The National Graduate Attributes Project - Institute for Teaching and ...

Final Report – The National GAPAUSTRALIAN LEARNING AND TEACHING COUNCIL2.2. Background to the ProjectThis project aimed to reinvigorate the integration and assessment of graduateattributes in university curricula in response to an issue that is of significantconcern to the higher education community. Though graduate attributes havebeen enshrined in educational policy and embraced for their promotional andmarketing potential, the sector has produced little convincing evidence ofauthentic curriculum integration or of impact on student learning.Graduate attributes are considered by many researchers to describe the coreabilities and values a university community agrees all its graduates shoulddevelop as a result of successfully completing their education at the university.They are the sorts of abilities graduates need if they are to be agents of socialgood (Bowden et al. 2000) and contributing members of global and nationalsocieties. They are also the abilities employers consider necessary for today’sknowledge workers (Watts 2006).Although there are commonly-cited definitions of graduate attributes, there is notinternational (Kearns 2001), or even disciplinary (Yeo 2004) agreement on what isbeing referred to by the term ‘graduate attributes (Barrie 2004). The complexity ofwhat is being referred to in short-hand as ‘graduate attributes’ is often masked bysimplistic formulations of graduate skills lists and as a consequence theauthenticity and utility of graduate attributes has been disputed by some (Hylandand Johnson 1998; Washer 2007).Over recent years higher education in Australia has increased its focus onefficiency, compliance and quality measures (Ryan, Guthrie and Neumann 2008)and graduate attributes have featured as key elements of both current (Bath et al.2004; Knight 2001) and proposed university teaching and learning qualityassurance strategies. Perhaps related to this quality assurance focus thereappears to have been a tendency for many in university communities to engagewith graduate attributes as a bureaucratic necessity rather than an intellectual orscholarly endeavour. The previously fragmented and bureaucratic approach toquality assurance has contributed to universities’ failure to capture the processrequired to foster graduate attributes (Carroll 2004).In many Australian universities, graduate attributes have not developed beyond aspecification of learning outcomes, which should be, though rarely are,‘measured’ or ‘assured’. Recently Barrie (2009) proposed a slightly differentdefinition of graduate attributes as an orientating statement of educationoutcomes used to inform curriculum design and the provision of teaching andlearning experiences at a university. The challenge of better linking graduateattributes to curriculum as well as teaching and learning renewal was a keyfeature in the development of the National GAP.Universities and governments have affirmed the need for a university education tofocus on the development of such abilities in various significant ways:• Graduate attributes are embodied in the rhetoric of universities’ missionstatements and a public statement of such attributes was made arequirement of government funding of universities in 1992;The National Graduate Attributes Project: Integration and assessment of graduate attributes in curriculum 6