Positioning the bar: outcomes associated with successful completion of an enabling course

My purpose in this paper is to provide a developmental framework for considering both the development of enabling program curricula and for the associated development of assessment regimes. The paper is based on two complementary theoretical positions. The first, following the work of Brophy (1999), emphasises the essential congruence between expected outcomes, curriculum and assessment. If we know what we want at the end of the process, this must inform us as to what our objectives need to be, what our pedagogies should emphasis, and what our assessment should inform us. In other words, we need to begin with a model of what Brophy (1999) terms “curriculum alignment”, where the quality of learning objectives, the quality of learning processes and the quality of learning outcomes are clearly specified. The second aspect of the paper concerns the identification of what such quality may mean, both developmentally (in terms of progress within and between educational levels) and situationally in terms of identifying the intellectual properties associated with the successful completion of an enabling subject/ program. This is where the notion of “positioning the bar” becomes a critical exercise for planning, implementing and assessing enabling courses. I describe a model of intellectual progress based upon Biggs and Collis’ (1982) SOLO taxonomy and develop this to incorporate both “academic” and “affective” factors influencing outcomes and their achievement.