Sustainable study program planning to meet student needs in multilayered and complex educational settings

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday II)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Unpacking paradigmatic contours of international service learning: equity and marginalization

Proposal

Drawing on a three-part conceptual framework of alignment, congruence, and coherence, this study of curriculum design in four study programs aims to contribute to the discussion on the functionality of study program planning in education settings with rising complexity. Educational developments today can be characterized as evolving from lectures and teacher-led activities that provide access to information and knowledge to making sense of increasingly specialized knowledge from a multitude of sources. Knowledge is not stable; rather, it changes over time as it is employed, adapted, and further developed in different contexts of practice. It is therefore widely acknowledged that learning is related to performative actions and to students’ active construction of knowledge (Säljö, 2010).

With this as a backdrop, the study focuses on how newer student-centered trends in education and developments towards a more heterogeneous student population require shifts in the understanding of how the various elements of learning environments work in teaching and student learning and alter our understanding of curriculum planning in higher education (Nerland & Prøitz, 2018). A central question for the analysis is how faculty try to meet these changes in educational planning and to what extent faculty efforts lead to sustainable practices of study program planning.

Traditionally, the literature has emphasized how internal consistency of study programs between learning activities, defined learning outcomes, and assessment forms affects the quality of student learning (Ashwin et al., 2015; Meyers & Nulty, 2009). A common notion is that pedagogical approaches and activities should be constructively aligned, with intended learning objectives and outcomes, assignments, and assessments to ensure that the elements support each other and work towards the same goal (Biggs & Tang, 2011). Moreover, the intended outcomes and assessment criteria should be clear to the students to enhance their engagement and motivation. Employing these principles in curriculum design has been found to improve students’ experiences as well as their academic grades (Larkin & Richardson, 2013; Reaburn et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2013). Further, concerns have been raised about the concepts used to describe features considered to be productive in educational planning, such as constructive alignment and coherence. In particular, it has been argued that coherence is under-conceptualized and often treated as a universal good and as an inherent characteristic in education policy and in professional development programs for teachers (Hammerness, 2006; Honig and Hatch, 2004; Lindvall & Ryve, forthcoming). In this study, explicit references to consistency in study programs were expected, as the theme has been emphasized in academia and in policy. However, it was also expected that it would vary, with more underlying as well as perhaps less conscious and explicit approaches to consistency.

The analytical framework is anchored in well-known concepts of constructive alignment
(Biggs & Tang, 1999), curriculum congruence (Aschwin et al., 2015), and curriculum coherence
(Muller, 2009). The concepts are often used interchangeably in the literature despite referencing quite different, although overlapping, aspects of curriculum planning and program design. The concepts have been used to complement each other for a broader consideration of how curriculum elements in study programs are planned and organized. The three concepts form a framework for this analysis of the curriculum elements of the study programs, defined in the following questions. 1) How are the study design, activities, and evaluation linked? 2) What study elements are interconnected? 3) How is knowledge organized? The concepts of alignment in study design, congruence as interconnectedness of education components, and coherence in knowledge organization provide a rich and multidimensional analytical framework for a broader analysis of the varied logic of curriculums in play. Logic in this study is based on Bernstein’s (2000) work on the process of recontextualization of knowledge into various curricula and Maton’s (2014) definition of such logic as “the different underlying principles legitimating different curriculum choices.” As such, different logics, in terms of reasoning, principles, or criteria, are employed in study program organization, and how the curricular elements are related to each other may reflect various approaches to the design of higher education studies.

This study draws on an analysis of qualitative data material from four educational programs in Norway and combines document analysis (Bowen, 2009) of program plans and analysis of interviews with study program coordinators (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2007). Combining documents and interview material allows for the identification of ways in which elements are organized in program plans (expressed in curriculum documents) and the reasoning and experiences of such efforts (described in interviews). The selection of the four study programs can be characterized as information-oriented (Flyvbjerg, 2011) and purposeful sampling (Gall, Borg, & Gall, 1996), as they were selected based on the expectation that they would provide rich data relevant to the research question. For a broader scope of analysis, these specific programs were selected from different areas of study, biology, programming, law and organization, and management, at four different universities. The selection of the study programs represented a broad variation of programs expected to display a range of approaches to consistency in program planning.

The qualitative data analysis displayed diverse approaches to curriculum work that illuminated varied logics at play in education planning. Faculty employed a range of aspects in education planning involving international influences for study program structures and credits, strategic positioning of study program elements to secure student recruitment and avoid drop out, as well as changes in knowledge organization to meet student motivations and needs. It also illustrated that pedagogical ideas of education quality are seldom the driver for study program development but rather a way of legitimizing change due to rising drop-out rates or negative student evaluations. Balancing different curriculum logics to meet the needs of the varied student body today seems to exceed the classic concept of alignment and requires multi-dimensional approaches in curriculum design as well as analysis and theorizing about curriculum planning in higher education.

Author

• Tine Sophie Prøitz, University of South Eastern Norway