives. They were todecide on the evidence for their learning in theform of items for their portfolio, and toexplain where they thought the portfolio as awhole met the objectives. Specifically, therequirements were:1. Four pieces of evidence selected by thestudent2. A reflective journal, including answers tothe main idea questions for each plenarysession.

3. A justification for selecting the items, andthe overall case they were supposed tomake as a learning package. This providedvery good evidence of students’metacognitive awareness of their learning.A list of possible item types suggested itemswas provided by request, but original itemtypes were encouraged.The portfolio was a completely new task tothem, to which most initially reacted verynegatively. They demanded guidelines, examplesof possible items, and complained bitterlyabout the perceived workload. In the event, Ihave to admit that their initial complaintsabout the workload were justified. Four items,apart the journal and the justifications, weretoo many. Three would have been better.The following dialogue, condensed from severalsessions, illustrates how this happened (S arestudents, T is teacher):S: What sort of items do we select?T: That’s up to you. Think hard about theobjectives. Here’s a list of sample items youmight include. (I take a few and explain howthey might work).S: Can we have a trial run?T: Yes, and if you’re happy with my assessmentof it you can submit it as an item.S: How do we show we can reflect?T: Use your journal.S: What do we put in it?T: What you think are critical incidents in yourteaching. Talk it over with your colleagues.Form a learning partnership.Sit next to your partner in class, get theirphone number or email. You can help eachother.S: Wouldn’t it be better if we had discussiongroups of students teaching the samesubjects as we do? Then we can shareexperiences on similar problems.T: Certainly. You can form groups in the roomnext door.S: We need direct teaching on the topics. Willyou lecture us?T: Only if I really need to. There’s a topic foreach session. The pre-reading should do,just a few pages, before each session. I’llthen meet half the class at a time, whilethe other having are in discussion groups.We can clarify each topic in the lecture, asnecessary. And so on.In short, the assessment task drove thestudents’ learning activities, which had toaddress the objectives, and the TLAs evolvedaround that.The students’ experienceStudent reactions gave an interesting insightinto the way alignment worked. One studentreferred to the portfolio as ‘a learning tool’.In fact, it is difficult to separate what is aTLA and what an assessment task in an alignedsystem. Students learn what they aresupposed to learn, and they are graded on howwell they learn it. What could be simpler?The negotiated teaching activities stimulatedthe students to respond in the way required,as the following quotations from theirportfolios indicate::What (we are expected) to prepare forthe portfolio undoubtedly provide me achance to reflect on my daily teaching.This would never happen if this moduleproceeds in the same way as the othermodules. I would not be so alert about myown teaching and eager to make changesand improvements.Instead of bombing us with lengthylectures and lecture notes, we have toreflect on our own learning experiencesand to respond critically ...I feel quiteexcited as this course is gradually leadingme to do something positive to myteaching career and to experience realgrowth.

