I must confess that, while i am aware of the term, I wasn’t until very recently entirely aware of the nature of what is meant by the term ‘constructive alignment’. However, I’ve now started looking into the term, with a mind for how it might be useful in the future, especially in the nature of designing one of the subjects in the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design.
I was pleased to see that Biggs, who is the main proponent of Constructive Alignment, is very clear that CA is a design for teaching in that it is a plan for what students should learn, and how they should express their learning. In other words, it’s an approach to instruction – or a learning design, which means that it fits very nicely into the work that I am currently doing.
Biggs goes on to state that teaching, at its heart, is a four point process. There is the need to describe the intended learning outcomes. Then, there is the next step of devising teaching and learning activities, before there is assessment task which are transformed into the final grades.
The crucial point that Biggs makes (and it seems an obvious one in hindsight) is that these elements should be aligned. While it seems obvious, it is perhaps not always apparent, especially in tertiary education. And, of course, stating that it should be the case doesn’t obviate some of the challenges that occur in attempting to align these four steps. In short, if you are testing someone on their ability to teach, then the tasks and the assessment should be in the same vein; there shouldn’t be a requirement to write an essay to make a judgement about whether someone can teach or not – after all, an essay is not measuring someone’s ability to teach so much as someone’s ability to write.
The challenges come in when we start talking about content and skills, and the necessity to know about something before you can do something.