According to Biggs’ alignment theory to teaching and learning (2003, 1999) a higher order learning process of students can be achieved when all components: curriculum objectives, teaching and learning activities, and assessment tasks, are aligned. Drawing from a constructivist perspective, Biggs highly valued the idea of helping teachers to reflect on their teaching in a way that best produces higher order learning processes from students. In his later book, Biggs and Tang (2007), insisted changing course objectives to intended learning outcomes (ILO) since ILO emphasises what students have to do rather than what teachers have to teach. Biggs (1999) suggested a list of verbs to be used parallel to structured observed learning outcome (SOLO) taxonomy to help design ILO at course level and adjusted Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy (Figure 2.1), and the revised version by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001), to categorise a list of verbs that help in the designing courses and teaching and learning activities, moving from the bottom to the top the taxonomy, as shown in.
Conceptual Changes in Higher Education Teaching and Learning in Vietnam
35 Biggs (2003) also suggested using the SOLO taxonomy to guide assessment and claimed that the underlying principles of assessment tasks should be a representation of the course’s intended outcomes. Strategies and activities to design learning/teaching activities and assessment types and standards are suggested in a few good textbooks for higher education teachers (Biggs, & Tang, 2007; Dart & Boulton-Lewis, 1998; Ramsden, 2003).
Biggs’s model of constructive alignment is widely used through aligned phases of curriculum and implementation to assist students to achieve the intended learning outcomes. According to Biggs’ ILO, young graduates need to be prepared a set of standardised competences which are translated as outcomes that are job-relevant in the new era of higher education. Learning strategies promoting a student-centred approach to achieve standards of competences are suggested and so are assessment types (performance-based evaluation) (Biggs, 1999). In a recent review of literature on curriculum construction in higher education, Annala, Linden, and Makinen (2016) conceptualised a framework of four models of curriculum construction in higher education. In Annala et al. (2016), higher education curriculum approaches were categorised into two orientations: knowledge and ownership. Knowledge, on one end of the framework is seen as the amount of static content to transmit to students whereas the other end sees knowledge constituted of dynamic entity, encouraging student’s critical reflection and creating knowledge. Ownership, which is referred to as the agency that drives curriculum thinking and development, is divided into two spectrums: one is derived from the interests of university or society that influences students’ outcomes and the other end allows students ownership in participating in developing the curriculum. The figure, adapted from Annala et al. (2016) is presented in Figure 2.2.
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36
Figure 2.2 Conceptualising curriculum approaches (Annala et al., 2016, p. 174)
The first model of curriculum is curriculum as control over contents, where contents of the curriculum was decided by administrators. Biggs’ (2003) constructive alignment was listed as the curriculum as producing competences in the framework from figure 2.2, which concentrates on producing standards of competence that drives teaching and learning activities and requires careful design of defined learning objectives, effective teaching methods. However, it has been claimed that competence-based curriculum overlooks students’ roles in defining their ownership of their learning and pathways of development. Similarly, teachers’ roles in contributing to curriculum design and decision making was marginalised the power in curriculum depended on the experts (Annala et al., 2016). In addition, the role of higher education institutions in producing and creating new inventions declines and is replaced by the role of fulfilling economical requirements, based upon expected outcomes from employers and society. A consideration for designing curriculum that involves more student ownership and inspires students’ critical reflection is proposed to focus on developing students’ full potential in different situations or competency (rather than competences). Competency-curriculum (curriculum as negotiating potentials) is suggested to allow the negotiation of both knowledge and ownership in curriculum design and implementation. A curriculum as empowerment, which is positioned the highest in Annala et al.’s (2016) figure of curriculum framework, is believed to help students to take ownership of their learning and turn them into co-creators of curriculum in higher education.