Student reactionsinitially negative:to the portfolio wereHow about the assessment? Aiyaa!ANXIETY! ANXIETY! ANXIETY! I was sopuzzled and worried about it when Ireceived the handout on the first meeting.And a backhander to me:This (the portfolio) is going to be anightmare! At least, if it had been anessay, I would have known what isexpected of me ...Have I ever caused thesame kind of fear among my students? Imust bear in mind to be more reasonableand careful when giving my studentsassignments from now on ... only give themassignments that are well designed andreally necessary to help them in theirlearning ... make sure they understandwhat is expected of them ... make suresufficient time is given for completing ....By the end of the unit, however, reactions weremore positive:You will be willing to do more than whatthe lecturers want you to do. Thecircumstance is like a little kid who haslearnt something new in school and can'twait to tell his/her parents.I learn more from the portfolio than in thelesson.All (the teacher) said was ‘show me theevidence of your learning that has takenplace’ and we have to ponder, reflect andproject the theories we have learnt intoour own teaching …How brilliant! If it hadonly been an exam or an essay, we wouldhave probably just repeated his ideas tohim and continued to teach the same wayas we always do!Another example of alignment in an engineeringprogram is given by Houghton (2002), which isdesigned specifically to fit within existing QAAprocedures.Conceptions of teaching,of the curriculumIt is now well accepted that teachers teachaccording to their beliefs about the nature ofteaching and of what the curriculum is about.Some see the curriculum as being entirelyconcerned with content the students have totake on board, the ‘transfer’ conception:knowledge being transferred from theteacher’s head to the students’ heads (I wouldrather see this as ‘reduplication’, otherwise theteacher is left a babbling ignoramus after eachlecture). Others see the curriculum as process,as the experience the students have, whichincludes the values that are transferred in theso-called ‘hidden’ curriculum. Where does CAstand on these issues?Actually, I think CA is neutral on most. It is ameta-principle of curriculum design, which canincorporate a variety of particular conceptions.The only aspect it cannot incorporate is, as Isay, norm-referencing. But you can criterionreference anything. For example, say I am avery stern traditionalist. Here are the topics tobe covered, and they have to be learned exactlyright, verbatim. Very well, the objectives areclear, the TLA is exposition, the assessment isbased on verbatim recall. It does not tap theupper reaches of constructive learning(memorisation is a narrow-band constructiveactivity), but it is one, and the design is alignedthroughout.CA does emphasise process, however. The verbsare really ways of requiring students to think inrequired ways, not just to achieve outcomes.But again, the processes are built into theobjectives and they can be high level or lowlevel.

The value of CA in addressing the hiddencurriculum came out beautifully in many of thestudent comments, some of which are quotedabove. All were teachers, and the experience ofbeing required to reflect on their own learning,enabled them to reassess their teaching, as isseen in the following:When I am a learner, I expect theteachers to provide me with good learning.When I am a teacher, I just neglect thelearners. Is this fair?As Ronald, one of my classmates, said,‘They are practising what they preach’. Hiswords recall my memory of Michael Fullan’spremise in his book Change Forces:‘Faculties of education should not beadvocating things for teachers or schoolsthat they are not capable of practisingthemselves.Constructive alignment is precisely that:practising what you preach. The medium is themessage.Advantages of aligned teachingThe advantages of teaching and assessing inthis way have been emphasised already. In sum:It’s more rewarding as a teacher, and moreenriching. We are forced to reflect on whatwe mean by ‘understanding’, and how we canfoster it.The students see that what they arelearning is real. They’re being required toshow that they can operate moreeffectively with what they have learned,not just talk about it. Cynicism, that enemyof deep learning, is much less likely.The outcomes on graduation translate intoinformed action, which is what thecommunity expects. Although the approach is common sense, itrequires a different way of thinking aboutteaching, and in particular about defininglevels of understanding. It requires a theory of teaching yourdiscipline over and above knowledge of thediscipline itself; and knowledge aboutoptions for teaching and assessment. Thisis where LTSN centres and staffdevelopers can be vital resources andsupports. Time. Academics are more stressed thanever, and in the initial stages setting up analigned system requires thought, and theredesign curriculum, teaching methods, andassessments. Institutional requirements, such asquantitative reporting, and grading on acurve, make aligned teaching difficult.It looks like the negatives outweigh thepositives, but that’s only if you thinkquantitatively.Why not try it for yourself.References and Further ReadingBiggs, J.B. (2003). Teaching for quality learningat university. Buckingham: The OpenUniversity Press.Houghton, W. (2002) Using QAA subjectbenchmark information: an academicteachers perspective.Ramsden, P. (1984). The context of learning. InF. Marton, D. Hounsell, and N. Entwistle, N.(eds), The Experience of Learning.Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.Ramsden, P. (1992). Learning to teach in highereducation. London: Routledge.Taylor, C. (1994). Assessment for measurementor standards: The peril and promise oflarge scale assessment reform. AmericanEducational Research Journal, 31, 231-262.Disadvantages and impediments

Tyler, R.W. (1949). Basic principles ofcurriculum and instruction. Chicago:University of Chicago PressSeptember 2003