1. Source-Based Misconception
The Myth: Alignment results in judgments about the "quality" of courses or curriculum.
What Drives the Myth: Erroneous belief that skill standards, just like academic standards, define "hard requirements" that programs must meet in order to be deemed "of quality."
Impact: It fosters a view of alignment as an evaluation of courses or curriculum. Hence, educators construe resulting "alignment gaps" as criticisms of their capability to teach their students what they need to succeed in the world of work. This "myth" fosters "defensiveness" resulting in lack of acceptance of alignment information.
Making it Right: Skill standards delineate industry's expectations of individuals; not industry's requirements of educational institutions. Industry expects individuals to gain knowledge and skills from a variety of sources including (among others) self-directed learning, education and training, work experience, and company-specific training. There is no way that educators can cover the full scope of knowledge and skills identified in skill standards. Hence, educators need to focus less on trying to cover the full scope of knowledge and skills identified in skill standards, and focus more on how efficiently and effectively they cover the relevant segments of the skill standards.
2. Process-Based Misconception
The Myth: Alignment is a generic, goal-neutral, "auditing" process and is an "end" in itself.
What Drives the Myth: Skill standards proponents send an overly simplistic message that aligning to skill standards is an "auditing" process that uses a "degree of alignment" metric with a "passing score" that, when met, will result in a "good housekeeping seal of approval."
Impact: It fosters a view that alignment has a singular purpose. Blind acceptance of this belief results in either outright dismissal of alignment, or failure to identify goals or questions to guide the alignment process.
Making it Right: View alignment as a process for supporting pursuit of specific goals. It
does not end with information describing the "mapping" between courses or curriculum and skill standards. It ends when educators achieve the pre-defined alignment goals. Alignment goals drive the process, and not vice versa. In general, educators have two related, but distinct, alignment goals: (1) content-related goals (such as content relevance, efficiency with which a sequence of course cover content, etc.), and (2) context-related goals (such as determining if the content is presented at the appropriate level, use of "real- world" scenarios as a backdrop for teaching content, etc.). Each type of goal requires the application of a different alignment process.
3. Results-Based Misconception
The Myth: Alignment results in prescribed curriculum or courses.
What Drives the Myth: Based on experience with implementation of "academic
standards" that typically results in prescribed courses or curriculum.
Impact: It fosters a view that alignment will result in prescriptions for "standardized" courses or curriculum. It fosters the perception that alignment will strip or constrain educators' "academic freedom."
Making it Right: Alignment is NOT instructional design. It is more like a front-end needs analysis that precedes instructional design. Supporting content-related alignment goals, alignment results in: (1) a general listing of baseline topic areas that should be considered when developing or adjusting courses or curriculum, or (2) a map of where specific instances of general topic areas reside within the current set of courses or curriculum. Determining how to cover the general topic areas, in terms of the details of what will actually be taught and the sequence with which they will be taught, requires educators' content and pedagogy expertise. Alignment does not result in prescriptions. It results in building-block recommendations that educators must "flesh out" and shape for alignment to succeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment