Constructive alignment is a principle used for devising
teaching and
learning
Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, value (personal and cultural), values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machine learning, machines ...
activities, and assessment tasks, that directly address the intended learning outcomes (ILOs) in a way not typically achieved in traditional
lectures,
tutorial classes and examinations. Constructive alignment was devised by
Professor John B. Biggs
John Burville Biggs (born 25 October 1934) is an Australian educational psychologist and novelist who developed the SOLO taxonomy for assessing the quality of learning outcomes, and the model of constructive alignment for designing teaching a ...
, and represents a marriage between a
constructivist understanding of the nature of learning, and an aligned design for outcomes-based teaching education.
Constructive alignment is the underpinning concept behind the current requirements for programme specification, declarations of learning outcomes (LOs) and assessment criteria, and the use of criterion based assessment. There are two basic concepts behind constructive alignment:
*Learners construct meaning from what they do to learn. This concept derives from
cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
and
constructivist theory, and recognizes the importance of linking new material to concepts and experiences in the learner's
memory, and extrapolation to possible future scenarios via the abstraction of basic principles through reflection.
*The teacher makes a deliberate alignment between the planned learning activities and the learning outcomes. This is a conscious effort to provide the learner with a clearly specified goal, a well designed learning activity or activities that are appropriate for the task, and well designed assessment criteria for giving feedback to the learner.
A branch of
educational evaluation theory has emerged that focuses on constructive alignment as a key element in effective educational design. Known as