Currently reading Loughlin et al. (2025) on “Reclaiming constructive alignment”
Constructive alignment is basically the simplest idea in teaching: Figure out what you want students to learn and how you would know that they learned it, then figure out what they need to do in order to learn that. But it is also controversial, because of its origins and because it was implemented as a Europe-wide policy instrument with the Bologna reform, and nobody likes to be told top-down to now implement some management instrument.
In their article “Reclaiming constructive alignment”, Loughlin et al. (2025) make the case for why constructive alignment is still a good model to use. They argue that theory, policy, and practice are not the same thing. Even thought the “constructivism” idea in constructive alignment got quickly dropped from the theory despite it being one of only two central ideas (the other one being the alignment) and this very much weakens the whole idea, and policies misuse what was meant as a tool for reflection as quality control instrument, a purpose it wasn’t intended and isn’t even suited for (“success, or otherwise, of a good education is something that can only be judged, and not measured“), practice can still be good and student-centered and open-ended — or not.
They conclude that “[t]hose who speak of education as a journey undertaken by student and teacher together, to an unknown, unknowable destination would, we suspect, struggle with a compulsory module comprised of six-hundred mixed ability undergraduate students“, and that constructive alignment was a response to those changes in the educational landscape and “offered an opportunity for theory to underpin practice and for academics to rethink how they conceive of their teaching“. Therefore, “[r]eclaiming the meaning of [constructive alignment] is crucial if [higher education] is serious about student-centred learning. Alignment should be used to guide students towards effective learning not to steer academics; and, constructivism puts the student at the heart of learning, without it, learning design can have the structure of [constructive alignment] and yet lack its substance.” And that seems like a very sensible and pragmatic approach!
Loughlin, C., Lygo-Baker, S., & Lindberg-Sand, Å. (2021). Reclaiming constructive alignment. European Journal of Higher Education, 11(2), 119-136.
Today was a beautiful summer day!
I came from the office absolutely exhausted, had a flash of energy during the couple of minutes I was in the water, and then crashed on a bench. But at least one with a view!
That bench, to be precise!
But isn’t it a glorious day, with the Turning Torso and Öresundsbridge in the background?
Reading more about constructive alignment (Wickström, 2015, on "Dekonstruerad länkning: En kritisk läsning av Constructive Alignment inom svensk högskolepedagogik och pedagogisk utveckling") - Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching says:
[…] academic development has become dominated by very few concepts and theoretical models, mostly constructive alignment, Bloom‘s and SOLO taxonomy, and deep- and surface learning (which, funnily enough, I […]