Conceptual Changes in Higher Education Teaching and Learning in Vietnam
37 Annala et al. (2016) advocated for a new insight into curriculum and course syllabus design that is in line with the current argument for curriculum reform in higher education. Recent literature on curriculum development in higher education has also challenged the drawback of Biggs’ outcome-based approach in designing curriculum and course syllabus due to the overwhelming disregard in students’ agency in curriculum and pedagogy development, which, if considered, could stimulate more creativity, empathy and democracy from the student (Stoller, 2015, 2013). Argument for the reconsideration of students’ authorship in co- constructing curriculum has gained increasing favour in recent higher education curriculum research (Bovill, 2014; 2013; Bovill, Cook-Sather & Felten, 2011; Brooman, Darwent & Pimor, 2015;). Built upon “student voice” theory that encourages students to become active agents in curriculum, analysis and revisions of higher education curriculum design through students’ insights on teaching and learning experiences have been argued for (Cook-Sather, 2010, 2009). Such an invitation to engage students’ voices in co-constructing curriculum will support collegial partnership between faculty members and students through empowering and engaging students, benefiting their motivation, commitment, and sense of shared responsibility. Other results include a deeper understanding of learning from both students and academic staff (Bovill et al., 2011), enhanced student performance and teachers’ satisfaction (Bovill, 2014), and improved students’ perceptions of modules, and attendance (Brooman et al., 2015). There are significant values in listening to students’ voices (Brooman et al., 2015), and implications on the forms and approaches of student participation in pedagogical planning, including curriculum and course design co-creation, have been suggested (Bovill et al., 2011). In the same line of thought, based upon Barnett’s (2005) view on higher education during the age of supercomplexity, a higher education curriculum that incorporated three domains: knowing, acting and being (Barnett & Coate, 2005), and challenged the so-called technical learning outcome convention of curriculum and course design in higher education should be developed. A broader purpose for curricula in higher education was proposed: engaging students in the wider community as active and global citizens, and cultivating humanity, with an emphasis on their ethical role within society. To conclude, this section has reviewed research on theories on teaching and learning conceptions in higher education. In general, studies on conceptions of teaching and learning in the past decades have proved to be substantially important to provide a theoretical base for the development of higher education teachers’ professional development programs. However, most theories related to teaching and learning conceptions in higher education are derived
Conceptual Changes in Higher Education Teaching and Learning in Vietnam
38 from phenomenological or relational approaches, which seem to be focusing on certain students’ types and teaching behaviour. As such, learning and teaching contexts are eclipsed and values that underline those conceptions of teaching and learning were not explored (Leibowitz, 2016). Examination of the conceptualisation of teaching and learning from a socio-cultural viewpoint, is therefore needed, to fill in the gaps of this kind of research into teaching and learning, especially in the age where higher education is believed to be the objective of policy directives by governments but at the same time, expected to define its own identity in response to social trends. Research by Mathieson (2011) and Trowler and Bamber (2002) on institutional impacts on teachers in developing an authentic voice in a complex environment validates this view. Aligned with the research line on values of higher education (Leibowitz, 2016) in the context of uncertainty and the constantly changing higher education context is the shift in challenging higher education teachers to question their being, rather than knowing, when they participate in professional development activities. Dall’Aba (2005) argued that models and approaches to academic development initiatives have been dominantly driven by epistemology (theory of knowing), which, she insisted, have not been adequate for transformative education teaching and learning to happen. For the consideration of ontology (theory of being) in which teachers enable transformative learning, higher education teachers’ professional development needs to accommodate not only methods of teaching, learning and teaching knowledge and skills, but also challenge ways higher education teachers think about themselves as teachers. This lack of ontological element in teachers’ professional development programs is believed to instrumentalise, corporatise and technologise higher education according to certain framework (Dall’Alba, 2005) and overlooks who higher education teachers are. Therefore, it would seem that the sense of being for higher education teachers needs to be incorporated in those training programs. This is further supported by Barnett’s (2005) theory of teaching in the supercomplex world where both epistemology and ontology were considered equally important in higher education teaching and learning, especially in an uncertain age, full of changes, as argued by Barnett (2005). The conclusion from this argument does not deny the necessary emphasis on epistemology but stressed the usually overlooked part, the ontological perspective (the being of higher education teachers), through a reflexive stance on their teaching practice during the challenge of changing contexts. This idea was further supported by Harris (2005) and Clegg (2008), for example, who also insisted that the reconsideration of academics’ identity
Conceptual Changes in Higher Education Teaching and Learning in Vietnam
39 construction in current higher education reform was necessary, especially with academics new to higher education.
It is based on those arguments that a broader understanding of higher education teaching and learning, involving higher education purposes and teachers’ roles, needs to be further developed. Investigating teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning should therefore not only be limited to the classroom practice perspective, but include the underlying influences on those conceptions under social-cultural changes, especially in a time of uncertainty and constant changes within higher education.