The Origin of Outcomes Based Education (OBE )

The origins of Outcomes Based Education or OBE are as perplexing as the outcomes statements.

I always imagined a committee of sociologists, sensitivity trainers, ethicists, middle-managers, cultural experts/commentators, humanists, critical theorists and anyone else who has an opinion on education but has never actually taught a class came up with the multi-headed hydra that is OBE.

As it turned out I was wrong...

OUTCOMES-BASED EDUCATION AND THE DEATH OF KNOWLEDGE
Richard G. Berlach
College of Education
University of Notre Dame Australia
Abstract
In a far off time, in the confederacy of Oz, teaching and learning coexisted in an artistically symbiotic relationship. Then the experts came along. No, not experts in educational theory, but experts in the art of Isms – scientific rationalism, reductionism, Fordism, Taylorism, sophism, postmodernism and above all, obscurantism.
They took their Isms and applied them to the art of education, and lo and behold, outcomes-based education was born. The Ismistic parents cooed and gloated over their cleverly conceived offspring.
In fact, the Ismites within one state of the confederacy hailed this birth as a watershed in education, a paradigm shift, and the dawning of a brave new era. “Let us devise a Curriculum Framework” they shouted with glee. The teachers, however, hung their heads in despondency, knowing that a dark beast of mammoth proportions and with great deceptive power had been created.
The Paradigm Outcomes-based education (OBE) is like a chameleon – at the point when its defining attributes are becoming discernable, it changes form and colour. Even its chief architect keeps changing his mind, moving from traditional OBE through transitional OBE to transformational OBE (Spady, 1994; Spady and Marshall, 1991) .

Article continues at: http://www.aare.edu.au/04pap/ber04768.pdf