The idea of educational outcomes (specifically learning outcomes) has been a central tenet in the educational landscape hitherto. From the perspective of contemporary pedagogy, it certainly goes to the very heart of learner-centered education, where learners are treated and valued as active participants and subjects in the learning process.

Learning outcomes comprise of a set of statements of intent that learners are expected to be able to perform and accomplish at the end of the instruction period or program of study. They are formulated in terms of both general and specific knowledge, skills, and values that students are obliged to attain by the end of their academic journeys.

The merits of these outcomes, for both teachers and students, are crystal-clear: they provide teachers with a clear and focused guide to teach; they serve as guiding principles against which students’ performance and behaviors are assessed. As for learners, they serve as the most transparent way of helping them acquire the intended educational goals.

However, despite these benefits, we should be wary that learning outcomes are expressed presumptuously, before the learning activities and experiences in classroom begin. Thus, they tend to impose on students a fixed and rigid system or set of principles a priori.

The assumed knowledge, skills, and values in the outcomes are formulated outside the boundaries of educational activities. They are then manifested, most specifically, in the syllabus and teaching materials. They thus steal the beginning from ongoing learning experiences in the classroom, which are dynamic, unpredictable, and always in constant change.

Aiming for prescribed educational outcomes, to the neglect of rich, vibrant learning experiences and activities, runs the risk of indoctrinating students and teachers into a technocratic rationality. By this logic, learning is seen as a linear, rather than discursive, activity, as a product, rather than a process, and as an ends, rather than a means.

The enthusiastic advocacy for achieving educational outcomes is not difficult to prove. In fact, our education system has been designed so as to embrace these outcomes. However, it is well-established that students are not sufficiently prepared to fully engage in their learning experiences with other students and teachers, and to experiment with their own imagination and creativity.

Instead, they are ushered from the classroom to national examinations. It is through these exams that the knowledge, skills, and values expressed in the educational outcomes are measured.

The tradition of pursuing learning outcomes has continued to present, and is likely to endure for the foreseeable future. A clear case in point is the national exam. Albeit now equipped with advanced technology for so-called computer-based exams, its spirit still clings heavily to the much-loathed assessment chestnuts previously practiced.

While educational outcomes, specifically learning outcomes, possess their own wisdom, which cannot be summarily dismissed, we need to reframe our educational aims from the perspective of pragmatism in order to gain a clear understanding of the notion of learning as an ongoing process and to refrain from succumbing to a limited perspective of technocratic rationality.

Initially described by educational pragmatist John Dewey, pragmatism, in its simplest definition, refers to the pursuit of practicality and efficiency in thinking and behaving. Adopting this philosophical approach to education means conceiving educational aims as something, which is not pre-determined, planned, and specified, but as something emergent and even unintended.

The underlying rationale is that what happens during the learning process cannot be prescribed, specified or even anticipated beforehand, as experiences and interactions may create new insights and new skills and knowledge that are not specified or anticipated in the prescribed learning outcomes. It is also possible that new goals or outcomes emerge as a result of this educational experience.

The promotion of pragmatism, as a framework for thinking, which can reframe our educational aims, is not without credible precedent.

The notion resonates well with the educational philosophy of Ki Hajar Dewantara and his renowned slogans, Ing Ngarso Sung Tulodo, Ing Madyo Mbangun Karso, and Tut Wuri Handayani, which emphasize the importance of the teacher as a model, facilitator, and motivator of their students, respectively.

Acting as a model for, facilitating and motivating students are forms of behavior, or attitudes, which imply continuous interaction, engagement, and involvement in educational activities – activities that will accumulate, and eventually metamorphose into educational experiences. Here is where the basic premise of pragmatism lies: the rendering of abstract ideas and prescriptions into real practices (i.e. attitudes).

Yet, this is certainly not congruent with, and even militates against, educational aims that pursue mere learning outcomes at the expense of the learning experiences students and teachers may collect.

Acting as a model, facilitating and motivating students cannot be narrowly defined and determined by educational outcomes. They are dynamic attributes, open to possibilities for new outcomes and goals.

In a nutshell, as composition scholar Chris Gallagher (2012) affirms, “If close attention to outcomes tends to narrow our view to what we wish to find, close attention to [learning] consequences broadens our view to include what we never thought to look for, opening us up to surprise and wonder”.
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The writer teaches at the Faculty of Education and Language, Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta. He can be reached at setiono.sugiharto@gmail.com.

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