Outcome-based Education as Janus-faced Travelling Theory: Appeal for a Broader Research Agenda

Abstract

A shift towards outcome-based education (OBE) is visible in an emerging set of educational policy and regulatory documents and higher education institutions across the country. The article argues for OBE to be approached through the lens of ‘travelling theory’ to foreground the process of translation across various scales, from the transfer of policy knowledge to negotiations in the classroom. By doing so, the article highlights the process of translation which remains at the core of OBE, as it tends to mobilize both managerial and behaviourist approaches along with a constructivist and constructionist approach. The popularity and acceptance of OBE and the disagreements surrounding it are made possible due to this Janus-faced nature of OBE. It argues for acknowledging the mobilization of multiple, contradictory and divergent epistemological approaches as integral to the process of translation of OBE.