Abstract
Outcomes-based education (OBE) has been very much in the news lately. Graeme Bloch’sbook The toxic mix: what’s wrong with SA schools and how to fix it (2009) has receivedwidespread coverage in the press, as have the results of the National Benching Tests Project(HESA, 2009), which demonstrated that a large number of entry-level students at tertiaryinstitutions were not sufficiently competent in academic literacy, quantitative literacy ormathematics to succeed at university without substantial additional help. There are manycomplex reasons for the problems in the South African education system, but the suitabilityoutcomes-based education to address the education challenges in South Africa has beenseriously questioned.
Highlights
Outcomes-based education (OBE) has been very much in the news lately
Social work education in South Africa has immersed itself wholeheartedly in the OBE rhetoric, given the regulations on how the Bachelor of Social Work degree is offered. It has a plethora of exit-level outcomes (ELOs), associated assessment criteria (AAC) and critical cross-field outcomes (CCFOs). This move towards outcomes-based education has been largely uncontested by social work educators, with only two articles being published in the South African social work journals – one by Lombard, Grobbelaar and Pruis in 2003, which uncritically described the process of registering the BSW, and one by Bozalek in 2009, which focused on outcomes-based assessment and provided a critical discussion of both the advantages and disadvantages
The way in which this was to be done was through the establishment of a National Qualifications Framework (NQF) and an outcomes-based educational system with an explicit focus on what has been learned as measured against socially agreed standards (Chisholm, 2007)
Summary
Outcomes-based education (OBE) has been very much in the news lately. Graeme Bloch’s book The toxic mix: what’s wrong with SA schools and how to fix it (2009) has received widespread coverage in the press, as have the results of the National Benching Tests Project (HESA, 2009), which demonstrated that a large number of entry-level students at tertiary institutions were not sufficiently competent in academic literacy, quantitative literacy or mathematics to succeed at university without substantial additional help. Social work education in South Africa has immersed itself wholeheartedly in the OBE rhetoric, given the regulations on how the Bachelor of Social Work degree is offered It has a plethora of exit-level outcomes (ELOs), associated assessment criteria (AAC) and critical cross-field outcomes (CCFOs). This move towards outcomes-based education has been largely uncontested by social work educators, with only two articles being published in the South African social work journals – one by Lombard, Grobbelaar and Pruis in 2003, which uncritically described the process of registering the BSW, and one by Bozalek in 2009, which focused on outcomes-based assessment and provided a critical discussion of both the advantages and disadvantages. While there have been a number of changes, the objectives remain essentially the same, with the emphasis on an integrated framework, enhancing quality of education and training, facilitating access and redress of past inequalities
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